As I was pulling into our driveway at home last week, listening to CBC radio, I heard a voice mail message from someone responding to a story that aired on CBC radio the week before. I've long forgotten the story and the actual comment. What I remember is the phrase used to describe something that was utterly terrible. The phrase that was used was "God awful."
I've heard of that phrase before, of course, but not in a while. I tried to find out where the phrase originated and couldn't. No one seems to know—the great Google search engine came up with no results. There was some speculation that it arose in the US sometime during the 50's and 60's. It's funny how things strike you every now and then: this phrase struck me. I thought to myself how could the two words be together in the same phrase: God and awful? How could anything associated with God be awful in the sense of being bad or terrible? I could understand how it could be full of awe, but not full of terribleness. Even thinking about the word awful, it is rather ironic to think that it now means something that is bad rather than something that is full of awe. It seems to me that something that is "God awful" should be good, should be awesome as one of the new words has it.
Well, that set me off thinking about images and how ideas change and how images don't speak to us as they once did. For example, the image of the rock from the psalms—God is often described as being a rock and a redeemer. I'm sure those that witnessed the rock slide avalanche near Pemberton have a different understanding of rocks. Or those who have stopped to look at the Frank Slide in Alberta or the Hope slide just East of Hope. I wonder what the Pakistani or Chinese people think of the image of water these days. It is despicable that aid is not reaching the people of Pakistan as it should be, both international AND national aid. I find it incredible to think that water from the flooding covered 1/5 of the land mass of Pakistan. Or the image of fire. I don't remember where I was back in 2003 when the forest fires were raging in many parts of southern BC, especially around Kelowna and some around here. I was part of a planning team doing worship for some event and someone suggested we sing the song from Voices United (# 289), "It only takes a spark to get a fire burning and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing. That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it: you spread God's love to every one, you want to pass it on." As soon as the suggestion was made the person making the suggestion realized that this would be a pastoral disaster as there were those in our midst who were facing the possibility of losing their homes.
Our Gospel story of today is an interesting story and is currently undergoing a shift in meaning. It's the story of the bent-over woman. One of the traditional ways in which this story is interpreted is that the woman is bent over because of the weighty burden of Judaism. She is unclean and has been ostracised by Judaism and Jesus liberates her from this institutional weight and restores her to her community. Amy Jill Levine, who teaches New Testament theology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, claims that many interpretations along these lines are anti-Jewish. Levine points out that nowhere in the story does it suggest the woman is unclean; she is in the synagogue with everyone else and no one has cried out "unclean! unclean!." There is also nothing in the story to suggest that the woman is weighed down by the institutionalism of Jewish law. So, this story isn't about a woman who is oppressed by Jewish law. It is a story about a woman who is ill and who has found no relief and finally finds healing in the hands of Jesus. The aftermath of this story, not directly about the woman, involves a dispute about what is lawful and what is life-giving on the Sabbath.
I can relate to this woman as I suspect many of us can. The burdens of this world can feel very heavy at times. The burdens that many Pakistani people are carrying at the moment are extreme. The weight of worry that many of the Tamil people who recently landed at the coast are feeling I'm sure must be overwhelming. "Will Canada allow us to remain? Will we be vilified for having sought refuge through smugglers? Will we find a new home? Will people embrace us for who we are?" Perhaps the woman in Jesus' story is worried about her children. Perhaps she is a widow. Perhaps she has recently experienced a loss from which she can't overcome. Perhaps she worries about her community and her family. Perhaps she is a worrier who can't seem to let go of things. Remember the story of Scrooge and how Marley tells him that he is weighted down by his attachment to material things. We all carry our burdens differently and we all have different burdens, but we all have burdens nonetheless.
And what happens? Jesus heals the woman. He takes off her burdens and to quote a different Gospel writer, Matthew, he gives her a new burden, a new yoke, an easy burden, a light burdenÉ the burden of love. Remember the quote from Matthew, the last few verses of chapter 11, "come to me all you who are weary and heavy-burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Yes, Jesus heals on the Sabbath, and this disturbs some of the officials of the synagogue. But what was the reaction of the crowd? They were overjoyed. Their sister's burdens were lifted. The crowd was the family and community of this woman; they tried for years to help her not feel so weighed down by the world. And Jesus picked the right moment to step in and remove her weight and burdens and give her peace and rest.
Why have we lost this sense in the church that Jesus heals us of our burdens? We have created rules and regulations that one must adhere to in order to be a Christian. But really, all that is required is that we accept the love of God and love God in turn, and try to love our neighbours as we would love ourselves. All that is required is that we work in our lives to remove the weight of worry or fear or whatever we are facing and gratefully respond to others in love. Remember those words of the African-American spiritual, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Nobody knows but Jesus. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Glory Hallelujah!"
Jesus is the Gospel and we've got to recapture that understanding of Jesus as the Christ. Jesus is a light who brings enlightenment. Jesus is a healer who brings healing. Jesus is a lover who brings love. Jesus is a transformer who brings transformation. Jesus is a poet who brings words that renew us. Jesus is Wisdom who re-creates us in the image and likeness of God. Part of our task in this 21st century United Church of Canada is that we proclaim this Jesus anew, this Gospel, this love, this new life and we invite others to let go of their burdens, let go of their worries, let go of those things that weigh people down.
But lest we be worried that we can't seem to escape the weighty burdens, we must remember that life is a dance, the life of faith is a dance. We experience moments of Jesus' gift of light and we feel lighter and buoyant. The dance goes on and the weight of the world weighs heavily upon us again; and then something unexpected happens, and we laugh or we receive an unexpected gift, and we feel lighter again. Life is this dance of moments of exhilaration and leaping, of feeling light and whole, mixed with times of struggle and trouble and feeling heavy and weighed down. The good news is that Jesus walks the road with us, dances the dance with us, carrying us at times and always helping us try to find the way to feeling loved and able to love and feeling able to cast off our burdens even for a short time so that we might leap in our dance with abandon and the excitement of a 5-year old.
Truly, this dance is God awful... that is, full of awe that God is the God of life and the healer of burdens!
Amen.
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