by Will Willimon
Gospel Reading: Luke 13:10-17
For Sunday, August 25, 2013: Year C—Lectionary 21
Something like 90% of all Americans believe in God. Most everyone believes God exists. “Does God exist?” is not the question. The tougher question is, “Does God care about me?”
What sort of God have we got? Vengeful? Judgmental? Angry? Detached? Unconcerned?
Enter, Jesus.
Here’s an answer: In the middle of one of his teaching sessions, Jesus sees a woman who has been bent over and crippled for nearly two decades. Without the woman even asking for his healing touch, Jesus notices her, calls out to her, and tells her so that she is free from her ailment.
Jesus doesn’t say or do much of anything to heal the sick woman; he doesn’t have to. It’s as if compassionate, merciful, healing is just who Jesus is. It’s as if the moment Jesus shows up; the mercifulness begins to overflow.
And though the religious leaders bellyache about Jesus doing such bodily healing on such a spiritual day, the gaping crowd “rejoices” (verse 17) at Jesus’ revelation of who God really is. God is merciful. This is God?
Jesus: The Truth About God
Christians believe that Jesus is the whole about God. When we look at Jesus in action, we really believe that this is who God is and what God does. For some (the sick woman) that’s good news. For others (the religious authorities), the conviction, that Jesus is the whole truth about God is bad news.
God? “God is high and lifted up, distant, great, all powerful but very far away,” most people seem to think. Listen to some of the words people use to describe God, big, abstract, high sounding words: omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, immortal. The sum of these words is this: God is a long way from here and, whatever God is doing, God is not doing that with us.
Then we met Jesus, the truth about who God is and what God is up to in the world. One of Jesus’ names was Emmanuel, “God With Us.” Jesus is God up close and personal; God as God really is rather than whom we had imagined God to be; God (if you happen to be a religious authority like me!) too close for comfort. And one of the main things we learned about God after watching God With Us in action was this: God is merciful.
I know someone who says, “I spent the first thirty years of my life thinking God was mad at me for something. Then I saw Jesus.”
Jesus could have passed by that suffering woman that day, could have preached to her some sweet sermon on bearing up under misfortune. He could have averted his eyes from her and focused instead upon the well-heeled and more attractive people, the defenders of scripture, the keepers of religious rules. Jesus didn’t do any of that. What he did was to feel her pain and to respond to her in mercy.
The Hardest Question
One reason why we do business with the Bible is to submit our preconceptions and misperceptions about God to the facts about God in Jesus Christ. In my experience, when people open up the Bible, one over-riding question is on their minds: Who is God? That question is often related to an even more pressing question: Does God care?
Will Willimon is a bishop (religious authority, brother to the Pharisees) of the United Methodist Church, retired. He is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC where he tries to get future pastors to ask hard questions. Will is the author of many books. His latest book is a novel (!) about a church, its clergy, and members, Incorporation, from Cascade Press, Eugene, Oregon. Will blogs at "A Peculiar Prophet"—willwillimon.com.
