| The Foundation of Lady Katherine Leveson at Temple Balsall | ||
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St
Mary's Church
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And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, be set free? Luke 13. 10 - 17 Sermon preached on Sunday, 22nd August 2004 Eleventh Sunday after
Trinity by At a baptism service I often ask the parents what was behind their choice of name. Sometimes it's a favourite name or perhaps it's a name that's been in the family for several generations. Unfortunately sometimes the question reveals that there has been some disagreement over the names. And think of all the different possibilities of names - old names, familiar names, trendy names, pop stars' names- the list could go on and on. What is significant here is that none of us - I guess - have picked our names for ourselves. Our names pick us. Our parents give us names. Other people bestow names upon us, and sometimes these names, these nicknames, are not at all the names we would have chosen for ourselves. And I am sure that many, many of us here in church today have been called by an inappropriate name. Can you feel the pain, do you know the pain, the pain of a name that hurts, traps, confines, cuts to the heart? It makes much difference how we are named. Today's gospel is a story about a woman. Let's remind ourselves how she is named. She's identified as the 'bent' woman. She was bent over and had been bent over for many, many years. When the people in the village saw her, they didn't say 'Here comes Mary', or 'look, it's Elizabeth'. They said 'here comes the bent woman, the crippled woman'. That was her name and in her name was her life, her destiny, her whole sad fate. So the bent woman encounters Jesus. And Jesus looks at her and heals her. For the first time in her adult life she is able to stand up straight, to look straight ahead, and to be restored. Jesus does not call her disabled, or hindered, or a victim of life's unfairness - rather Jesus calls her 'a daughter of Abraham'. Abraham was the one to whom a promise was given. God promised to make a great nation out of Abraham, a nation through which all the nations of the earth would be blessed. She is a daughter of Abraham. She is an heir to the blessings of God. She is meant for more than superficial, cruel, limiting labelling. Jesus means to name you. He will not let you acquiesce to the names
the world wants to lay upon you. You are daughters and sons of Abraham.
Your life is meant to count for something, to take its place on stage
in God's great drama of redemption. Our life within the horizon of God's
love is a long story of growing into the name that was given to us in
baptism, living into God's gracious dream for us. Living a life of promise,
means living free from the shackles and the names and the limitations
that are put upon us. And we are free to be the liberating agents of
the Gospel for all those who need their shackles loosened who have names
cruelly given by our prejudices.
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