Note: This was preached at the Lutheran House at Chautauqua Institution.
Pentecost 14C
August 25, 2013
Luke 13:10-17
Who does Jesus think he is, anyway? You know, this is just one more reason to believe that he does not come from God – working on the Sabbath! We have laws for a reason, after all – we can’t have people breaking them willy-nilly. Where does it stop? Today we’re breaking the Sabbath, and tomorrow, what? Do we start taking the Lord’s name in vain? Dishonoring our parents? These are God’s laws, we’re talking about here. This is a really big deal.
I mean, why would God give us a law that was meant to be broken, huh? Laws are meant to guide our way, to show us how God wants us to live. They are meant to protect and preserve us. But you start breaking one law, and then all laws become more like suggestions, and they lose their power to protect and preserve. It’s a slippery slope, my friends!
On the other hand…
Can you imagine viewing the world – for eighteen years – from the waist down? To be so bent over that you can’t see anyone’s face?
She tried to make the best of her life. She maintained her faith, kept the law, and always went to synagogue on the Sabbath, as the law told her to do. She knew that her God was full of mercy and compassion, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Perhaps someday, that merciful God would free her from this crippling spirit that made her quite unable to stand up straight.
For her, that day in the synagogue was a normal day, a normal Sabbath, the day specifically set aside for holiness and rest. The woman knew her Scriptures – she knew that keeping the Sabbath was linked to two significant stories in her people’s history. It was because of creation, because God rested on the seventh day, and so do we, but it was also because of the exodus. Many years before, her people had been slaves in Egypt, cruelly treated by the Pharaoh, made to work without proper rest, bound in slavery. And God had sent Moses to free them. They followed Moses, out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, leaving their bindings behind. And so God told them, in the book called Deuteronomy, to remember on the Sabbath that while once they were bound as slaves, now they are free.
The woman clung to that second meaning, the one about freedom. Oh, to be free from this ailment! To be free from this thing that kept her hunched over, unable to see and appreciate the fullness of the world!
Imagine how she felt, then, when she encountered Jesus that day, when he said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” A part of her was scared – had this man Jesus, this man claiming to be from God, just broken the Sabbath? She did want to be healed, of course, but was the Sabbath the right time to do it? But she also knew that this was exactly right: the Sabbath was about freedom, after all! And she had been bound as a slave to this crippling spirit, and now she was free – so what a way to honor the Sabbath, to keep it holy! She even heard this in Jesus’ next words, “…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?” Yes, Lord, free from bondage!
Even as she was unsure about whether this was the right time and place, she also knew that she had that day become a living example of the spirit of the Sabbath – a spirit of freedom from bondage, freedom from slavery. And as she stood up straight and saw the world around her for the first time in eighteen years, all she could do was begin praising God – who indeed is full of mercy and compassion, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Today’s Gospel reading gives us two powerful perspectives on law: the indignant synagogue leader who is wary of breaking one law lest we take it as leeway to break all the rest, and the bent over woman, whose healing can be seen as the embodiment of the spirit of freedom that the Sabbath intends. Who is right?
To be fair, there is validity in both perspectives. The synagogue leader is right: these laws are in place for a reason. They are there to protect and preserve us, to keep us on the right path, and therefore, to lead us toward life. And I think Sabbath is one law in particular that we could take a lot more seriously. For most people, I think when we hear “Sabbath,” we think, “Go to church.” And yes, that’s one thing you can do on the Sabbath to keep it holy. But Sabbath is so much more than that. In today’s story, Sabbath is about release from bondage, about overcoming that which bends us over and makes us unable to see, about freedom to shed what binds us and offer God our unfettered praise. Some of us may have been physically bent over at some point, but my guess is that all of us have been spiritually or emotionally bent over at some point in our lives. We have too much on our plate. We have too many demands on our backs. We have impossible expectations put upon us by friends, family, co-workers, or even ourselves. We are weary, and don’t allow ourselves the rest we need – indeed the rest that God commands.
Sabbath, then, becomes a life-giving mandate for us, a chance to find release from all these binding and crippling demands of life. A whole day, preferably, but if not that, maybe you need to take Sabbath wherever you can get it: at a red light, perhaps, when you can just take a deep breath and say a prayer for freedom from the weight of the world. Or in those few moments after you wake but before you are out of bed, when you can pray for peace throughout your day.
Sabbath is something we need, and the synagogue leader is right to stand by that need. Where the synagogue leader’s view falls short, however, is that his upholding of the law is only for the letter of the law, and not for the spirit of the law. This is where we can learn something from the woman’s story as well. Our Psalm today, which we used as a Call to Worship, says that God is full of mercy and compassion and abounding in steadfast love, and we would do well to remember that these characteristics of God overarch all laws. In other words, God gives us these laws because God is merciful, compassionate, and loving. And if those laws contradict those values in any way, then the spirit of the law is not being fulfilled.
What, then, is the spirit of this law?
With Jesus, grace trumps law. That’s not to say we disregard the law – by no means. Law has its place, to show us the way God wants us to live, to get us outside ourselves and facing God and the needs of our neighbor. But the law always bows to mercy, grace, love, and life. Law helps us know how to live better lives, but grace creates and enables life. Law pushes us to care for each other, but grace catches us when we fall short of that. Sometimes the law is suspended in order to let grace abound, and today’s Gospel is just such a time. In this story, when Jesus breaks the Sabbath law, healing happens, a sinner gives thanks and praise, and a crowd rejoices – because that is what happens when grace invites us to both value the law and also suspend it in the name of mercy, compassion, and love.
Let us pray. God, you are full of compassion and mercy, and abounding in steadfast love. Help us to value your commandments and live them to the fullest, but help us also to know when we must tend toward grace in order to let your mercy, love and compassion abound in our lives and in the lives of everyone we meet. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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