Set Free for Sabbath Sermon – Aug 22, 2010
August 22, 2010
Scriptures:
Isaiah 58: 9-14
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Luke 13: 10-17 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.
Sermon: Set Free for Sabbath Rev. Doreen Oughton
At first glance Luke’s gospel story seems like a fairly straightforward healing story, another miracle added to inspire belief in Jesus’ followers, in Luke’s community and in us. We see the folly of Christ’s opponents and rejoice at all the wonderful things Jesus has done. But as is always the case with Jesus, there is more to his message than the glory of his miracles. Our first reading from Isaiah has the prophet telling us what it will take on our part for God to refresh and renew us, make us “satisfied in parched places, like a watered garden, like a spring of water.” He says we must remove the yoke from our midst, stop bad-mouthing each other, and take care of the needs of others. Then he cautions us against trampling on the Sabbath by pursuing our own interests and affairs. Then we have Luke telling us of the healing of the bent over woman that takes place on the Sabbath, and the religious leader that has a problem with this. He believes Jesus and this woman are trampling on the Sabbath, pursuing their own interests and affairs, doing work that is forbidden.
Let’s take a moment and talk about Sabbath, what it meant to the Jews in Isaiah’s time and in Jesus’ time. The Hebrew scripture mentions the importance of Sabbath over and over again. There are references to it in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and several of the prophets. The Jewish prayer book describes the Sabbath as having three major purposes: to commemorate God’s creation of the universe and God’s rest on the seventh day; to commemorate the freeing of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt; and as a foretaste of the Messianic age, the time when God’s kindom will reign. It is the first holy day mentioned in the bible, and one Jewish tradition holds that the Jewish Messiah will only come when all Jews properly observe two consecutive Sabbaths. Ironic, isn’t it, the Jewish leader perhaps was concerned with proper keeping of the Sabbath so that the Messiah will come while the Messiah was there breaking Sabbath in his mind.
The angle of keeping the Sabbath to commemorate Creation is what leads to the prohibitive elements of Sabbath law. The thinking goes that because God created and was purposeful on the six days, then rested on the seventh, so we are to be creative and purposeful for six days, then rest on the seventh. We are to rest especially from creative and purposeful activities on the Sabbath. The rabbis and biblical scholars through the ages debated what that meant, looking at the scripture around the commands on Sabbath, thinking about the “work” that was being done at the time the commandments were given, and came up with thirty-nine categories of activities that are to be restricted on the Sabbath. Scripture is very clear that Sabbath is not just for the Jewish householder, the one in charge, but is to include all family members, servants, or slaves as they were then, visitors, foreigners, even animals. They were all to honor the Sabbath by refraining from creative and purposeful activities, from doing things that exercise control or dominion over one’s environment. These activities included: burning, extinguishing, writing, erasing, cooking, washing, tearing, knotting, untying, planting, harvesting , combing, building, demolishing, transporting or carrying, and marking. It is thought that all prohibited activities fall into at least one of the thirty-nine categories. This seems to be the focus of the religious leader who challenges Jesus. However, reading and re-reading the categories, I can’t think which one would prohibit healing. Granted, it is a creative and purposeful activity, but to my understanding, it doesn’t fit under any of the thirty-nine categories of work identified.
Jesus seemed to have some idea, though, of what the leader was protesting. He talked about how any of them will untie their animal on the Sabbath to allow it to drink, so he sees his action as one of untying, of loosening bonds. This is consistent with the angle of Sabbath that commemorates the release of the Israelites from bondage. Jesus says to the woman not, “you are healed,” but “you are set free.” To him, setting free from bondage is completely consistent with the Sabbath. To him, that is what Sabbath is all about – freedom. To him, that is his life’s mission, not just his Sabbath observance. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, in chapter four when he is teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth he quotes Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free..” and tells them the scripture is fulfilled in him. Jesus’ mission is to set us free, not just on the Sabbath, but for eternity. To me, that begs the questions: freedom from what, and freedom for what?
The religious leader in the story says we are to be freed from work, from creative and purposeful endeavors, but Isaiah doesn’t seem to be saying that. In fact the things Isaiah recommends are quite purposeful – offer food to the hungry, satisfy the needs of others. He does protest serving one’s own interest, and urges us to take delight in God. Isaiah says to take the yoke, the burden, from your midst, and Jesus understood what a burden the religious authorities were putting on the people in their quest for proper Sabbath observances.
I wonder about the woman who was set free by Jesus, as he said, unbound from Satan. Did she have the sense of being bound by Satan? The Greek word translated here as bent over is sugkupto which also means bowed together. The phrase translated as “quite unable,” panteles, is unusual in this situation as it has connotations of being all complete. It implies that the woman is completely unable to pick herself up. So we might think literally and metaphorically. She is unable to pick herself up physically, spiritually, emotionally – not in any way. She’d been this way for eighteen years. I wonder how old she was, what portion of her life she’d been bent downward, looking at the square of ground around her feet. I wonder how much light she was able to see, or if she was more used to the shadows. It couldn’t have been all bad. She was probably familiar with flowers and the interesting pattern of tree roots rather than branches and leaves. She may have seen all kinds of things on the ground that others missed. I left some things on the floor for anyone who may have been looking down. If you missed them on the way in, perhaps you will see them and take one on your way out. It’s not that its bad to look down, it’s just not freedom if you have no choice but to look down. I believe the freedom of Sabbath, the freedom Jesus offers is one of balance and wholeness.
I resonate with Jesus and other Jewish reformers who see the irony of making Sabbath observance overly burdensome. It makes sense to incorporate rest, rejuvenation and remembrance of God into scriptural guidelines for a holy life, but it doesn’t make sense to me to make it a one-size-fits all model, proscribing exactly when and how such rest and remembrance should happen. Christians did not carry over the 39 specific activity restrictions from the Jewish tradition, but I suspect many of us carry some ideas of what should and should not happen on the Sabbath. We might bemoan the end to the blue laws, wishing all the stores would close for the day so we wouldn’t be tempted to run errands. We miss the big Sunday dinners that often came after a morning at church, with lots of family stopping by. We shake our heads at all the sporting events scheduled for Sunday mornings, both for adults and children. I can understand that, really, I can. But are we acting like the religious leader in the story at all? Are we just missing what we once enjoyed, or is there judgment there? Do we want to impose a burden on the freedom of others?
I think it is important to consider the question of Sabbath observance for ourselves, however. What do we need freedom from, and what will we use our freedom for? What balance do we need in our lives? Have we been looking down too long and need to look up? Have we been looking only up, constantly straining to look up and climb that ladder of success and we need to pause, to look down, look around? Are we so constantly busy and productive that we think we are human doings instead of human beings? One scripture commentator lifted up a quote that “A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.” She then notes that by that definition, she doesn’t know many free people. There are plenty, she says, who are capable of tremendous multi-tasking, but unable to do nothing. So many who can make decisions about which task to prioritize, but are unable to trim the to-do list. So many who find that saying no to a request is a harder spiritual practice than tithing, praying on a stone floor, or fasting. What do you need freedom from? What are you bound to?
And if you were released, if you accepted this freedom offered by Christ, what would you do with it? Would you take time to enjoy family and friends? Could you be better able to stay awake to God’s presence in your life, and, as Isaiah says, take delight in that? Would you use your freedom to help others find the freedom of Sabbath? Would you lighten another’s load so that they could also find rest, rejuvenation and remembrance of being one of God’s children? Would remember for just one day that you are not in charge of your life, that God holds you in the palm of his hand? Would you let yourself feel relief over that revelation? I also must say that the Jewish tradition of Sabbath observance wasn’t all about restrictions. In fact, the intention of the restrictions was to free all people for the celebration. People were to get cleaned up, put on their nice clothes, eat festive meals, avoid unpleasant conversation topics, drink wine, retell the favorite stories of their people’s history, spend time with family and friends, and it was a day especially made for conjugal bliss. Let’s use our freedom to find the customs that open us to the joy of being God’s children. Such a gift we have been offered. Let’s receive it and rejoice. Amen.
