Luke 13: 10-17: "Now Jesus was teaching in one of the temples on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands upon her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the temple, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing." How often have we stood in the place of the crippled woman and asked for what we were told we could not have? And how often have we stood in the place of the priests and said no? And, when have we stood before those priests and said, Yes, but of course!
There were three clergy, a Baptist minister, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Unitarian Universalist minister. The Roman Catholic priest invited the other two to the parish retreat center to go fishing, and so the three met at the lake and took off. No sooner had they left dock, than the telephone in the center rang. "I guess I'll have to answer that," said the priest. And he got out of the boat, walked across the water, answered the phone, and came back. The Baptist minister was absolutely stunned! "How did you do that?" And the priest just shrugged. The phone rang again, and the Unitarian Universalist minister said, "I think that one's for me!" She got out of the boat, walked across the water, answered the phone, and came back. This time the Baptist minister looked even more confused! I mean, a Catholic, that was understandable. But a Unitarian Universalist? The phone rang a third time, "I think" said the Baptist minister, "that this one's for me." And he got out of the boat, and sank.
"You think we should have told him about the stumps?" said the priest.
"What stumps?" said the UU minister. (I have to thank the Rev. Burton Carley of the Church of the River in Memphis for that one.)
What gets me about this joke, is that of any denomination, we Unitarian Universalists are are least likely to believe in miracles, the most likely to seek a rational explanation for what we see in the world around us. Now that has changed somewhat as we have become more theologically diverse in the last 20 years or so. However, since the birth of Unitarianism in North America, we have been known as a rationalist faith. William Ellery Channing, one of the fathers of American Unitarianism, argued that you must approach religion and scripture, in fact, life itself, through reason, because using primarily emotion was too risky and prone to error. His claim to fame was his insistence that the Bible should be scrutinized like any other book. Strangely, though, he never questioned the truth of the miracles in the Bible. They were proof of Jesus' special relationship to God. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, one generation later, who questioned the importance of the Biblical miracles. Emerson argued that they were of little consequence. What mattered was our own ability to experience God, to touch the divine, to intuit through our beings what was right and true. Emerson's challenge nearly precipitated a split in 19th century American Unitarianism and his challenges still echo within our faith today.
My own take on miracles is similar to Emerson's. I'm not so concerned with whether the miracles of Jesus are fact or fiction. My concern is the message, the truth in the stories that are told. And I'm not talking about literal truth, I'm talking about a deeper truth, a truth that is much larger than the mere story that holds it. In fact, I think that we let ourselves down when we measure the value of religious books like the bible by their literal truth. Demanding that kind of truth actually imprisons and demeans scripture - both for those who dismiss it as meaningless because it's not literally true, and those that force it to be literally true and ask us to believe all kinds of theories that really don't hold up. Both are missing the point.
And what is the point? The point is the questions that are left for us to ponder.
How often have we stood in the place of the crippled woman and asked for what we were told we could not have?
How often have we stood in the place of the priests and said no?
And when have we stood beside that crippled woman and said, "Yes, but of course!"
Those questions, and others that arise, are the point.
Perhaps this Biblical tale asks us to look at what we assume is acceptable and allowed. Perhaps this story asks us to look at the times in our lives when we have been that crippled woman, crippled either by disease, social structure, or something of a personal nature. And perhaps this story asks us to look at how in our lives we may be like those priests, standing in the way. And perhaps, this story even asks us to look at how we might take on the role of Jesus, to be the healers, to be the ones who stand up and say, "Yes, but of course!"
It seems to me that this story embodies the story many of us tell about Unitarian Universalism. We are known as the people who question. We are known as the people who choose. We are known as the people who look beyond form and tradition so that we can better respond to the religious and spiritual needs of those who make Unitarian Universalism their home. Questioning tradition, and making up our own minds is such a cornerstone of Unitarian Universalism. But it's more than that. The basis, the foundation, of Unitarian Universalism is trust. We expect you to question and then we trust you to make your own choices and we trust that those choices will be good. This is not a religion that focuses on the depravity of the human condition, so we don't expect goodness to come only with carefully proscribed and rigidly enforced rules of what is right and wrong. This is one of the reasons that we are a people of hope, because there is the trust that given real and viable choices, people will choose wisely and they will choose well.
VIABLE CHOICES
Notice that I said "given real and viable choices". So much of our ability to make good choices rests in being free and having equal access to the basic rights of life. Unfortunately, we live in a world where we do not have freedom and equality for all, and so we are faced with a myriad of choices that leave much to be desired. Part of our commitment to justice is because we believe so much in choice, and in providing the circumstances for people to make good choices for their lives.
When the crippled woman came to the Temple that Sabbath, she had made a choice. She chose to ask for healing on a day that Jewish law forbade healing. Imagine the courage that took. Living her whole life within a religious system that set out strict certain norms, and she chose to break with that system and ask for what she needed.
I believe that many of us are crippled women in search of healing. Whether that woundedness comes from our place in society, like being a woman, being a sexual minority, being a person of colour, being poor. Whether we are wounded by dynamics that may have flooded our chosen and birth families. Whether we are wounded by day to day events that simply come into our lives. To be human is to be wounded.
Like the crippled woman, when we ask for healing, it means we are asking for the rules to change. When women asked for equal pay for equal work, they were asking for the rules to change. When African Americans demanded civil rights, they were asking for the rules to change. As sexual minorities now fight for their civil rights, again, they are asking for the rules to change. And in the ongoing struggle to provide for the poorest in our nation, we keep asking for the rules to change. When we try to heal ourselves within the contexts of our family dynamics, we are asking the rules to change. And when we come to this church, to this faith, to Unitarian Universalism, in search of a religious home that will nurture and support us, we are often asking that the rules change so that we can freely explore what is in our hearts, in our minds, and in our souls.
However, there are many priests who stand in the way. The priests resisted when women began agitating for equal rights and the priests continue to challenge women's rights at the dawn of the 21st century. We have been painfully reminded of that this week as Governor Blunt signed into law one of the most restrictive pieces of legislation regarding access to abortion services. The priests resisted when African Americans took to the streets. They are resisting the rights of sexual minorities.
The priests raise their voices when we ask our religious communities to reflect the world that we live in and the lives that we lead. And those priests live in all faiths - they live in Roman Catholicism, they live in all forms of Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, they live in Judaism, they live in Islam, they live in Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Paganism, and they live in Unitarian Universalism. The priests of resistance live in all faiths in all times because ultimately, the priests live in us.
Just as each of us embodies a crippled woman yearning for healing, each of us also embodies a priest who stands there and says no, this must not change. This cannot change. Because if this changes, the world as I know it is going to fall apart. There is in each of us a deeply felt sense of what is normal, what is sacrosanct, what should not be changed. And when we are faced with the unknown, with demands that mean letting go or stepping back from what we understand as normal, it is very easy to retreat behind our walls and to hold up our hands as if to say, stop, no more. That is enough. Even when we start to realize intellectually that some of our deeply held understandings are keeping us from living full lives, it is very hard to take that intellectual understanding and embed it in our hearts and make it real in the way we live. If you're in therapy, or if you are in a 12-step program, or if you are one of those people who has cultivated a deep awareness for why you do the things you do, you will likely know what I am talking about. Our own natures provide some of the strongest resistance to change.
It is very easy to recognize the priest in others, especially because as Unitarian Universalists, we are often so intent on differentiating ourselves from our more conservative neighbours. It is much harder, I think, to recognize the priest in ourselves. Imagine what it would have felt like to be those priests. Here you have lived your whole life believing that by not working on the Sabbath, you are honouring and deepening your relationship with God, and then someone dares to proclaim that this is simply not so. That this rule that you have held as an absolute for your whole life, should be set to the side. Imagine how painful that would be. I think some of this has happened in Unitarian Universalism in the last generation. While we have grown more theologically diverse, the change has been difficult and painful for many. So before we go judging the priests, I think it's important as well to empathize with them.
What are your absolutes? What have you given the place of the unchangeable in your life? Are these absolutes strengthening and enhancing your life? Are they keeping you from going someplace you need to go?
What are the absolutes of this congregation? What are those sacred cows that dare not be touched? Now I'm not sure yet what those sacred cows are here, because I am so new. No doubt some of them will emerge at the Ministerial Start Up Worskhop two weeks from now. Often it is by identifying those absolutes, those unchangeables, that we can see very clearly what our rules are and how they affect our lives. How do the unwritten rules of our lives and of this congregation affect the way each one of us lives, the kinds of relationships we build? For this congregation to reach out to that crippled woman and the priest who live in every person who walks into our lives, we need to, first of all, own that even this church has its own crippled woman, those burdens of years gone by which still have not been let go, and that this church also has its own priest, standing before the doors of the Temple. Why should this church be any different than the precious human beings that fill it? What we aspire to be, as individuals and the church is to be like Jesus, who stands before the temple, and says yes.
What I wish for this congregation, and what I wish for each one of you, is that your lives and your faith can addresss the wounds and take down the walls that keep us from living whole and full lives. And so let us bless the crippled woman, let us bless the priests, for they point the way to the truth, and it is the truth that sets us free.
Posted: 10/3/05