August 24, 2025

 When I was 7 years old, I saw a movie that changed my life and that movie was Annie.  My parents bought us the record and I memorized it.  My mom did daycare and that summer we played Annie every single day, having a whole cast of orphans to join in the fun.  Santa brought us the Annie mansion and dolls that Christmas.  Thankfully the film was a flop, so the merchandise was affordable for our struggling family.  Annie captured my attention because she was a spunky, resourceful girl who had dreams that she never gave up on.  The movie shaped my views of the relationships between rich and poor, my ideas of what girls are capable of, and my sense of self-worth.

The movie (and play) Annie relate to today’s Gospel in the theme of hope.  For Annie, she lived such a miserable existence at the orphanage, but her hope was that the next day would be better, hence the song, “Tomorrow.”  She hoped for family, for love, for sufficient food and a warm place to sleep.  She hoped to belong.  The world was telling her there was no reason to hope.  But she held on by clinging to the idea of tomorrow, of hope very near, just around the corner.

The woman in our Gospel story with the ailment was probably also seen as a hopeless case, too.  She was bent over for 18 long years.  There was no reason to think that anything would change.  But she maintains hope, too.  She is coming to the synagogue.  She is a believer.  She has come to practice her faith, to be in community, to join in the prayers and the singing.  She has come with hope.  And it turns out that the Kingdom of God is very near.  She and her community likely believe that she will never be healed.  But she finds this “never” transformed by the tomorrow when the Sabbath will be over and it will be permissible for healing to take place.  But Jesus is even so bold as to transform her hopes for tomorrow into the reality of healing today.

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring the things that we worship and idolize more than God.  We have found that we worship money and possessions, that we worship family and place them before God sometimes.  And today we encounter something else we worship and idolize and that is the rules.  Here is a rule, Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.  A lot of us being church people are rule-followers.  We like guidelines.  We like to know what to expect.  We like to be orderly and follow the rules.  Stand up, sit down, sing the Alleluia before the Gospel.  Say the Lord’s Prayer before communion.  My colleague Pastor Josh and I take turns leading the service at Courtyard Fountains.  He’s Presbyterian.  Presbyterians say the Lord’s Prayer after communion.  It drives me a little batty because I like my Lutheran order of service.  I know what to expect.  I like my rules!

For us rule-followers, we may have got a lot of rewards from following the rules, like not going to jail and being our parents’ favorite.  We are reliable and trustworthy.  However, we should be careful not to just follow rules without examining why they exist in the first place.

That’s what Jesus is talking about today.  The commandment to honor the Sabbath day was given to us because rest is important to God and important to the well-being of people. Also rest is part of God’s plan of liberation and freedom for humans, animals, and our planet.  So if keeping the Sabbath becomes a way of oppressing people and keeping them captive, then it can and should be violated.  So Jesus does.

Humans are so good at taking something beautiful and helpful and twisting it to help ourselves, make ourselves look good, and hurt others.  So this woman was told to wait another day in captivity of her ailment.  She was told to wait until tomorrow.  But Jesus remembered why the rule was written, not to be worshiped and followed blindly, but to free us from bondage, pain, and separation.

There is a turning point in this Biblical story and in the story of Annie.  It comes when Jesus saw this woman.  How many times did people look right through this woman, right past this woman who was all bent over?  How many times did they disregard her, ignore her?  But here Jesus sees her.  What does it mean to be seen?  How did she feel to be seen after all this time?  She was seen, her pain was recognized, her disconnection was perceived.  She was seen, and having seen her made Jesus bring her tomorrow into today.  It caused him to reach out to her to free her, to loose her bonds, and to heal her.

How many times did people ignore the orphans and make them invisible?  But Annie, too, is seen, first by Grace, Daddy Warbuck’s assistant who comes to the orphanage to bring a child home.  Grace is in the office with Miss Hannigan describing the kind of child she’d like to bring home.  Annie is in the hall, curious, listening.  When Grace says the age of the child she’d like to have, Annie motions for her to indicate an older child until she gets to age 10 like Annie is.  When Grace says what color hair she’d like this child to have, Annie shows her red curls.  When Grace says she’d like a happy child Annie collapses laughing in the hallway.  Grace is being introduced to Annie through a closed door and yet she sees her, understands her want for family and love because it is the same want that Grace has.

This is the beauty of the Gospel.  We are seen.  Our needs are seen.  Our pain is seen by Jesus.  And he wants the same things we want, healing, love, community.  And he’s not willing to wait until tomorrow, because we can put off the day and say it will never happen.  That all the world will be fed—never!  Why?  Because we keep putting it off.  Jesus says that tomorrow is today.  He has come to bring healing to the world today.

One more thing about this afflicted woman and Annie—they are nobodies.  They have very little power, no money, nothing this world values.  Yet Jesus invests in this woman, he uses his power to give her new life.  In the same way, Grace and Daddy Warbucks invest in Annie.  What they find is that there is a huge return on investment, not in money but in relationship and love.  Jesus invites us to look for unlikely people to invest in.  We may find in them people who are open to something unexpected, something surprising.  And we may find they have more to offer, a story, a point of view, a witness that can lift the whole community.

We come here with all our troubles and difficulties, invisible to other people, trying to follow the rules so we will be good enough to earn our place, our healing, our good outcome.  We don’t know why but we still have hope.  We hold this vision of God that tears will be wiped from all faces, the hungry will be fed, and the lion will lay down with the lamb.  We long for that tomorrow, not at all confident that it will be in our lifetime.  But we come together and find that we are seen.  Jesus sees our pain and calls to us to come near.  Jesus reassures us that our hopes are not in vain because we love the one with the power for healing and reconciliation.  We get glimpses now and then of that kingdom breaking through—a cataract surgery restores sight, grandchildren sing the doxology at the bedside of their dying grandpa, little children’s footsteps ring out like prayers at the back of the church, two people who have been estranged sit down across from each other and see each other for the first time in a long time.   

Jesus is a rule-breaker, a rebel that came to set the oppressed free.  Freedom cannot wait because he has declared the year of jubilee, release to the captives.  Tomorrow is becoming today because the children of Gaza cannot wait until tomorrow for food, the foster children cannot wait until tomorrow for love, the immigrant in detention cannot wait for tomorrow to be reunited with their families, the veteran cannot wait for tomorrow for health care, the people of Ukraine cannot wait until tomorrow for a cease-fire.  Jesus is here now among us and is working through us urgently to make tomorrow into today for justice, for peace, for healing, for community, for wholeness.  So we are invited to defy the pharaohs in our midst, the ones in power who hurt the little ones and grow richer on their labor.  We are invited to break the rules that oppress and spring open the jail cells that confine.  We are invited to follow Jesus’ ways, today.