Lectionary Reading - Luke 13:10-17 NRSV
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."
But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
Righteous Indignation
Freedom depends on those who act, one commentary says. The same commentary also states that by taking action, one’s speaking out might harm relationships at first but then bring healing in the end. For me, Jesus has long been my inspiration for those situations that involved taking a person, or group of persons, by the horns to speak plainly to them. When this happened, it always occurred for the purpose of accomplishing a greater good. Jesus proved that quite obviously to the hypocrites and crowd with his Sabbath healing of the long crippled woman. Clearly his speaking out – and acting out -- brought healing to the woman and rejoicing from the crowd. For it was nothing less than an amazing moment of blessing and miracle that suddenly and irrefutably reframed Sabbath. Furthermore, it put the religious authorities to shame for their self-righteousness and rigidity which purported that Sabbath could only exist and occur in a certain way and form. One might hope that the embarrassment and reframing from Jesus accomplished a change of heart in the religious authorities, but as most people realize – there are those individuals who remain hardened or untouchable. No matter what you do or try to do, they’re simply rigid unreachable micro-managing unhappy people too attached to their own sense of how things should be done. Most of us know when we’re up against such persons and situations. And most of us know that nothing we do will bring such persons into a healthier, happier, more relaxed and productive space. So like Jesus, it’s simply best to speak forthrightly in such situations or circumstances and let your indignation show. It gets the message across – and as you can see from Jesus’ example -- it gets across unmistakably so.
On that note, I remember a situation a number of years ago while care-managing the adult system of care for publicly funded mental health services in the county where we live. One of my tasks involved getting our county residents back home from the state psychiatric hospital which was a two hour drive away from our community. Typically our residents were hospitalized in that facility when there was a bed shortage in our local hospitals. And as you might guess, those individuals wanted to get back to their home community as soon as possible as did their families and loved ones. Problem is that once they landed in a long term state-run psychiatric facility, patients tended to be kept longer than was necessary. Generally, the problem was two-fold in that either the state hospital would hold on to the patient too long for revenue purposes or the community did not have an adequate discharge setting for the person.
In one such situation, the hospital contacted me about a patient. He wanted to get home – nothing new there. The nice thing however was that the hospital felt he was ready to return to the community but the local mental health center wasn’t doing enough to make discharge happen. The issue involved the person’s inability to get himself out of his bed in the morning. A few days later, I drove to the state hospital to see the person and review his medical record. Long and short of it, the person’s need was quite simple. He only required that someone come into his room and get him sitting upright on his bed. Once that was done, he was able to take care of his needs such as transferring himself to a wheelchair and getting on with his day.
Returning to the office, I contacted the director of our local transition facility. I reported my observations and urged the necessary accommodation so our resident could return to the county and move forward with recovery from the psychiatric crisis that had landed him in the hospital. As often occurs in the poorly funded world of public mental health services, the subsequent conversation between the director and me occurred via voicemails to each other over a period of several days.
At one point, after a particularly annoying voicemail, I finally arrived at exasperation and vented with my office colleagues. “Hypocrites,” I said, “why are these people working in community mental health if they refuse to accept a patient back to his community simply because he needs a staff member to get him sitting upright in his bed? He’s a small guy. It won’t take much effort at all.” I then said to my colleagues that I had to cool down, get my head back into rational space, and make one more attempt to persuade the facility director. To my amazement my colleagues said, “Absolutely not!” They then said, “Brad, you never let your anger out at these unjust situations because you never want people to feel that you don’t respect or appreciate them. You need to trust your anger. You need to trust that it’s right and just and appropriate and not disrespectful. We know you and we know that nothing less would ever come out of you. Don’t think about what you’re going say. Just call back and say what needs to be said.”
Long and short of it, I made the call. And once again it had to be a voicemail, but I said everything in that message which needed saying including how incredibly angry I felt over the situation and how woefully inadequate I felt the mental health center’s response had been to this particular situation. I then demanded a meeting with the transition facility director as well as his supervisor who was the mental health center’s executive director, and lastly their medical director. A day or two later the meeting occurred during which the executive director apologized to me personally and apologized that more hadn’t been done for the patient to return him back to the community in a timely fashion. I was also assured the situation would not happen again.
Righteous indignation, there’s always a place for it my friends even if some fool of a person tells you there isn’t – and believe me there are plenty of fools who will tell you so. Mostly it’s because they are persons incapable of handling intense feelings or situations themselves – no matter how righteous or appropriate indignation may be.
Main thing for you to understand about righteous indignation is that it says the game is over. It also says that you will no longer allow another person’s manipulations and scheming and need to control to go on. Trust such indignation my friends even if in the end your anger generates but one therapeutic result such as a crippled woman healed or a physically disabled man with psychiatric issues to come home. When righteous indignation becomes necessary, trust it, for it moves the world closer to God’s Peaceable Kingdom. And that means everything!
Resources Utilized:
1) Commentary from Community of Christ 2010 Worship Helps for Sunday, August 22, 2010
2) New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
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