FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LUKE 13:10-17 Eighteen years. 216 new moons, 216 full ones. 940 Sabbaths. 940 walks of indignity; hobbling, shuffling to the synagogue to do her Sabbath duty, to worship the God of her ancestors, to thank the Rock of her meagre life, to beg for the mercy of Yahweh. The Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, she repeated to herself, was gracious. The God of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel, she tried to convince herself, would look with compassion on her. Yahweh, she argued against her better reasoning, loved her, treasured her, cherished her as a daughter. And so 18 Passovers came and went, 18 harvests were celebrated, 18 Days of Atonement passed through the fingers of her people. And still she kept the faith, still she stumbled her way to worship, and still she hurt.

No doubt at some point, maybe during one day of excruciating pain, perhaps one week of utter despair, she had accepted the permanence of her disability. She possibly relinquished all hope of ever standing straight again. Being bent double does more to you than disable your body. It distorts your vision of the world. It disfigures your soul. It crushes your spirit. You are sentenced to staring at the ground. You can't look the world or any of its inhabitants in the face. Your perspective is waist-high and not headhigh. You are small, unnoticed, humiliated. Your back is bent, but your spirit is broken.

Why today? What took God so long? 940 times she had stood in these same courts, and God had chosen to let her depart in the condition she'd arrived. But today, yes today, God's..... (read the full sermon here: Sermon: Donkeys or humans)