The Great Physician
Sermon by Rev Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.
Scripture: Luke 13:10-17
Back in June, we celebrated Pentecost Sunday, which welcomed the Holy Spirit, announced the birth of the Church, and began the Pentecost season which lasts all the way to the end of November. During the months of Pentecost, we listen especially for teachings specifically aimed to help the Church mature, so the liturgical color is green for growth. These 6 months we focus on Jesus’ guidance in our own discipleship and what it means to be church. Then we move in late November to a new liturgical year, to spend the first 6 months learning again about Jesus – his birth, ministry opposition, death, and resurrection.
For now, as we read Luke during this Pentecost season, we see various aspects of 1st century life and how Jesus teaches among common people, as well as the movers and shakers, and the broken, ill, and rejected people of society. On recent Sundays we heard lessons for us, the church, which showed Jesus’ loving grace for all of us, as well as God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. But we’ve also been taught Jesus’ passionate concern for the ones he calls the least, who, we are told, are actually the greatest in God’s administration. So, no surprise, with his extravagant love pouring out on the neediest, Jesus bumps up against resistance time and again. Although many things have changed in the 2000 years since Luke wrote, there are still people who rejoice when holy healing takes place and people who grumble because they like things the way they are. Stop now and read Luke 13:10-17.
We can almost see as Jesus enters the room, everything divides. On one side of the gathering is the woman, bent over, making her way in (painfully, slowly), completely oblivious of the famous Rabbi. She is merely preparing to worship. On the other side is the religious leader. He certainly has noticed the Rabbi. Already his hostility is stirred against Jesus. But Christ, the Great Physician, ignoring the opposition, chooses to set the woman free.
We can all see it. The world today is still full of infirmities needing healing. But for a few minutes, let’s focus specifically on the sinful sickness of racism. We need healing from racism. No matter what color we are, racism corrupts us all and society as a whole. We all need to be healed. White people among us may not have a Confederate flag in our yard or think African Americans should be denied the right to vote, but racism is everywhere. It’s like the air we breathe.
Racism affects every Person of Color, as they strive to live a free and successful life while racist realities hold them back. I imagine no Person of Color would deny racism is an insidious illness which affects us all. And every White person needs to see our souls are wounded, too, even when we don’t recognize the pain. Our privilege makes us less than we should be, makes us guilty, even when we are not intentionally racist.
White people grow up thinking Whiteness is normal, so if someone refers to “a person,” we assume a White person. Society treats Euro-centric art, music, and literature as normal; superior to any other type, so African American art trends are considered out of the “mainstream,” by which we mean the White stream. Much non-Eurocentric music is considered “exotic,” which often relegates it to the periphery. And literature by Black authors is almost always still categorized as Black literature. Zora Neal Hurston and James Baldwin are African American writers, whereas Harper Lee and Kurt Vonnegut are just writers.
Recent anti-racist scholars name one of the most pervasive symptoms of privilege “White pseudosupremacy,” meaning we falsely assume White people can best solve every problem. (1) This is not just Tarzan saving an African village (although how sick is that?). Pseudosupremacy is at work when White churches plan a “mission” trip to fix a situation someplace for People of Color, ignoring that local people know best what is needed. When we get honest about our secret assumptions, privilege, and prejudices, we realize we are all infected. Scholar Rufus Burrow Jr. claimed White people in the US are either racists or recovering racists. We all need divine healing.
Some people will resist divine healing. They don’t want to be made well. They prefer to keep the status quo, as if liberating someone were somehow inappropriate, as if another’s wholeness threatens theirs. Of course, they would never oppose healing directly. Like the synagogue leader we heard about who instead nit-picks about the law, recalling some policy which prevents initiating a healthy outcome for the other. We might call him a “nay-sayer.” There are people who use the same tools today – tradition, rules, or not rocking the boat – as hammers to knock down people’s movement toward healing. Even though the very nature of Jesus is liberation, nay-sayers are still active today in keeping the status quo of racism.
Don’t get me wrong. Churches of all types let people of all colors join. But think about us, St. Andrew. I preach awfully White, and many of our hymns and traditions are Euro-centric, and we would think it odd if people danced their offerings forward or Communion servers wore white gloves. And the reality is, most of us like the privilege of treating White culture as normal. We don’t want to feel guilty about our privilege, although many of us resent Florida’s restrictions on teaching racial history. We are shocked that teachers cannot teach about enslavement, Jim Crow, the violence of the Civil Rights Movement, or Black Lives Matter because our White children may feel guilty. But how many of us wrote to the Governor to protest that legislation? What have people done to open their own minds, to share their ideas, to make sure public libraries have plenty of copies of the books the schools are pulling off their shelves? Most White people are comfortable keeping the status quo of our privilege, the normality of whiteness, and the systemic racism we breathe every day. Thinking back to today’s scripture, more than just being a nay-sayer to others’ healing, some of us are willing to stay bent over by a sick spirit. Lots of people resist healing.
But Jesus says, “Celebrate wholeness.” Embrace healing! Rejoice as we work to recover from racism. Jesus’ Spirit is among us, helping us heal! Unfortunately, Jesus cannot just touch us once to cure our racism, but we do receive divine assistance. We have to, because racism is a deep infestation and takes divine healing as well as personal work. Racism is sin after all.
The woman Jesus cured had been bent for 18 years. That’s a long time. However, yesterday was the 403rd anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved persons on a Dutch vessel, landing in Jamestown, in 1619. More than 150 years before the Declaration of Independence, we were already enslaving human beings. We, the people of this land, have been bent by a spirit for over 4 centuries, so no easy one-touch cure will happen, but (and here’s a crucial lesson) we can lift up our eyes toward becoming anti-racist. And we can trust God will keep unbending us as we work.
What steps could we take? Perhaps we can form an additional book group to help us become more aware of where racism is infecting us. We can challenge each other to be more welcoming to non-Eurocentric elements in worship and in our lives. Remind ourselves that White is not best, not normal, not what everyone should aspire to. White is just who some people are, like African American, Asian, Indigenous, or Latinx is what some people are. But before we are any color or race, we are people, children of God, each precious, with gifts to share, and so life to celebrate. Together we can notice steps we take on the path toward anti-racism and rejoice in our progress! In the scripture, when the woman was healed, she stood up straight and what? She began to praise God. Then after she starts rejoicing, everyone joins in. The amazing power of praise is its contagious inclusivity. Once someone starts praising, others catch it. Of course church is not only about whooping it up, but we can’t leave the rejoicing out. Racism is a deeply ingrained illness. We are all bound in different ways by it, but we are all bound. So, every step toward freedom from racism, every movement we make toward anti-racist wholeness deserves to be celebrated. Jesus says so.
1 Kerry Connelly, with Byana Clover, and Josh Riddick, Wait – Is This Racist?: A Guide to Becoming an Anti-racist Church (Westminster John Knox, 2022), 148, see also 185.