Sons and Daughters

Jeremiah 1: 4-10; Luke 13: 10-17

             In Victor Hugo’s literary classic, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the main character, Quasimodo, is described as having a twisted face, no neck, two uneven shoulders, and a curved hump that has grown from his back, like a camel’s.  Because of his appearance, the people of Paris view him as a monstrous freak and he is the object of their ridicule and scorn. Because of the ridicule and scorn, he is bound to a life lived in the confining bell tower of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. 

            Hugo’s story introduces and develops an unlikely heroic figure.  Like Quasimodo, Esmerelda has a low standing in society. So, perhaps out of empathy, she accepts him when no one else will.  She befriends the hunchback when no one else would dare call him a friend.  She views him as a person of worth. “Only the blind could think you ugly”, she once said to him. “I can see your soul is noble.”[i]

Like Quasimodo, the woman in today’s text was bent over.  Though we can’t say with certainty, she probably had some form of scoliosis.  Like Quasimodo, her condition has created for her a very lonely existence.  It has had a very crippling effect on her. For eighteen years, she has not been able to look directly into another person’s eyes. She has had no freedom to establish intimate relationships with neighbors and members of her family. Because she was ritually defiled, ostracized and segregated, she was not supposed to enter the synagogue.  

     Defying social and moral rules of that day, she courageously enters that place.  Jesus, also in defiance of the rules, calls her to come to him.  Jesus speaks words of healing and touches her with a touch that makes her well.  Like Esmerelda who befriended one who had no friends, Jesus reaches this one whom no else attempted to reach.  He heals her physical malady; but he also gives her social healing. It is a story about freedom that comes to one bound to a life of second class citizenship.  It is a story about the undeniable love of Christ for a person on the margins of the world. To this woman whom the world had perhaps nicknamed ‘crippled’ or ‘lame’ or ‘bent over’, Jesus gives the name ‘Daughter of Abraham’.   Remember Abraham?  He was the great-great grandfather of Israel’s faith.  To Abraham, God gave a promise: to become a great nation, a nation through whom the world would be blessed.    

              She is a daughter of Abraham, one blessed by God to be a blessing to others.  She has a divinely given name and identity.  She is now able to sit up straight, for she has been claimed by God as one of God’s children.

 We come to this place as people who, but for the grace of God, would be bent over by despair and crippled by our sins.  Even before we utter a word, God reaches to us in forgiveness and mercy.   In our healing and our inclusion, we receive identity as sons and daughters of God. 

Fred Craddock tells of meeting a man one day in a restaurant.  “You a preacher?” the man asked.  “Why, yes, I am”, Craddock responded.  The man pulled up a chair 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 mamma had me but she had never been married.  Do you know how folk treat someone like that? Do you know the words they use to name kids that don’t have no father?

“Well, we never went to church, no body asked us.  But for some reason or the other, we went to church one night when they was having a revival.  They had a big, tall preacher visiting to do 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 at me in the eye and says, “Boy, whose your daddy?”  “I didn’t have no daddy.  That 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.”[ii]  Tell people that they are children of God.   

          That woman, who once was bent over and crippled, was never the same after her encounter with Jesus.  The text makes the passionate claim that she is a child of God and that, by extension, we are, too. 

We are sons and daughters of God. Preach that!  Celebrate that!  Live that! 

          As God’s children, one of our responsibilities is to allow God to use us to bring new life to others, even when it means going against the established views of the world, as Jesus did in the synagogue that day; even when it means taking a risk.

          I do not know Jan Matthews Hodges, but I am guessing that she is a Christian.  She runs a small local business, located in an old renovated school building.  Many of the people she employs are people the world has deemed unemployable. 

          One of her employees is an 18 year old boy who found out about the job opening through a career class at school.  “It was a help you get a job class,” the young man says.  “Before, I was broke.  Now I save my money and help my mama with the light bill, phone all that.”

Many of the employees needed a job close to home so they could walk or ride a bike to work.  Some have aged out of the job market or lost positions when local businesses closed.  Others are inexperienced or have a level of disability.  One employee, a supervisor, has cerebral palsy.  Another started working at the business in April straight from prison.  That man, as he interviewed for the position, told Mrs. Matthews-Hodges his story and asked her to give him a chance.  She said she has not regretted it.[iii]

When baptizing a child in the Presbyterian Church two names are used.  One name is the name given the child by his or her parents-Jacqueline, or Janet or James.  The other name used in baptism is “child of the covenant”, son or daughter of God, Christian.  In using that name we are proclaiming that child’s identity and, also, predicting that that child will grow even more fully into that name. 

In baptism, you also are named sons and daughters of God, Christian.  Stand up straight.  Act like it.[iv]  Live like it by reminding people bent over by despair or crippled by sin that they also are sons and daughters of God.      

--David Sherrod