Pentecost 11 – 2025
Luke 13:10-17
Marian Free
Loving God, grant us a clarity of vision, that enables us to determine right from wrong and gives us courage to act when others believe that we should not. Amen.
There are some choices which simply shouldn’t have to be made – neither choice has a good outcome. That we are often faced with difficult choices is evidenced in the popular sayings: “Choosing the lesser of two evils” or “it’s a lose/lose situation”.
Recently in Queensland, we passed laws to enable Voluntary Assisted Dying. This was in response to a question: do we stand by and allow a dying person to live with unbearable pain, or do we give them some agency, the freedom to choose when to bring that life to an end? For Christians this is a choice fraught with danger not least because of our belief in the sanctity of life and the thought of hastening death by artificial means (or by suicide) raises the question as to whether or not VAD contradicts that belief. Over and against that is the fact that by not freeing someone to end their life, we know that we may be condemning them to a long, drawn-out, undignified, and agonising death. Which is the lesser evil – showing love and compassion to the dying or allowing nature to take its course? Which better demonstrates the love of God?
That the church can, and has, made choices between law and compassion is evidenced in our changed attitude to divorce and to the re-marriage of divorcees – the former of which was almost impossible until a century or so ago and the latter impossible until the 1970’s. In allowing divorce, the church eventually came to the conclusion that the pain and suffering inflicted on those in unhappy, violent marriages surely did not match up with the love, compassion and understanding that Jesus showed to people in a variety of situations and Jesus’ insistence that we have life in abundance.
In more recent memory, the church has also faced the reality that: “Till death us do part” does not mean that a spouse must stay in a marriage which is stultifying, dangerous and psychologically damaging for the person and for any children in the relationship. Jesus’ teaching against divorce and re-marrriage has been set aside in favour of what we believe Jesus’ response would be in the current era – that he would want an abused spouse to be set free to live.
There are times when, as a church, we have to choose the lesser of two evils – disobeying Jesus’ teaching as it appears in the bible and interpreting Jesus’ actions and teachings for a different time and place. More than once, we have had to try to balance Christian ideals and values against regulations which have become untenable, unreasonable and harmful.
In so doing, we have Jesus as our model and guide. Jesus was faced with difficult choices on many occasions – mostly in relation to whether or not it was right to break the Sabbath rule. He had to consider whether the health and well-being of a person was more important than the prohibition against working on the Sabbath and he always chose the needs of the person. Over and again, Jesus was faced with making a choice – between cultural norms and God’s love of all people, between religious norms and the social/psychological needs of the person in front of him, and between the norms surrounding family and the possibility that his teaching might split families. Overwhelmingly, Jesus’ chose to ignore law and convention in favour of God’s unconditional love.
Jesus allowed a woman off the street and a woman with a haemorrhage to touch him, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, and he extended his healing power to Gentiles. Jesus’ insistence on putting people first, of showing God’s love rather than rigidly applying the law, meant that he was misunderstood, condemned and ultimately put to. death. Jesus risked social condemnation, religious persecution and the rejection of his message because he made choices which was contrary to what was expected of him. Always he chose compassion and love over a strict adherence to the law.
Jesus’ actions have, over time lost their power to offend and to shock. We take for granted that healing should be allowed on the Sabbath and forget that Jesus was deliberately making a choice to ignore or to break the law. It makes sense to us that Jesus’ should allow himself to be anointed by a strange woman – what a wonderful loving act we think. However, we don’t take into account the strict separation of men and women in the first century and the deep offense that her actions caused to those who witnessed it. We think, ‘of course Jesus would heal the leper’, forgetting the deep fear around the transmission of leprosy and the strict cleanliness laws that were instituted to stop the spread of the disease.
Jesus was out of step with his time and culture, he was a troublemaker, a lawbreaker, a radical. He was arrogant enough to believe that the religious law did not apply to him. He ignored social and religious convention and tried to behave as he believed God would behave – always prioritising the health and well-being of a person over strict adherence to laws that had reached their use-by date.
Throughout history the church has made, often uncomfortable, decisions between law and compassion. The church has tried to make decisions based on what Jesus might do in the present moment, rather than on what he said or did in a vastly different time and place. We must pray that we have Jesus’ clarity of vision so that we can recognise when laws that were intended to set us free have become laws that bind, when regulations designed for our protection have become instead our prison, and when laws that force people to endure unbearable suffering have lost their power to heal. May we see as Jesus saw and have the courage to break the law, when breaking the law more powerfully demonstrates the love and the will of God.
Swallowsrest 