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It was a typo in a church bulletin but what a great typo: Rather than what we sang as our second hymn being listed as “There’s a wideness in God’s Mercy” it was listed, “There’s a Wildness in God’s Mercy.” What great typo, because there is indeed a Wildness in God’s Mercy. Take for example today’s story from Luke's Gospel…..

[A dialogue with the woman and the Leader of the Synagogue]
WOMAN: I had looked at the ground for years.
LEADER: I had been looking at the heavens for years.
WOMAN: I had wanted to stand straight for a long time.
LEADER: I had been walking straight with God for a long time.
WOMAN: Then he called to me, an untouchable woman who had been crippled for eighteen years.
LEADER: Then he ignored me, a Pharisee, a leader, a man of God.
WOMAN: He spoke to me, “You are free of your illness.” I was amazed.
LEADER: He spoke to her, “You are free of your illness.” I was shocked.
WOMAN: And I was healed, what a Sabbath!
LEADER: And she was healed, on the Sabbath!
WOMAN: I never expected to be healed particularly on this day of the week.
LEADER: There are six other days to be used for healing during the week.
WOMAN: I felt released, renewed, reborn.
LEADER: I felt angry.
WOMAN: I never thought the Sabbath could bring such a time of liberation.
LEADER: I never thought I’d see the day when the Sabbath was so damaged.
WOMAN: He took my life and celebrated it.
LEADER: He took the law and challenged it.
WOMAN: I am elated.
LEADER: I am downcast.
WOMAN: Now I look to the heavens with thanks.
LEADER: Now I stare at the ground with questions.

Jesus is on his final journey to Jerusalem. He has, as Luke puts it, “turned his face towards Jerusalem!” Luke intends for us to see everything that happens with, to and around Jesus, in the light of what will happen when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, and to see what happens in Jerusalem in the light of what happens as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem. On the way to the holy city, in one of the many small towns on the way, Jesus worships in the synagogue on the Sabbath and accepts an invitation to teach.

Jesus is gathered with the faith community. They are singing about divine love, they are listening to and proclaiming the love and mercy and grace of God, when Jesus sees a woman, who is bent over. Turns out she has been like this for 18 years. Difficult to imagine what her life was like: unable to look others in the eye, to see the sun, to take her full part in the life of the community, she existed, overlooked in the shadows…. But Jesus sees her, Jesus calls her forward, Jesus restores her. Jesus speaks and acts out the wildness of God’s mercy.

We can speculate over what it was that caused her to be bent over. Luke calls it a “spirit,” and many of us have known people who are bent over by depression or mental illness or other life circumstances.

A street preacher once asked during his sermon, "What in your own experience might cause a woman to be bent over for eighteen years?" A woman in the crowd quickly replied, "Her children! Eighteen years is the minimum sentence parenthood brings." Another woman spoke up and said: "Don't forget her husband. She was probably permanently bent over from picking up his dirty socks for thirty years." Still another woman said: "Maybe she was tired of working like a slave for minimum wage or even tired of working like a slave at home for no wages at all." One further response from yet another woman, "Perhaps, every time she held her head up and tried to be somebody, the people around her--both male and female--did all they could to deflate and diminish her again." In each and all of these situations, Jesus would offer, Jesus does offer, the wild mercy of God to raise up any that are worn down or beat up or bent over or closed out.

Notice that the text does not say that she came seeking Jesus, to ask for healing. The wildness of God’s mercy is for all, even when they don’t ask for it or expect it!

It is the wild nature of God’s mercy that disturbs the leader of the synagogue where Jesus worshipped that day. Again and again as we have read our way through Luke’s gospel, we have seen Jesus push the boundaries of theology and religious practice. Jesus told the hometown folks that often prophets are not received well at home, and that prophets have done miracles among outsiders. Jesus has been bold enough to take it on himself to forgive sins, something considered blasphemy. Jesus and his disciples have harvested grain on the Sabbath. Jesus has healed people considered unclean or healed on the Sabbath. Jesus has gotten the reputation for being countercultural, for questioning traditions that had lasted generations. The wildness of God’s mercy means trouble for the religious and civil authorities.

In the wildness of God’s mercy, Jesus did not write position papers, debating or advocating the changing of the laws and traditions of the Judaism of his time. Instead, Jesus shared and lived this theology in small acts and stories that brought the wild mercy of God to the Gentiles, the hungry, the leper, the despised, the unclean, the foreigner, the occupier! Truth is God’s mercy is so wild - there is nothing that can stop Jesus from healing, welcoming, and loving all, not even death!

Mark Twain once stated, "There are only two kinds of people in the world; those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and everyone else." The anger of the leader of the synagogue towards Jesus reveals into which of these categories he falls. He was sure of his position - by healing on the Sabbath, by speaking to a woman, by laying hands on a woman, Jesus had broken the Law inside his very own synagogue!

Please remember that Jesus’ critique of this leader is not a critique of Judaism but of the type of divisive, insular, reductionist spirituality he manifested. Jesus calls him a hypocrite. We get the drift; a hypocrite is one who says one thing and does another. But in the original Greek, the word translated "hypocrite" can also be translated as "pretender." That thought works well in this situation. The leader of the synagogue “pretended” to know and honor God and his pretence was revealed by his refusal to welcome and celebrate the wild mercy of God revealed in the woman’s healing!

I thank Rod Hardee for passing on a phrase used by singer David Wilcox to preface one of his songs at his concert last Sunday. Wilcox talked about folks who live in, “spiritually gated communities"; ready to divide or demean those who are different! I think this is an apt description of the leader of this synagogue.

That was then and this is now, but so much is the same! Once again today, we are gathered in the faith community, singing songs of God’s mercy, listening to and proclaiming God’s Word! Gathered in this way, at this time, in this place we have the opportunity to experience the wildness of God’s mercy for ourselves. As Jesus reaches out to touch and liberate the woman who is bent over, this my friends, is our liberation as well. In Jesus, God is breaking into our world and into your life and my life, to shakes things up and to make all things new, setting us free to respond to God’s call and so to share this new life with all.

And we can and should be honest: It is true, even though we do our best to hide it, all of us have been and are bent over people in one way or another. The Good News is that Jesus our Savior, our Lord is here to restore us, to help us stand up, to bring us to know that we are loved by God, freed for faith and service to others. We might be aware of our need or not, we might coming seeking or expecting God’s intervention in our lives, we might be here for the first time or the umpteenth time or the last time, we might be happy or sad, up or down, bent over or standing straight. No matter. Here, at this table, in the giving and sharing of gifts of bread and wine, Jesus offers us anew the wild mercy of our God to re-make and restore and renew and re-create us.

And all we need to do is come and be. Ken Medema, is a singer who is legally blind, he has a song about the church that says this: “If this is not a place, where tears are understood, where can I go to cry? And if this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I go to fly? If this is not a place where my questions can be asked where shall I go to seek? And if this is not a place where my heart cries can be heard, where shall I go to speak? If this is not a place where tears are understood, where shall I go, where shall I go, to fly?"

My friends, here, in this faith community, as we experience God’s wild mercy – your tears are understood! Your questions are welcomed! Your cries are heard! Your spirit can take wing to fly! Here Jesus touches you and embraces you with the wild mercy of God!

Preacher and author, Fred Craddock tells of meeting a man one day in a restaurant. “You a preacher?” the man asked. Somewhat embarrassed, Fred said, “Yes.” The man pulled a chair up to Fred’s table. “Preacher, I’ll tell you a story. There was once a little boy who grew up sad. Life was tough because my mama had me but she had never been married. Do you know how a small Tennessee town treats people like that? Do you know the words they use to name kids that don’t have no father? Well, we never went to church, nobody asked us. But for some reason or other, we went to church one night when they was having a revival. They had a big, tall preacher, visiting to do to the revival and he was all dressed in black. He had a thunderous voice that shook the little church. We sat toward the back, Mama and me. Well, that preacher got to preaching, about what I don’t know, stalking up and down the aisle of that little church preaching. It was something. After the service, we were slipping out the back door when I felt that big preacher’s hand on my shoulder. I was scared. He looked way down at me, looked me in the eye and says, ‘Boy, who’s your Daddy?’ “I didn’t have no Daddy. That’s what I told him in trembling voice, ‘I ain’t got no Daddy.’ ‘O yes you do,’ boomed that big preacher, ‘you’re a child of the Kingdom, you have been bought with a price, you are a child of the King!’ “I was never the same after that. Preacher, for God’s sake, preach that.”

People of God, friends and members of Northminster, girls and boys, women and men, you are children of the Lord. In mercy, through mercy, you are loved with an everlasting love, you are where you need to be – welcomed and wanted. It is God’s purpose and plan to never stop loving you so that you might be made whole, so that you might serve one another and serve all God’s children by accepting and living and sharing the wideness and the wildness of God’s mercy. It is this wild mercy that awaits us here and now, that is poised to impact your life, that is given to us all in bread and wine the gift and the presence of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!  Amen.