Set Free on the Sabbath
Pentecost + 14 – August 25, 2013
Christ the King Lutheran Church, Brookfield, WI
We see that in the gospel. We have a local synagogue leader, someone the people in his community admired and looked to for guidance about the law. And I get the impression that he was a letter of the law kind of guy, and when it came to the sabbath, the law says this: “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.” The law says that the sabbath is a day set aside for God – so you shall rest and do no work. There were strict rules around this, about what constituted work and what was allowable, and to not observe it properly was a big no-no.
We also have a glimpse into the lives of the people of Israel from an earlier era when we hear Isaiah's words to us this morning. He writes in this part of the book to the people who have returned to their homeland after long years in exile in a foreign country. And again, we have people who understand the letter of the law. They followed it in form and really felt that they were fulfilling their religious obligations, but clearly, God has another opinion! God accuses them here of trampling the sabbath, of pursuing their own interests on God's holy day, of going their own ways, serving their own interests and pursuing their own affairs. This is not just to say that they did what they pleased, but even more importantly, that what they were doing was hurting others in the process. Though they did the worship thing, they weren't attending to the needs of the hungry and afflicted in their midst. They honored God outwardly, but in their hearts, they selfishly did their own thing.
In both these stories, the deeper meaning of sabbath was lost, the idea of sabbath as a promise and a gift, an opportunity for rest, renewal, and the restoration of relationship – first and foremost with God and secondly, with each other.
We have two ditches running alongside the sabbath road. Our culture long had an image of the sabbath, which we Christians celebrate on Sunday, as a dour day of obligation, perhaps handed down from our Puritan ancestors. No one was to do any work on the sabbath, but nobody was allowed to have any fun either! Observing the sabbath was an act of pure religious obligation, but when done that way, it becomes a burden. Going to church for an hour, give or take is one thing (but it'd better be no longer really, right?), but to set aside an entire day as holy, as centered on God; a day when we deliberately seek to disconnect from all the distractions of our world and deliberately seek to reconnect with God – yikes! That makes us squirm. We don't know how to do it. This past year, I tried to do a day of unplugging – from my phone, my computer, my TV, etc. It was a campaign, a sunset to sunset kind of thing – and I failed utterly...
But there's the other ditch too, and I think that's the one we are more likely to fall into these days, the ditch where sabbath is just like any other day. You go to church, or not, but either way, once that hour is done, we go off and pursue our own interests and own affairs. We run errands, go shopping, clean up the house, finish the homework that's due 1st thing Monday morning. (I know, school hasn't started yet, but it's coming...) We have no sense that the sabbath is supposed to be a time, a day set apart, a way to realize that the world keeps on spinning even without our efforts – and we end up heading into the week ahead almost as stressed and overwhelmed as we ended it on Friday – if we're lucky enough to have the kind of job where you get weekends off to begin with!
But the sabbath road isn't supposed to be about either of those things. It's not intended to be a joyless day of boredom and obligation where we resent God for taking our fun away. Nor is it a day just like all other day with just a little God sprinkled in.
No, God intends for sabbath to be a gift. It's a day to be restored, to realize that we are set free. The gospel shows us one clear example. Here is Jesus, teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath and a crippled woman appears. Who knows why she came – her own sense of religious obligation? Habit? A thirst for companionship or inspiration? But whatever brought her there that morning, she wasn't expecting to meet Jesus. She wasn't expecting him to pick her out of the crowd and call her over, not expecting him to say these fateful words, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”
Yet she feels it happen as the words leave his mouth, as he lays his hand on her broken, bent body. She's amazed as she is immediately able to do what she hasn't done for 18 long years of pain and disability and otherness, and she stnads up straight, able once again to look at the world around her head on, able to see more than just the ground in front of her, able to look her neighbors and friends and family in the eye, instead of just staring at their feet. Suddenly, she is set free from all of that, and immediately she begins to praise God – because after all, isn't this what sabbath is for?! Finding ourselves, through no act of our own, set free from all that holds us captive and recognizing that God is at work in our lives and in the world around us? Sabbath is our chance, our opportunity each and every week to connect with God and acknowledge this One who comes to set us free, to rejoice with the community gathered around us as we join in prayer and praise and worship for the wonderful things that Jesus has done and continues to do!
This is at the heart of God's gift of sabbath – a chance to rest (a command, actually), but more than just a command, and invitation to trust God more than ourselves, to believe and live into the promise that God can and does and will guide and provide for our needs, even if we dare to take a time-out from “doing once a week. It's an opportunity to come together and remember all of the ways that God has and will set us free from whatever it is that binds us and holds us down, whether it's physical, spiritual, relational. It's a day to celebrate and share God's promise of deliverance with all we meet, so that together, we might recognize and acknowledge the One who does all this and rejoice together, praising and worshiping God and so be drawn back into restored relationships with God and with each other – so that when we go back out there Monday morning and all the days that follow, we can work with God to be repairers of the breaches, the restorers of streets to live in. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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