Devotional 8-24-07

The following two devotions are quoted from the book Disciplines 2007. They have submitted to the Devotional Ministry by Jim Ray, a member of our church. The "Prayer to be Reminded" at the end was an anonymous contribution.

Scipture Reading: Luke 13:10-17

Coming to Worship

It is amazing how many of Jesus' healings and confrontations take place in a synagogue -- and on the Sabbath to boot. The sanctuary of a special time and place, a God place, a God time, is as important to us today as it was to Jesus' first-century contemporaries. Things should simply be different in church. We may dispute how things are to differ, but we all understand that things should be different in this sacred place.

In Luke 13 a woman appears before Jesus with a crippling spirit. Why has she come? How might her pain be understood against the backdrop of the sacred? Nothing dictates that the woman comes for healing. She has simply come to worship. Jesus, however, considers her infirmity and the truth of Sabbath to be at odds. So he calls her to him, and the joy of sacred rest and renewal becomes her physical and spiritual reality.

Unfortunately the story ends in conflict. Jesus' view of sacred time and space clashes with that of the elders. Have the rules changed? No. It wil not do for us to make new rules about the sacred. This time, this day, this sacntuary is still God's. It continues to be a place of mystery, hope, and wholeness. New rules are no better than the old if they seek to circumscribe what is beyond our comprehension.

Prayer: Lord God, when I gather with the faithful for worship and praise, let my heart be open to the freeing power of your spirit. Amen.

Coming to Freedom

I find this story's language intereseting: "A spirit that had crippled her....Set free from her ailment....Set free from this bondage." We would say the woman was healed. Jesus says she has escaped a prison.

Do you ever feel like the walls are closing in around you? I do. It may be a growing awareness of my own personal limitations or a deadline looming on the horizon. Friends share with me a sense of being trapped in marriages without love. Some are confined to wheelchairs with legs that refuse to support their weight. The language of bondage or spiritual and physical imprisonment gives me a different take on life. "I am still here behind thes bars. Who will set me free?"

For eighteen years this "daughter of Abraham" (slave to no one) has been bound by a crippling spirit. The evil is not part of who she is to be. A spiritual pariah fights to define her identity. For eighteen years she keeps coming to synagogue because there is a counter claim being made in the sacredness of sabbath joy.

The battle has gone on long enough. The daughter of Abraham that she has always been needs to be set free. "Stand up straight, sister. Embrace your true self. Slough off the evil accretion of your past. God sees the real you behind those bars, and it is that sparkling spirit called to life this day."

Suggestion for Meditation:
Behind the bars of broken hearts,
of banishment and pain
lives a spirit crying out for freedom from the shame.
"Long enough!" is Jesus' cry,
"Stand up straight with spirit spry.
This is the day the Lord hath made;
let love be known and bondage fade."

Submitted by Jim Ray

Prayer to be Reminded

Oh, Heavenly Father, we forget. Remind us. Remind us, as we stand in your sacred sanctuary, that you love us. We look around the huge space, set apart, and we see light passing through beautiful stained glass, we see a magnificent organ, whose music can fill the air, we smell the melted candle wax from the altar, and we wonder why you even notice that we exist. We forget, Father. Remind us. Remind us that you sent you son to show us how to live, to show us how to love, and most of all, to show us how much we ARE loved. We forget, Father. Remind us. Remind us that we are a Holy People, set apart, made sacred, made acceptable to you, through your own action, as you once and for all removed the weight of sin from our lives, freeing us from its crippling grasp. We forget, Father. Remind us. Remind us that you given us freedom, and that because of your love, we are able to go out into the world, as reminders to others of your freeing grace. We forget, Father. Remind us. Remind us that the man on the street corner, the child playing in the mud, the unwed mother, the angry boss, the careless neighbor, and the mourning widow are Holy People, set apart, made sacred by your love of them. We forget, God. We forget, Father, and we need to be reminded. Amen.

Anonymous