Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

A friend of mine from college had an interesting way of filling his free time: he would climb up the exteriors of various buildings on campus. This all happened at Valparaiso University, so one of his climbing adventures took place on this building: the 60’-high Chapel of the Resurrection (see image below).

His attitude towards life was engaging, fresh, and often quite different from mine. I rode a bike, always with a helmet firmly attached; he had a skateboard. I played cards and video games; he came up with crazy pranks to pull off on campus. I was concerned about following the rules; he pushed boundaries. I kept my feet firmly on the ground; he...did not. Well, I kept my feet firmly on the ground until the day I finally went with him to climb a building on campus. I didn’t attempt it until our senior year. In all reality, it was little more than an attempt to impress the girl I had recently started dating. We all made it up to the roof and back down without falling and breaking any bones. And she must have been impressed because we kept dating and eventually married.

I asked my friend if he was ok with me talking about him and his campus climbing adventures for my sermon illustration. He joked that he wasn’t aware of the story of Jesus climbing the temple. However, I reminded him there is a story about Jesus climbing the temple. It’s found in Luke 4:9, which reads: “The devil...placed [Jesus] on the pinnacle of the temple.” It all makes sense now...the devil made him do it!

I’m not advocating for anyone to go scale the facades of buildings. That’s not exactly what inspires me about him. I am inspired by his impulse to push against rules, norms, and expectations in order to serve others. This same friend graduated and went down to Guatemala to work with people who lived in landfills. That takes a serious boundary-pushing impulse.

I hope you are blessed with a friend like this; someone who helps you see new possibilities. A friend like this keeps you on your toes. A friend like this helps you understand that some rules are made to be broken.

In this way, my friend modeled an aspect of Jesus’ life that is often overlooked by Christian churches in the West today: Jesus was ornery. This is evident in the miracles he performed, the wisdom he taught, the friends he made, the freedom with which he lived his life, and the way he understood and related to God. All of it clashed against the customs and rules of his time.

Ornery Jesus reserved his most radical and controversial actions for the Sabbath day–the day no work was to be done. I imagine Jesus was pretty low key throughout the week, but as soon as the sun goes down on a Friday night, Jesus would get a look in his eye that suggested he was ready to break some rules...because some rules are made to be broken.

In the gospel story for today, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He’s not teaching like everyone else teaches...this guy is impressive! He’s engaging, authoritative, and exciting. He’s pushing boundaries. He’s the skateboard-riding, thrill-seeking, excels-at-everything guy captivating a room full of rule-followers wearing safety glasses, pocket protectors, and bike helmets...or whatever the equivalent was 2,000 years ago.

He is addressing an assembly of people whose power is perfectly preserved by the rules they impose and enforce. But here they are, eating up Jesus’ every word. They begin to see that the rules should ensure that all people thrive. Maybe someone other than a priest can forgive someone’s sins in God’s name. Maybe people should be allowed to be healed on a Sabbath day. Maybe sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes are worthy companions with whom to sit down and break bread.

And then someone in the assembly recognizes what Jesus is doing and calls him out on it. “I know who you are. You will destroy us!” Scripture says this is the voice of an “unclean spirit.”

The unclean spirit has found a compatible host in this religious man preoccupied with his own power. This unclean spirit is threatened by anyone suggesting there is a life to be lived beyond the rules, regulations, and structures that preserve the power and privilege of the elite. The voice insists what matters in life is to follow the rules so that you can keep your cupboards and treasure chests full, even if those same rules mean others are denied their fair share.

Jesus does not sit quietly and listen to the concerns of the unclean spirit. He does not allow the voice of lies, deceit, and unbelief to utter another single word. He has no time to waste rationalizing with such narrow-mindedness. Instead, Jesus commands this unclean spirit to be silenced and remove itself from the man. It does. All are amazed.

I like to think that all those who witnessed this event in the synagogue that Sabbath day left feeling free and emboldened to push the limits of society, ready to treat people with more respect and compassion than they had before. However, there were some whose hearts were hardened against the new gospel they were hearing and witnessing with their own eyes. They saw Jesus as an ornery rule-breaker. And when your identity, value, and salvation is tied up in maintaining the rules even if those rules oppress others, then ornery rule-breakers must be stopped at any cost. These men would conspire with other powerful people to rid themselves of this rebellious Jesus once and for all. They would, of course, fail.

Fortunately for human civilization, history is full of examples of people who have been in touch with the rebellious nature of the universal Christ and have gotten into “good trouble,” as the late Georgia Representative John Lewis liked to refer to it. John Lewis, leading the crowd of black southerners across the Edmund Pettus bridge to register to vote. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, raising the world’s awareness of the sin of apartheid in South Africa. Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head for demanding girls be given the right to be educated in Taliban-occupied Pakistan, only to survive and find an even louder voice. These are just a few of the stories most of us know well. But each day there are people who challenge rules and assumptions that only serve to preserve the power of the privileged. They get into good trouble.

God did not send Jesus into the world to sanction our worldly preoccupation with preserving our sense of power and privilege. God sent Jesus into the world to expose the sin of humankind, teach us a more beautiful way for all people, and remind us that we are forgiven even when we fail to follow that more beautiful way. In the coming days and weeks, I encourage you to get to know ornery Jesus. Ornery Jesus calls out injustice. Ornery Jesus calls out the unclean spirits that tell us our salvation lies in our power and privilege. Ornery Jesus looks at an obstacle as intimidating as a 60’ brick wall and says, “We can make it up there.”

Amen.

Luke 13:10-17

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

There are many ways to go with a story like this one. Of course, so many people, for so many generations, have been drawn to the miracle of it all – like so many other healing miracles, we are drawn to the miracle of what Jesus does for the woman who’d been sick and crippled for so long. And that’s great – and good and holy thing, for sure – but that healing is only a small part of the story. And not really the point of it all, in the end.

And it reminded me that that’s the case with most – if not all – of Jesus’ miracles, really. They are less about the hocus pocus, abracadabra of it all than they are about telling a better story… teaching a larger lesson … proclaiming a wider mercy, love, and grace not just because of what Jesus does in those magical moments – but because of how and why and when and where and for whom, in most cases, God does what God does through Jesus.

Think about the miracles of Jesus, with me – right from the beginning – starting with the virgin birth, for example. The most impressive thing about all of that – the greatest lesson, for my money, isn’t so much about immaculate conception. The hope of Mary’s motherhood is about a young woman who had faith enough to say “yes” to God. The power of that story comes from the notion that God would use a poor peasant girl to do an amazing thing for the sake of the world. It’s about casting down the mighty down from their thrones and uplifting the humble in heart. It was about the creator of the universe using the creative power of a human womb to become like one of us in every way.

And think about the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine, at that wedding in Cana. It could have been milk or honey or Coca-Cola, the substance of it didn’t matter so much. The point was – the lesson to be learned, the good news was – that there was more than enough to go around and that God always saves the best for last.

Or what about the miracle of the guy who was born blind but for who Jesus helped see again? His friends and neighbors thought he had been born blind because of something he or his parents did to make him deserve that hardship. So when Jesus restores his sight, it wasn’t about the miracle of Lasik surgery in the 1st Century. It was about showing that God doesn’t punish us with sickness or disability. It was about showing, perhaps that, even if you believed that his blindness was the result of some sin, God could and would and does delight in undoing that through the power of forgiveness.

Or that time Jesus walked on water, he wasn’t proposing a new Olympic sport, he was showing us something about faith. When he calmed the storm, he wasn’t concerned about the weather, he was revealing the power of God’s peace in the presence of our fear. When he cleansed the leper it wasn’t about better skin-care it was about God’s love for the outcast and the outsider in our midst.

Do you see what I mean? As much as we love a good miracle story, the magic of it all is rarely the point. And today’s episode, in the synagogue is no different.

It’s great that this woman who’d been hunched over, crippled, for nearly two decades was “up-and-at ‘em” again without the help of a chiropractor, don’t get me wrong. But in light of what we know about the kind of things Jesus can do, this isn’t the most impressive thing about that day. What we’re supposed to pay attention to – what matters most about all of this in the first place – is that it happened on the Sabbath. The Lord’s day. The day of rest and for worship.

I mean, it wouldn’t have meant as much had the woman done what the leader of the synagogue suggested and come back for her healing the next day, right? It would have been great. It would have been no less miraculous had Jesus commanded this woman to stand up for the first time in 18 years, like on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. But, again, the miracle – the healing, itself – is barely the point.

So, miracle, schmiracle. It can’t be just about the miracle or else all we’re left with is the hopeless reality that we can’t do what Jesus does and that Jesus doesn’t do what he can for everyone, in every way we would like. So there must be something more than the miracle here.

And the “more,” Jesus’ greater point and larger purpose today, is to heal and to comfort and to share love and grace at all costs. In excess of every expectation. At the expense of every rule. Breaking the rule about working or healing or whatever on the Sabbath is Jesus’ larger mission – and our greatest hope – this time around.

The point seems to be that the only rule that matters to Jesus is the one about loving God and loving neighbor and living in any way and every way possible that brings that love to bear upon the world – so to Hell with the rules. Literally. (No kids, I didn’t just say a bad word, for the sake of it. I mean to Hell with the rules. Let the rules go away to the outer darkness. Let the rules be subject to whatever weeping and gnashing of teeth it takes to dismember them.)

And that’s something I can sink my teeth into. That’s something I can wrap my brain around. That’s something each of us can do something about – breaking the rules, I mean – that keep God’s love from being shared in as many ways, with as many people as we can manage.

When someone tells you you can’t or shouldn’t love someone because…

When your own score-keeping, rule-abiding heart tells you you shouldn’t forgive someone because or until…

When your own fear tries to convince you you shouldn’t be that generous

When society tells you you shouldn’t extend mercy because…

When your own history and experience tells you you should or shouldn’t, or can or can’t because “that’s not the way you’ve ever done it before”…

In the face of whatever rules or expectations that threaten to limit what God can accomplish by grace, for you and through you, Jesus gets up in the synagogue on the Sabbath day and breaks the rules. He breaks the law so that we can see just how brave and bold and beyond reason God’s love means to be. And how beyond the rules we are called to be, just the same.

Because we can’t heal every disease, but we can love one another through the sickness and struggle and sadness of them all – and that’s a miracle.

We can’t change the weather, but we can trust God’s presence when the storms of our lives come – and that can be magical.

We can’t undo every sin, or change every sinner, but we can accept and offer forgiveness – and that’s no small feat.

We can’t walk on water, but we reach out to an outcast or an outsider and welcome them in – and that work wonders in the lives of God’s people.

Because the greatest miracle of all – Jesus’ resurrection from the dead – shows just how far God is willing to go to break every rule for our sake. And the miracle of that isn’t just something we wait for on the other side of heaven. In a world full of so many rules, too much fear, and so much sadness that try to convince us otherwise, we are set free from all sorts of bondage, like the woman in today’s Gospel, to live in the miracle of new life and second chances and amazing grace, every day, in Jesus’ name.

Amen