No Longer Bound - Rev Dr Kelly Sprinkle 8-24-25

Reading: Luke 13:10-17 by Wendy Murray

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Second reading is from Luke thirteen ten through seventeen. This
is a lovely story. One Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in
one of the synagogues. There was a woman there who

(00:26):
for eighteen years had a sickness caused by a spirit.
She was bent double, quite incapable of standing up straight.
When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, woman,

(00:49):
you are free of your infirmity. Can you imagine that?
He laid his hand on her, and immediately she stood
up straight and began thinking and thanking God. The head

(01:10):
of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had healed on the seventh,
said to the congregation, there are six days for working.
Come on those days days to be healed, not on

(01:33):
the Sabbath. Good Jesus said in reply, you hypocrites, which
of you doesn't let your ox or your donkey out
of the stall on the sabbath to water it? Hmm?
This daughter of Sarah and Abraham has been in bondage

(01:59):
of Satan for eighteen years. Shouldn't she have been released
from her shackles on the Sabbath. At these words, Jesus'
opponents were humiliated. Meanwhile, everyone else rejoiced at the marvels

(02:26):
that Jesus was totally accomplishing.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Amen, I've been a bit mathmaized this week with the

(03:02):
work of artists Grace Cross from South Africa. You've seen
her work if you've looked at today's bulletin. The image
that I've been mesmerized by is She's got the whole
world own her back. I've been mesmerized by it. At

(03:25):
first glance, I imagined that the globe that we see
was setting upon what might be her shoulders. But then
as I look at it more, I can see that
it's the figure is perhaps bent over, and the weight
of the world the globe in this sense, is chained

(03:47):
to her back, all its weight, perhaps a symbol I'm
not just the globe we have in our offices that
we can spend easily, but all of that weight that
we carry as a burden on our backs. At time,

(04:07):
I think when we approach this wonderful story we hear today,
is we clergy, including myself, We have preached this text
in many different ways. There's been times I've wondered aloud,
well what about the osteoporosis? And I wonder about all
the medical diagnoses I'm a doctor, but not that kind

(04:28):
of doctor, So I should have never wondered out loud
about what it might be, because I'm not able to
diagnose that. But perhaps we and I together, we can
diagnose some of the burdens that she might be carrying
on her back. We live in a day and age

(04:55):
where it appears that many are carrying the weight of
the world world upon their back and their shoulders. We
can flip on the evening news, tune in to NPR,
we can read the newspaper, and we too can almost
sense our bodies tightening up with all the pain that

(05:17):
there is in this world. This past week. I happened
to turn on the television this past Friday, right as
the newscast began about the accidental Interstate ninety with the
troopers standing there, and I felt myself tightening up inside

(05:44):
as that officer described people ejected, people died, helicopters waiting
on the interstate as ambulances came down the interstate in
the wrong direction to make it to the scene. Perhaps
you've tightened up this week as the UNN has officially

(06:09):
said that there is famine in Gaza, not famine by
natural disaster, but by human disaster, of young ones dying
in their mothers and fathers and aunts and uncle's arms,
a mother, father, someone who cares deeply, trying their best

(06:35):
to find maybe just a small morsel of food to
split into numerous ways. Perhaps the weight of the world
is searing hot, for there are parts of our nation

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in Europe and other parts of the world, where it
is sizzling hot, where there is drought, where there are
storms that are so big, even miles from the coast,
that there is erosion, and sandbags stacked ten feet high

(07:19):
on the outer banks of North Carolina for a storm
that's going to just brush them. Are you feeling somewhat
heavy now? I am, And then I feel even the
weight of the world, perhaps the weight of our nation

(07:43):
upon my back and your back. Wondering when will civility
and humanity realize that we are one. So I'm not

(08:05):
in the business of diagnosing medical issues that are not
mine to diagnose, but I can with you diagnose pain
in the world. Pain. Even as Church World Service, and
as we begin collecting items from back to school, Church

(08:28):
will services in the process of renaming the offering to
kids kids, but back to school still works. But the
issue is that it's not just that back to school
that children often need supplies in December and January and
February when we've moved on to the net. Big thing.

(08:53):
We live in a world where we rebrand things so
that we can continue them without the burden of having
to really describe why we've done it. And this is
what today's story gets me. And it makes me uncomfortable,

(09:13):
and I think it probably makes us as Mountain Rise, uncomfortable,
because rarely do we say things about Satan in worship
or saying things that are bound by Satan perhaps a
better word, if you will. What things are upon us
as a nation and a world, and upon those we

(09:35):
do not know who feel it heaviest, What evil things
are binding them? For some, the evil is not caring
about creation, where some struggle to find water not just

(09:57):
for crops, but for even themselves to drink, The evil
of not recognizing someone's humanity, the evil of borders clothes
to food. But this is what gets me. This woman

(10:18):
bent over has been bent over for eighteen long years
and didn't anyone else see it? Did it take Jesus
finally to show up to see her bent over? With

(10:38):
the world chained to her back. Perhaps this woman for
eighteen years has been chained with the evil and of
not seeing and understanding. Then we sort of normalize it,

(11:00):
just as we don't see issues like xenophobia, authoritarian regimes, homophobia, racism.
For we've normalized it in such a way that it
just passes by, even though it's a burden on someone's back.

(11:20):
For us who are privileged on some level, it doesn't
weigh us over as much. And as I think of
the world and nation that we especially live in, now
that it's been normalized so long that shifts to move
things in the right direction seem threatening to some. It

(11:42):
is threatening that things that seemed like normal, that slavery
wasn't all that bad, have gotten it wrong. Perhaps we
have missed it because we were never slaves. Perhaps we

(12:02):
have missed it because we have never been denied entry.
Perhaps we have missed it because we were not bullied
in school for liking doing things that boys shouldn't do,
or liking things that boys like to do, or questioning
or trying to figure out ourselves in the world. For

(12:24):
you see, my friends, this woman, many of us, for
eighteen long years or longer, have been bent over. But
here's the thing. Once we recognize what has bound us
and bound others, there can be hope. And it's not

(12:48):
an easy hope that yes, it will be better tomorrow.
But it is, as Audre Lord and her writing sister
Outsider is content, that we have to begin with naming
the pain and suffering and injustice in this world, and
that's when healing and transformation can begin. Now, Lord differentiates

(13:14):
the unexamined suffering from that which is named. Audre Lord writes,
pain is an event, an experience that must be recognized, named,
and then used in some way in order for the
experience to change, to be transformed into something else, strength, knowledge,

(13:39):
or action. What action is required of us to make change?
Perhaps some of us are doing it as we stand
on sidewalks and protests. Perhaps some of us are doing
it by getting into the middle of the messiness and
teaching a child to read. Are standing up and saying,

(14:02):
not in my name will children starve because of battle.
Not in my name will children be indoctrinated into some
other form. We think of it often in the Ukraine
Russian War, but it happens here in our own myths,
and we don't see it because it's become so normalized.

(14:23):
My friends, we are no longer bound only when we
only if we see it and do something about it,
we can break those chains. We can be the people
of hope that gets out there changes the way we

(14:44):
do business, the way we do business in the world,
and how we with one another work together in solidarity,
seeking new ways to work beyond boundaries or assumptions, seeking
new ways to be the church that's already in the
twenty first century and preparing to be the church of

(15:12):
the next century. Really, in this scheme of things, is
not that far away for some of us. In our lifetimes,
we will probably not see the twenty second century, but
it's seventy five, seventy six years away. What is the
world that we want our great grandchildren, our our great

(15:34):
grandchildren's children to grow into. Will it be a world
where there is poverty and pain because it is just
so normal we don't see it. Or will we be
the messengers and harbingers of peace? What will you do?

(15:57):
You have the knowledge ability to lighten the load, and
by lightening the load of others, we too lighten the
burden upon our own facts. Amen,