What could be more important than setting people free? That was the question Jesus put before the crowd and the leader of the synagogue.  What indeed --- the rules, the laws, the norm and practice.  Sticking to the plan, not veering from the way it's done, not going beyond the walls of safety.  Jesus was not exactly big at playing by the rules.  And that was the hardest part for people to accept!  Funny isn't it when you think about how many times the biggest challenge for the church is going in a new direction, or breaking the barriers of what is the norm.  And you know about barriers, for everyone who is inside the barrier there is someone who is outside.

          Do you ever think about what it is that has you bound? Sometimes the word study in the texts is very enlightening.  The word that is used when Jesus tells the woman she has been set free is the same word for untie, release --- it is not a word generally used for healing.  And when she is standing up straight, the word has to do with being restored, or set right again.  So, like so much of what we read in the Bible, we look deeper, what is really going on here?  Yes, a woman who was bent was made straight, a woman who had been bound up by Satan, Jesus said, was now set free.  If the big deal that made the religious leaders mad was that it happened on the Sabbath, why in the world could Jesus not have waited a few hours, healed her, made friends with the religious leaders, and gone on his way?  If his goal was to heal the woman, he could have accomplished the same thing without rocking the boat.

          But what if he wanted to rock the boat, what if he wanted to force people to rethink the long held laws and help them to see in a new way?  What if he wanted to say that being freed from bondage was more important than the age-old laws?  What if he wanted to make the point that he was ushering in a new kingdom that had nothing to do with legalism and a kingdom where the dominion of evil forces-Satan, was being challenged?

          Think of ourselves for a moment as that woman, someone with no status, less important than the animals, locked up for years with an ailment that had her bent in on herself.  And now, God has come in the flesh to say no to that bondage, to set her free.  Personally, individually we are set free from the bondage of the law, from the rules that we cannot possibly keep.  And corporately, as the church, we are set free --- set free to be in relationship with God, and to be an instrument for the unbinding of all the people of God.

          Sometimes we get so accustomed to the notion of being bound, that we forget that we are set free.  We live as people who have not heard the news that the war is over.  We live as people who have become so accustomed to being bent over, curved in that we don't realize that we could stand up straight. One definition of sin is being curved in on yourself.  But we have been set free from that, unbound from that, so that we can stand up and look beyond ourselves, so that we can live as people who have been renewed and restored.

          We have been unbound.  That means we need to pay as much attention to the systems that keep people tied up as we do to the daily acts of charity that help them to make it for another week.  That means that we have to look at our own greed, as individuals and as a nation.  We have to look at our own prejudices and judgments.  Throughout time people have used the Bible to say that slavery is an institution ordained by God; that women have no place in leadership in the church;  that people who are gay or lesbian do not have the same rights as those who are not.  People have used the Bible to justify wars and explain why people other than us will certainly be among the damned.  People have used the Bible to justify beating their children and treating their wives like property.  People have used the Bible to promote anti-Semitism and white supremacy.  When Jesus stopped on a Sabbath day, reached out and touched a person who was not only a woman but someone with a crippled spirit who could not stand up straight, when he did all of that in the face of the leaders of the synagogue who lived to maintain the law, he was saying to us, "Stand up, stand up and live as people who have been restored, stand up and open your eyes to a new way of being in relationship.  Stand up and know that you are set free from bondage".

          And what difference will that make in our everyday lives? Once again, as in so many of these texts from Luke's gospel, it has to do with living in faith rather than fear.  If we hear the voice telling us to stand up, maybe we won't be so afraid to open our eyes to those who are not like us.  Maybe it will give us the strength to live into the future instead of being ruled by the past. Maybe we can think more about the possibilities than the limits.

          Let me give you an example of a church that saw things in a new way and figured out what it meant to be untied.  It was a church about a mile or so from my congregation in Phoenix. More and more the surrounding neighborhood was made up of Hispanic people who did not speak English.  After a great deal of thought and work, the congregation decided to disband as a congregation, and give their property to become a new mission church with a Latino pastor who could speak Spanish, and have a better understanding of the needs of that community.  The other members relocated to various other churches.  I am sure that for many people that was a difficult decision, change like that does not come easy or without pain, but it seemed to be what they were called to do for that time and place.  They stood up as people who were untied from their attachment to the way it was. Of course, that is not the call of every congregation --- but as a gathered community of faith we too have a responsibility to listen to what God is calling us to do and to be, here and now.

          This is our Sabbath, the day when we celebrate the resurrection, each Sabbath a little Easter, the reminder that we are a new creation, that we are unbound from all that would keep us bent down and in toward ourselves.  God comes to set us free, comes with gifts that are meant to enrich our lives.  From If God is Love, a book I have mentioned before, "The Church, offering a foretaste of heaven, should be a place where people come to be accepted, loved, healed, and restored --- Many have left the church, synagogue, and mosque.  They aren't atheists.  They have simply found the courage to reject religious fear and control.  They seek a spirituality consistent with what they sense to be true --- there must be more to life than escaping hell and keeping the rules.  They yearn for a way of life that is gently, humble, open, and compassionate."  ( If God is Love, Gulley and Mulholland)

We now, are the body of Christ in the world, and we have the ministry of untying those who are captive, of setting people free to know what it is to be unbound by fear, and to stand up in joy.