Jeremiah 1:4-19 4 - Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, 5“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” 6Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 7But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, 8Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.” 9Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. 10See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Luke 13:10-17 10 - Now 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. 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. 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.” 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?” 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.
Two years ago, a curious story appeared in a small academic journal called “Current Biology’. It offered an intriguing insight into the human condition. Three researchers at Oxford University in England had demonstrated that binoculars could be used to treat an injury. Just looking through them at the affected part reduced pain and swelling. Specifically, the patient had to look at the injury with the binoculars turned around the wrong way, so that it looked smaller than it really was.
I know, this sounds like a lame joke. Like the one about how to put an elephant in a shoe box using binoculars and tweezers. Or maybe you’re thinking those doctors must be out of touch with reality and have too big a budget in order to be researching and publishing such stuff.
But no, it actually is for real. One of the researchers explained the phenomenon like this: the experience of pain is actually influenced by the brain's perception of danger. If the injury appears bigger, it is experienced as more painful, and the brain responds by triggering a protective response. It hurts- don’t touch! If the injury looks smaller, the sense of danger is less.
The researchers noted that it is much the same kind of thing as our body image, where what we think we see in the mirror and what we really look like affect each other. Think about the skinny teenage girl who becomes anorexic because of how fat she thinks she looks. Her perception totally controls what she thinks and as a result, how she behaves.
Such an approach is actually quite familiar to many of us, if not as extreme. Have you ever gone to the doctor all worried about strange symptoms? You’ve had night sweats, you are sure your skin has become pale, and you just know something is wrong. Then she tells you it’s really nothing more than a little anxiety, and both your symptoms and your anxiety just disappear. Doctors often face the challenge of getting patients to see their conditions in proportion.
But such perceptions apply to more than just body image. Some people are anxious about flying, yet completely comfortable driving a car where they are far more likely to be in a deadly accident. When it comes to worries, our emotions usually overrule any statistics or cognitive understanding about what is more or less apt to happen.
So maybe the binocular thing doesn’t seem like such a joke after all. Hmmm. Maybe ambulances should be furnished with binoculars to provide instant relief at accident scenes. Or maybe they should be covered by medicare if your doctor prescribes them for pain relief.
Enough about binoculars. Let’s talk about another kind of visual instrument.
If you have ever used more than a point & shoot camera, and have had one with interchangeable lenses, you will know that there are a variety to choose from that give you very different effects. You can photograph the same scene, but depending on the lens you choose, you might produce a photo with a clear subject on a blurred background, a certain light or colour effect, an extreme close-up or a panorama. Which one is the truest picture? They all are, of course, in some fashion. The art of photography is in knowing how to choose and use the right lens that will reveal the aspect of truth you intend to reveal.
For several years I was a volunteer with the national United Church, on the committee that helped develop the church’s policies and actions about missions. When reviewing policies and action plans, we would stop to check how they measured up to certain statements of values. We actually called these statements “lenses”, because we looked at the action plan through the filter or viewpoint of the values statement. So, there was the lens of anti-racism. We would hold up the lens and ask “what would this plan look like to a person of colour, or someone from a visible minority, or a First Nations person. Would they see themselves reflected? Would they read language that was respectful? Would the methods be inclusive enough that they could find a way to participate?” There was the lens of gender balance: “is the language balanced, would both men and women feel respected and included, and so on.” You get the picture?
Of course, we all do the same thing with our thinking, but most of the time it is not conscious or intentional. We often apply lenses that filter what we hear and what we think to fit our way of looking at the world, and our values. It helps the world make sense to us.
The leader of the synagogue saw things through a particular lens. His lens had to do with compliance with rules. He was deeply concerned with following God’s commandments. In his role, he needed to set an example, and be a strong advocate for doing things by the holy books. What’s so wrong with that? Don’t we pray that more people would be concerned with following God’s ways?
The problem for Jesus was that the synagogue leader seemed unable to discern the deeper truth, the meaning behind the commandments. His lens filtered out the underlying meanings, and through it he could see the scriptures only in a certain way.
Do you know the old Robert Frost poem, Mending Wall? He describes the spring ritual he and his neighbour practise together, repairing the stone wall, which divides their properties, that heaves and breaks apart each winter. Frost asks why the wall is even needed, since neither has animals to keep in, only trees that stay put. The neighbour’s only answer is the old adage “good fences make good neighbours”- and he appears unwilling to engage with Frost the question of what purpose the fence serves.
Some Christians in utter sincerity approach the scriptures the same way. They hold the very words of the bible in such reverence, that they insist on reading them as literally as possible, rather than allowing themselves to dig for deeper meanings, for more nuanced meanings that require the reader to make a judgement. Somehow they think that if they apply some reason, some interpretation, that they will be watering down the word of God. From there it could be a slippery slope to interpret the scriptures any way you want.
Their caution is not without merit. Certainly, one must be careful about one’s motivation. If your intention is to find scriptural support for what you want to do, or what you believe, without actually discerning what God wants you to understand, then you might indeed end up twisting or misinterpreting a scripture to suit yourself. On variety of that practise is called “proof-texting”, where you look for scriptures, usually out of context, that can be used to support your point of view. Or you could be like Tevye, the old Jewish peasant in Fiddler on the Roof, who was fond of prefacing all of his opinions with “As the good book says…”. In one scene, Tevye is talking to his friend Mendel:
Tevye: As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.
Mendel: Where does the book say that?
Tevye: Well, it doesn't say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken.
The synagogue leader thought Jesus had gone way too far in interpreting the scriptures. In the leader’s mind, Jesus was showing horrendous disrespect for the written word of God.
But Jesus saw things differently. To him, it was about seeing the deeper truth. He challenged the legalistic or narrow or simply literal readings of the word, and shone a light on what God really wants. He knew that God was all about love, reconciliation, healing, wholeness, abundant life. By holding up the lens of love, and looking at the scriptures through it, he was able to see how God’s word, revealed to many prophets and witnesses over the centuries, was intended to guide the people to be more like God, more loving, more forgiving, more generous of spirit and of worldly goods. That’s why he saw healing the sick woman on the Sabbath as totally consistent with God’s word and God’s intent.
Looking beyond the words on the page to find the deeper truth is liberating. Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free”. It was liberating for the woman whom Jesus freed from her infirmity. “You are set free from your ailment,” he said.
And that is what we are all asked to do. As children we may just memorize certain phrases from the scriptures that wiser adults have selected as containing truths that we are able to understand with ease.
But as we mature, we become responsible to dig deeper, to choose the lenses that will reveal to us the wisdom of the scriptures for our lives. In Judaism, this concept is enshrined in the coming-of-age rituals of becoming a “bar mitzvah” or a “bat mitzvah”. The terms translate as “son of the commandment” or “daughter of the commandment”. At the age of 13, boys and girls are “called to the torah”. This is the time when they become responsible for their own actions, for right and wrong, for understanding the word of God. Not an easy thing to do, and of course it doesn’t happen all at once. So it’s also a Jewish tradition to debate with one another about the interpretations of scripture. That’s what the peasant Tevye wanted, to have the luxury of being able sit all day long, talking about the holy book with other learned men, if only he didn’t have to be so occupied with scratching out a living as a dirt-poor farmer.
In telling the religious leaders how the scriptures should be read, Jesus was simply doing the bar mitzvah thing, and being responsible for the meaning of the commandments. He just had a little more authority to contradict the leaders’ ideas than they could imagine.
Why do people follow rules blindly, whether they be scriptures or laws or company policies?.
It can give comfort to know what is right and wrong without having to work hard to make our own judgement. It is a virtue to hold fast to what we know to be right. But it can be bad to be so rigid that we cannot reason what may be needed for the situation, like the good fences in Robert Frost’s poem.
It can help people to maintain a powerful position. When a leader says his view is supported by a higher power, if they can say “God has declared it so” and “God is on our side”, then who can argue?
There are times where it is necessary to obey without question, when the timing is urgent and the situation dire, such as with soldiers on the battlefield or when firefighters are trying to control a disaster. But we are also called to be responsible for ourselves. Paul & Timothy wrote to the new church in Philippi to “work out your faith in fear and trembling”. We need to find the proper balance between making up our own minds and being obedient. It is an awesome responsibility. One way or another, we make the choice each day.
Choosing the lenses we see the world through is an act of faith, an act of trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us as we seek to live out our lives as Christians. Let us, like Jesus, lift up the lenses of love, generosity, charity, kindness, and look at the world, at those around us, with forgiveness, generosity, kindness, acceptance, and love. Amen.
