Do you enjoy watching magicians?

Pastor Jay Petrella
Graceham Moravian Church

(9/1) I do. Occasionally in my internet meanderings I come across a video of someone performing some kind of magic trick. You click the play button and you’re watching closely, trying to spot any trickery going on, trying to to spot the moment a hand disappears into a pocket or a card slides out of a sleeve. You’re waiting for a trick to happen. For what seems like the longest time, the magician is shuffling cards, moving some cups around, telling a story or giving an assistant or volunteer some instructions and you’re wondering where all this is going; wondering just what the trick is going to be. Then, while you’re still watching closely, but somehow not expecting it, poof, the trick happens and you’re amazed.

You didn’t see anything weird or sneaky happening. You didn’t notice any obvious opportunities for the magician to switch decks, or where on earth he or she could have been hiding a dozen lemons while still keeping them accessible. But there you have it. Fruit conjured from inside a cup, or a signed playing card somehow appearing in the magicians empty palm.

I’m not a magician, but I do know a part of the performance often involves distraction. Maybe the magician does a lot of fidgeting or lots of hand waving. Maybe they adjust their shirt or sleeves. Maybe there’s lots of talking, perhaps a pointless story, or verbose explanations of things. All of that is meant to be a distraction. Often, hidden among the extemporaneous movement and words is the secret of the trick, but you didn’t catch it because you were looking in the wrong place. Like the religious leaders in Luke 13:10-17 you missed out because you were distracted, you were paying attention to the wrong thing.

One day Jesus was teaching in a Synagogue. Luke tells us a woman shows up. Whether it was outside after the religious service, or Jesus noticed her in the synagogue or saw her through a window-walking past outside, who knows. But suddenly this woman appears on the scene who has had a physical illness for 18 years that prevented her from standing up straight. Perhaps scoliosis, or osteoporosis. Again, who knows? Whatever crippled her caused her to struggle for the past 18 years. Anyway, when Jesus saw her, He Immediately healed her. Hooray! What an amazing miracle!

Everyone was happy and amazed at what they just saw happen. Well, everyone except some the crotchety religious leaders of course. As they explained their outrage I couldn’t help but to smile to myself. I pictured them being interviewed on some 24 hour news network once this controversy blew up.

Live, on air they explained themselves. "Of course we are glad this woman who has been suffering for so long has been healed of her aliment. You’d be heartless if you didn’t think this miracle was an amazing thing." Then they’d clutch their pearls tightly and say, "But we have laws in this country. God’s laws. And God himself tells us that we are to do no work on the Sabbath. Now this woman was sick for 18 years. How would it have hurt for this Jesus fellow to tell her to come back tomorrow to be healed. In fact, not even tomorrow. Just 12 more hours. If Jesus would have waited just 12 more hours, the woman would be healed, and the law would have been obeyed. The fact that he didn’t wait shows us that Jesus has no respect for our traditions, or for God himself. If this act to go unpunished then we, the leaders of this community will be guilty of letting our society abandon God and descend into chaos."

Jesus immediately points out to them that they are misusing the law they claim to love so much. He calls them hypocrites because even they perform basic work tasks on the day of rest. Tasks like relieving the hunger and thirst of their livestock, as they can’t let their animals go hungry just because it’s the Sabbath. Jesus basically says, if God is OK with them watering their cows so the animals don’t suffer, why would God have a problem with Jesus providing a much greater relief to this woman who was suffering. Why should her suffering continue even one minute longer than it needed to?

The issue was the religious leaders were treating the law of God like an idol. By blindly serving the law, they felt they were being faithful to God. People back then felt their preferred deities inhabited the material stuff of this universe. So "feeding" a wooden statue of said deity was the same as feeding the deity itself. But God is not a carved piece of wood, nor is God a scroll or a book containing a written set of laws.

The law is a tool that is supposed to direct us to God, to teach us and allow us to learn in a safe environment. Treating the law as God himself is what lead to the logic allowing the law "Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy" to turn into killing a man because he helped a woman on the Sabbath. The law must be obeyed at all cost. All hail the law!

Now before we throw too much shade at those religious leaders we also have to be honest with ourselves. Christians have the tendency to proclaim with Paul and Luther that Jesus has fulfilled the law on our behalf so we are not saved by our adherence to the law, or by our works. We are saved only by the grace of God. But in the next breath some turn around and create a new batch of laws for us to follow based on select texts of both Old and New Testaments and they treat those laws with the same reverence and religious ferocity as the religious leaders in this gospel passage. So they end up back where we started, under the law’s oppression. Serving this new law is on par with serving God Himself, therefore it doesn’t matter who or how many people get hurt in the process. People aren’t important. Worshiping this new idol is what’s most important.

Well Jesus offers some correction, a different perspective. We serve God best not by ruthlessly applying law, but by loving others. Remember the two greatest commandments? Love God and love others. Everything else should fall into one of those two categories. For all you Star Trek fans, this is like the prime directive. Wherever we go, whatever situations we find ourselves in, we need to test our decision making against those two permanents. If something we’re saying or doing brings harm to someone, then we can be assured we’re doing something wrong.

So long story short, we shouldn’t use our religious beliefs or the bible itself as a means to cause others harm all in the name of serving God. Jesus made it clear that we are to love God and  love others. We can’t do that if we worship law in place of God, or love law more than people.