Sermon 8/21/16
Luke 13:10-17
Long Enough
Sometimes, we create really
complicated systems that are meant to help us do something good, but the very
system meant to help ends up making things harder, not easier. My older brother
Jim works for the ARC as a manager in vocational services, helping people with
special needs find and maintain employment. He told me, once, about all the
rules in place that had to be worked around for a particular young man to stay
working, which was the goal. This young man couldn’t work too many hours, or he
wouldn’t qualify for certain programs that were really helping him thrive. He
couldn’t work too few hours, or he wouldn’t make enough money to survive. He
couldn’t make more than a certain amount per hour, or again, he wouldn’t be
eligible for benefits. While at work, he wasn’t allowed to complete his work
too quickly, because he was required to be in a supervised setting for a
certain number of hours a day, and if he worked too quickly, even if he did his
work well, again, he’d lose out. To help this man work, all sorts of rules have
to be followed. The aim is to help him work, but sometimes the process is so
complicated that it feels like the rules are making things harder, not easier,
moving him farther from his goal, not closer.
Today, we’re skipping ahead a little bit in the gospel of
Luke, and find another story of something being made harder, more complicated,
until Jesus steps in. Jesus, we read, was teaching in one of the synagogues on
the Sabbath. And he sees there a woman “with a spirit” that has caused her to
be crippled for the last eighteen years. She is bent over, quite unable, Luke
tells us, to stand up straight. The text doesn’t tell us she was coming with
the hopes of being healed, or that she was seeking out Jesus in anyway.
Instead, he calls to her. When she
comes over, Jesus simply says to her, “Woman, you are set free from your
ailment.” Jesus lays his hands on her, and immediately, she stands up straight.
She begins praising God. And in fact, the phrasing suggests not just a one-time
prayer of thanksgiving, but that rather, from this point on, she begins
praising God. It’s a turning point in her life, and her relationship with God.
But that’s not where our story ends.
One of the leaders in the synagogue is
indignant. Jesus has just healed a woman on the Sabbath. Healing would be
considered a form of work – the job of
a healer, performed on the Sabbath – was considered breaking the commandment to
keep the Sabbath holy. And so the leader begins his own teaching to the crowd,
reminding them: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on
those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” He’s right, of course. It
can be our tendency to think that everything the synagogue leaders and scribes
and Pharisees do and say in the scriptures is bad, because Jesus argues with
them so often, and we’re smart enough to know we want to be on Jesus’ side. But technically, what the leader says is right. He doesn’t say that the
woman shouldn’t be healed. Instead, he asks why, of all days, Jesus had to heal her on the Sabbath. Why not on any of
the other days? The Sabbath is a day set apart. Why break it, when what Jesus
did could have easily been done the day before or the day after?
In response, Jesus calls the man and
his colleagues 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?” he asks. “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?” At this response,
Luke tells us, Jesus’ opponents are put to shame, and the crowd rejoices at the
wonderful work of God they see in Jesus.
We have a remarkable talent for
taking gifts that God gives us and turning them into burdens, when we misuse or
abuse, or simply ignore what God offers to us so freely. Elsewhere in the
gospels, Jesus teachers that the Sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around. Sabbath is a
gift from God, enjoyed by God, and shared with us. There are two main “sources”
of Sabbath in the scriptures. The first, of course, is in the very first story,
the very story of creation. God created the heavens and earth and all living
things, and then God, creator of the universe, rested. And so we rest, because
God demonstrated to us that rest and renewal are a precious part of life. We
honor God and God’s creative work when we set aside time to rest in God.
Sabbath also finds roots in the story of the Exodus, when Moses leads the
Israelites to freedom, as he helps them escape from captivity to their Egyptian
masters. Sabbath-keeping, keeping a time of rest and making it a holy time is
good news to slaves who had been working relentlessly to serve their keepers.
And the gift of Sabbath was for all in the community – all economic classes,
all ages – even animals got to rest on the Sabbath. (1) Sabbath is rest in God,
aligning ourselves with the rhythm of our creator, and Sabbath is a sign of our
freedom, the freedom that comes from following the ways of God.
That’s why Jesus calls the synagogue
leader a hypocrite. Because when Jesus heals this woman who has bound, been
captive to her own body for so many years, the way for her to experience rest,
the way for her to experience freedom is for Jesus to heal her and to heal her
at once. Eighteen years is long enough, and Jesus sees no need for her to wait
a single day, a single minute longer to experience the true gift of Sabbath.
Anyone who doesn’t understand that, Jesus says, is making something simple and
freeing into a complicated burden that tries to negate the gift of God.
I wonder, do we understand Sabbath
any better than the synagogue leader. The leader and his colleagues tried to
keep Sabbath by making so many rules for observing it that it could actually be
more difficult to experience it as a gift, as rest, as freedom. And ironically, I wonder if our very opposite approach to
Sabbath has resulted in the very same consequences. In our world today,
Sabbath, real rest, real time set aside to soak in God’s spirit is nearly
unattainable. How free do we feel?
We’ve let go of the rules and regulations that made it hard to practice true
Sabbath, but we’ve also let go of the gift
that God so desires us to have. From both sides, I think we’re in danger of
being more bound up than set free.
So we have a few questions to ask ourselves, I think, in
light of this text. First, I think we need to ask ourselves if we can receive
the gift of Sabbath. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you
who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” I don’t know about
you, but I hear that phrase “weary and heavy-laden,” and I know Jesus is
talking to me. God invites us to rest,
to rest in God. To rejoice in the freedom we find in Christ Jesus. To treasure
our time and to treasure time we immerse ourselves intentionally in growing our
relationship with God. I encourage you to look over your days and ask
yourselves where you can find moments and minutes and hours – and maybe even a
whole day of resting in God, honoring God’s creation, treasuring God’s gift to
us, rejoicing in the freedom we find in God.
Next, we have to ask ourselves how we are bound, like this
woman Jesus healed. How are we bound? How do we need lifting up? From what do
we need to be freed? Sometimes we’re bound by things that we can’t get free
from on our own, and we need help – from our friends, from our church family,
from our community, from God, to find freedom. Sometimes, we can begin the
process of loosening our bonds when we finally realize or admit or acknowledge
that something about how we’re living is keeping us in bondage. How are we
bound?
And then, finally, we have to ask ourselves: how are we like
the synagogue leader? How are we getting in the way of someone else
experiencing freedom in Christ Jesus? What boundaries and limits have we been
inadvertently, or, I’m afraid, sometimes purposefully
putting on how others receive the gift of God? Who is it that we’d keep from
healing, keep bound and bent because we don’t want to break any rules to find
the freedom God offers? We have the opportunity – the responsibility – to help
others break free of the chains in their life as they embrace the freedom God
extends to us.
Jesus said, “’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.” Let
us go and do likewise. Amen.
(1)
See Lose, David, http://www.davidlose.net/2016/08/pentecost-14-c-dream-tenders/
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