The Unmistakable Marks of a Christian Scholar: A Meditation on Luke 13.10-17, President's Chapel, South Texas School of Christian Studies, Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Disclaimer: I am continuing to mine the riches of Pastor Kyndall Rothaus' recent sermon, "Women, We Are Bent," available here. The following is a slightly-expanded version that I preached at yesterday's undergraduate chapel for the Hardin Simmons undergraduate program at the South Texas School of Christian Studies. In his absence, our president, Dr. Tony Celelli, graciously allowed me the privilege of preaching the President's Chapel.

Collect

Great God who arises with healing in your wings, you call us whose intellects are crippled by sin to think straight, that our thoughts might honor you. We come to you confessing that though we cannot obey, yet we desire to be obedient. "Give what Thou bidst, and then bid what Thou wilt." Make us straight that we might strengthen others, so that we might love you with all our minds, and our neighbors as ourselves.

Introduction

            Since this is an academic institution, and since we professors are always harping to you students about the evils of plagiarism, I'll begin with a disclaimer: The core exegetical content of this sermon comes from the sermon, "Women, We Are Bent," preached by Kyndall Rothaus, pastor of the Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio, which you can read and hear in full on the church's website. I'm going to tweak her application slightly and then add an observation of my own.

            Pastor Rothaus makes the key observation that this woman - and it matters that she is a woman - is bent over; she occupies less space in the world than God intended. Rothaus goes on to make the point that our society - including, too often, the community of faith - kinks women into permanent question marks and insists that they interrogate their own right to fulfill the Creator's full purpose in them. "Women," she declares, "take a long time to learn how to stand tall, how to square our shoulders, how to lift our chins, how to take up our space." 

            She's right, too, but I would like to use her insight to address a different point; two points, in fact: As you begin your semester as a theology student in the Hardin Simmons program here at the School of Christian Studies, in your specific calling as a Christian scholar, I want you to urge you to take up your space, and lift up your sisters.

Take Up Your Space

            First, take up your space. Luke, the physician, studs his narrative with medical terminology. She is bowed together (v.11), a diagnosis of curvature of the spine. She cannot lift herself up (v.11), Galen the Physician's term for straightening the vertebrae. Jesus declare her loosed (v.12), a technical verb for recovery which Jesus places in the perfect tense, indicating a permanent cure, not a mere remission. She is made straight (v.13), the scientific word for restoring dislocated parts of the body to their natural position.

            Now, here's my point: The call of Jesus for you as a student is to stand up straight, to take up your space in the place you rightfully occupy in this community of Christian scholarship. Do not sidle sideways to the back row of seats! Do not avoid eye contact until your back bends you into a permanent case of blackboard blindness. Do not preface every comment with an apology and end it with a question mark! Do not double your opinions into the smallest possible package until you half-disappear from a case of scholarly scoliosis and curvature of the mind! Find your spine and untwist it! Find your mind and unfold it! Contribute to the ongoing conversation of faith in this place as one who, by the summons of Jesus Himself, belongs here! Like this woman, glorify God by finding the freedom in Christ to fill up the fullness of all God intends for you!

            But one caveat: Taking up space is a privilege premised on a responsibility. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him. (v.12) It was not a terribly difficult command: Jesus does not insist that she walk on water, but he does insist that she walk. And for a woman so badly bent, even the short shuffle down the central aisle might have seemed like a marathon. Yet Jesus, who has already proven his ability to heal at distance (Lk 7.1-10) insists that she invest effort in order to take ownership in the project of occupying her rightful space.

            You enjoy a privileged place as a student in this school, and Christ's invitation demands a response of effort. Want to know more than you know. Want to be more than you are. As Mark Edmundson of the University of Virginia observes, "Some measure of self-dislike, or self-discontent. . .is a prerequisite for getting an education that matters." Scholarship, study, hard work, these are the price of full participation, the required investment that God multiplies to unearnable dividends. Study to show thyself approved (2 Tim 2.15), work out what God has worked in, open your textbooks or close your mouth! A straight spine that supports an empty mind substitutes the presumption of arrogance for the praise of enlightenment. Don't worry if your mental pace is slow; don't worry if your academic gait lacks grace; don't worry if your intellectual advance is a bent-double-shuffle. Come as best you are able into the place where Christ has called you and let your Lord teach you to stand tall. Take up your space.

Lift Up Your Sisters

            Next, as you take up your space, lift up your sisters. I notice in this story that the result of contact with Jesus is that a person gets taller. I also notice that the ruler of the synagogue (v.14), the man who is already the tallest hog at the trough, gets upset. In fact, I notice that the same verb tenses describe the responses of these two individuals. The New Revised Standard Version comes closest to getting the translation right:  Just as the woman "began (and presumably continued) praising God," the ruler "kept saying to the crowd." From this, I would deduce on the one hand that the mark of Christ's presence in my own life is that the people around me get taller as well. I would deduce on the other hand that the mark of Christ's absence in my own life is that I try to look tall by keeping those around me short!

            The problem with Christian scholarship is that far too often, as we learn to take up our space, we encounter the desire to cramp those who continue to seek their space. Also, if we are unwilling to make the necessary effort to stand up ourselves, or are uncertain of our ability to do so, we want to compensate by making sure everyone else stays bent over. Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi said that fatigue makes cowards of us all. I would add that insecurity makes jerks of us all.

            Now this may be fine in the secular academy where Darwinian competition and draconian condemnation rule the culture, but such spine-twisting territorialism has no place in the presence of Our Lord. The mark of Christlikeness is not your solo soaring as a single star student, but your contribution to an active, straight-shouldered, full-throated, stiff-spined community of fellow-students in your immediate vicinity. 

            If your colleagues get shorter around you, if your enacted theology kinks them into commas that pause before speaking, or quirks them into question marks that make every declaration a request for permission, then you have ceased to be the incarnation of Christ and have become instead an enraged ruler who forgets whose synagogue it is in the first place. But if the grades of those who study with you steadily climb like marks up the pantry door, if their comments in class quickly begin to eclipse your own, if they suddenly speak out and you find them standing so tall that you can now look up to them and be glad to do so, then perhaps indeed in you Jesus visits the classrooms of this place.

            I commend to you the advice given by George MacDonald in his poem, "Willie's Question":

I will tell you the only plan

To climb and not to fall:

He who would rise and be greater than

He is, must be "servant of all".

Turn it each way in your mind,

Try every other plan,

You may think yourself great, but at length you'll find

You are not even a man....

Be admiral, poet, or king,

Let praises fill both your ears,

Your soul will be but a windmill thing,

Blown round by its hopes and fears."

Conclusion

            A windmill thing/Blown 'round by its hopes and fears; whipped into a whirl of happiness by the latest word of praise from a professor or torqued into a tornado of jealousy if the kudos go to someone else: That is not the fullness of life promised in the Kingdom of Heaven, and I urge you not to stand for it.

            Take up your space! Lift up your sisters! And one day you will stand before the Throne of Grace to take the only final exam that counts, and you will hear your Lord say, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. (Mt 25.40, 23)