230 How To Be Happy

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text “How To Be Happy”, originally shared on August 17, 2022. It was the 230^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Have you ever been really sick and then been well? How did you feel? Today, we’re going to look at one woman’s experience, and how that same experience brings us to eternal happiness.

   Have you ever been sick for a really long time? Or even just a couple weeks? Do you remember what it felt like when you started getting better? And when you were healed? Though now we might be more inclined to say “cured”?

   Do you remember how you suddenly had energy and enthusiasm that you didn’t know you had? How you saw things with new eyes?

   Projects you had been putting off now went to the top of the list. People you hadn’t spent time with for a while now became important. Your values changed. Where you wondered if you would every feel good again, now you were happy!

   Life seemed more real, more like what it was supposed to be. You went back to church and you were, what, grateful?

   We see all these things in Luke 13:10-17, only backwards, and with different people, and with different things pushed to the center of our attention.

   The event takes place in one of the synagogues in the towns and villages north of Jerusalem. Jesus was on His way to trial, humiliation, torture and death on the cross.

   It’s the sabbath and, typical of Jesus’ day, most of the synagogue service consisted of teaching. The word “Rabbi” means “teacher” and, typically, a scroll from the Bible (what we would call the Old Testament) would be given to the most learned man present, who would read a section and then teach its meaning to those gathered (women were barely allowed to learn, much less teach).

   I remember hearing about a study of human healing when I was in seminary. The leaders of the study were trying to find out when a patient’s healing process began. Was it when seeing the doctor? Being given a name for their condition? Was it being told that a course of treatment was available? Filling a prescription?  Taking the medication? Having the medication take effect?
   The study found that it was none of these things. The researchers discovered that the healing process began as soon as a person decided to see the doctor. Healing begins with hope and action.

   That’s where we see the woman in this text, Luke 13:10-17,

   Woody Allen is credited with saying that 80% of success in life is just showing up.

   That’s what the woman did. Jesus didn’t seek her out. Jesus didn’t ask for sick people to come forward. She just appeared.

   The woman, and we can only call her “the woman” because in the patriarchal age in which Jesus lived as both divine and human, she is given no name. Women weren’t viewed as important. Except to Jesus.

   Luke includes more stories of physical healing than are in any other Gospel. Perhaps this is because Luke was a doctor. He begins with Jesus and then he describes “the patient”.

   The first thing we are told about the woman is that she had come to the synagogue at a time when women were only allowed to sit at the back or in the balcony, apart from the men. And we see that she didn’t ask for healing. She just came to the service. The next thing we learn is that she had a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. This is not a good thing. 😊

   We see this in verses 10-11,

¹⁰Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. ¹¹And 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. 

   I think that the worst advice that I ever received on how to improve my golf game, when I was playing golf, was that adage, “Never leave a birdie putt short.” I think it means to be bold under pressure. But I found that what it meant for me was that most of my birdie putts went way long! They were too bold.

   The woman in this text is bold, but not too bold. She just appears.

   And what do we learn about Jesus from his response?

   First, we see that he doesn’t see her condition. He sees her.

   Second, he heals her even though most people at the time would have believed that she, or at least some ancestor, had sinned and that she was being punished for that sin. Jesus makes no reference to this.

   He heals her, in verses 12-13,

¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

   What else to we learn about Jesus?

   Third, we see that he doesn’t question the right of the woman to enter the synagogue. He isn’t bothered that she has interrupted his teaching and the men’s learning.

   Fourth, we learn that he sees her ailment as spiritual bondage by something or someone. And he sets her free from that bondage.

   Fifth, we learn that he called her to himself and healed her in speaking the words saying that she is healed, as God brought everything into being, as recorded in the first chapter of the Bible in Genesis!

   Sixth, we learn that Jesus has power over the spirits.

   And, Seventh, from all of this, we learn about the meaning of a miracle. A miracle is not the suspension of the laws of nature. A miracle is a glimpse into the way the world was created to be before human rebellion against God messed it up.

   But there’s a problem. What’s the problem with healing someone?

   The leader of the synagogue is critical of Jesus without confronting Him directly.

   We see in verses 14,

 ¹⁴But 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.” 

   The leader of the synagogue, a lay person, knew the Bible. He knew the commandments, including the one about keeping the sabbath holy.

   Yep. That’s not a suggestion. That’s a commandment. One of The Ten. It’s the third of the first three, the ones dealing with our relationship with God.

   It’s seen for the first time in Genesis 20:8-11,

8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

   The sabbath day is holy because God made it holy.

   The third commandment was, among some people, defined down to how many steps a person could take and not be considered to be working.

   How does Jesus respond to the accusation of breaking the commandment? We see in Luke 13:15-16,

¹⁵But 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? ¹⁶And 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?” 

   So, the sabbath is a day of rest. Jesus does not deny it. But he asks why it is a day of rest? Is it not to give life, as his accusers acknowledge by their actions, doing work to maintain the health of their animals? They didn’t want their animals to get sick! Should not healing sickness and ending suffering also be seen as acceptable on the sabbath?

   Luke concludes Jesus’ healing event with Luke 13:17,

¹⁷When 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.

   His opponents were put to shame. But what about everyone else? We don’t hear any more about the woman who was healed, but we do hear about the crowd that was following him, that Luke numbered in the thousands of people.

   The people were rejoicing at everything he was doing.

   And what was Jesus doing?

   He was giving people a glimpse of the way the world’s supposed to be, the way it was created to be, and the way it would one day be again. How did the woman respond? By praising God!

   They were happy! They were rejoicing!

   None of them would always be happy, and they would not always be healed by God on the spot.

   But they saw the power of Jesus to heal, and its meaning and its promise.

   They were happy knowing that all goodness and good things come from God. We experience those things in the living relationship with the one true living God who will one day call an end to the evil that our rebellion against God produces in the world.

   He has come to set us free from sin, death, and from all the forces that defy God. And he did it on the cross.

   Have you ever felt sick of that sin, sick of death, sick of seeing the work of the forces that defy God?

   Take that sickness to Jesus. He will heal you. And he will give you hope in His power to bring into being the new heaven and the new earth that is coming. And he will be with you always.

   Happiness comes as a byproduct of belief in God’s promises and faith that, in the midst of human sin, God loves us and makes us new, born again, a new Creation, God’s people. Forgiven. Healed.

   Being happy is not just being without Illness or conditions. We all know that we can be well, but not be happy.

   Being happy is being restored, being re-created in the life of faith.

   Jesus, on another occasion, made this statement about the keeping of the sabbath as a holy day of rest, in Mark 2:27-28,

27 Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

   The sabbath is a gift to us. It is given so that we can rejoice in life, the joy that comes only from God and can therefore never be taken away from us.

   Are you sick of sin? Every day?

   Do you know somebody who is sick of sin, even if they aren’t using those words? This week, I invite you to talk with them about healing. Invite them to open their hearts, their lives, their true selves to Jesus.

   For in Him is the power to be made new. In Jesus is the power to be made whole and made happy forever.