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 Transformed |
26 August 2007 Bert of Sesame Street fame collects them. The Guinness record by one person in the span of 24 hours is the 819.33 meter chain, which required 22,025 of them. Straightened out, one end may be used as a tool to eject computer discs manually. They add ballast to paper airplanes, serve as ornament hangers on Christmas trees, double as lock picks, pipe cleaners, poker chips and hooks for suspenders, belts and bras. They can re-wire a fuse or substitute as a screwdriver. A WWII operation to remove scientists from Nazi Germany used one in the code name. A Canadian bartered a single red one into a two-story farmhouse in Saskatchewan. A group of eighth graders in Tennessee collected one for every Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Norwegians wore them on their lapels as a symbol of defiance during World War II. And in May 2001, Microsoft conducted a funeral for its iconic version to the tune of 30 million US dollars.[1] A paper clip is an amazing piece of technology. Its lowly function is to fasten together small bundles of paper. Large bundles of paper can be bound. What to do with two sheets of paper that need to be kept together? Or a small stack of receipts or records? You can slit the pages in the corner with two parallel cuts, thread ribbon or string through the slits, then tie the ends and seal them with wax. You can dog-ear the corner and tear two parallel slits and fold the small center tab down. But if you have to handle the paper several times, the paper begins to wear and tear. Once steel pins were manufactured—initially for tailoring, but quickly adapted to business—you could pin your papers, but the little spots of blood from pricked fingers were tacky. Besides, pinning and unpinning paper is just as wearing as the dog-eared corner with the parallel slits. So you’d think that eighteen centuries of evolution (paper was invented in the first century), paper clips would be used for the purpose for which they’re designed, right? Not even close. Of the estimated 20 billion paper clips sold each year,[1] as many as 80% of them never see the use for which they are intended. A study conducted in 1958 found that, out of 100,000 paperclips, 5,434 were used to pick teeth or scratch ears, another 14,163 were broken or twisted during telephone calls, and at least 20,000 were lost or swept away. Not to mention all the other creative uses we’ve already identified. After all is said and done, only one paper clip in five actually is used for its intended purpose: to clip paper.[1] That paper clip isn’t far removed from the woman Luke identifies in today’s scripture, the one who comes to worship in the synagogue. The woman doesn’t approach Jesus; she makes no request of him, reveals no faith in him.[2] As far as we know, she simply is there to worship. But when Jesus sees that the woman is unable to stand up straight, he calls her over and touches her, lays his hands on her and frees her from her ailment. Immediately, she stands up straight and praises God. The two acts are impossible to separate. The woman is healed, freed from whatever it is that bound her, and in that healing, in that freedom, she is transformed into the fully-human being she is intended to be from the moment of her birth. The purpose for which she has been created finds expression, and she lifts her voice in praise. Right there in the sanctuary, right there in front of God and everybody. And then leader of the synagogue becomes upset because Jesus has cured on the sabbath, and the leader appeals to the other worshipers. We who go to restaurants on a Sunday and expect to have food prepared and served, we who shop and mow lawns and garden on a Sunday live in an era in which one day is pretty much indistinguishable from another. But in Jesus’ time, the sabbath was the queen day of the week, the holy day, the day in which labor was set aside. And even with disproportionate responsibilities falling on the women of the house, it was a day of renewal, a day of worship, a day of rest. It hadn’t always been that way. But with the Jewish exile to Babylon hundreds of years before Jesus, harsh experience was crucible through which much of Jewish identity was forged. And a significant piece of that identity was observing the sabbath. So it’s no wonder that Jesus’ act of healing, his work, on that holy day, sets the synagogue leader on edge. And it’s no wonder that Jesus draws a parallel between the necessity and compassion of unbinding a farm animal and unbinding a daughter of Abraham on the sabbath. Incidentally, this story has nothing to do with God creating the woman’s condition as some sick means of testing her faith or purifying her soul. The old saw that God does not give us more than we can bear is poor theology and an equally poor reflection on God. Of course, our scripture tells us that the woman was not crippled by God for eighteen years, but by a spirit, much as the story of Job tells us that the Satan, or the adversary, was the source of Job’s many problems. We don’t have to believe in a horned demon with tail and pitchfork to know about crippling spirits. Racism. Homophobia. Sexism. Greed. Ignorance. They each leave their mark on perpetrator and victim alike. But that isn’t how God creates us to be. We are created in God’s image. And when that image gets bent out of shape by greed or ignorance or any of the –isms that mark the world’s cultures and warp the souls of God’s people, then we truly are bound by Satan, bound by the spirits of evil. It doesn’t take the headlines of the week’s news telling us that hundreds more Chinese have died in coal mines that are unsafe; it doesn’t take the image of an eight-year-old US citizen separated from his undocumented mother by US agents; it doesn’t take the reports of Sudanese refugees being blocked from safe haven in Israel to tell us that our spirits are crippled…but these reports and images are chilling reminders. These reports tell us again and again that the forces of evil are real, and that we will not be freed of them simply by wishing them away. It isn’t happenstance that Jesus meets the woman who was bent over while they both are in worship. At its best, the synagogue, the church is a place where we can be recognized as a daughter of Sarah, a son of Abraham, a place where we can be received and nurtured and touched and claimed as God’s own, a place where the very best of who we are is proclaimed, a place where we are held in loving and healing hands so that we can stand up straight. We also know that other voices are there, even within the church. Voices that become indignant, and pull us back to the bent ways of convention, to interpretations of scripture that confine healing to a specific time or place. To interpretations of scripture that not only allow for slaves, but give rules for their treatment. To interpretations of scripture that ignore the multiplicity of times Jesus speaks of poverty and riches over the paucity of times he speaks of sexuality. Conventional interpretations are always possible, just as creative uses of a simple paper clip are the norm. But today’s story reminds us that God does not want us to go through life in bondage; God wants us to be freed, transformed so that we can claim our full humanity. It is the work of the church to be the place where that can happen. When you think about it, that’s a terrific vision for Rally Sunday—being the place where transformation is possible, the place where we are nurtured into being what God intends for us to be. # # # [1]”Clip Job”, http://www.biggeworld.com/archive/npbizpaper.html, April 2003, National Post Business Magazine. |