WNC Worship: Sermons

The Rev. Christiana Olsen · Pentecost XIII · August 26, 2007

Text: Psalm 103:1–8; Luke 13:10–17

O Lord, you have made us for your own and we are restless until we find our rest in you. Amen.

Do you have holy time? Portions of your day, your week, month, year, when everything stops? When efforts to get ahead, to please, to make more, to do more simply end and your mind turns off and your heart takes over? When you recognize, again, those things that matter the most, that mean the most, maybe even cost the most? Do any of us truly rest in God any more? It’s actually a rather embarrassing question from someone who works on the one day in the week when we are asked to cease working! Yet, I’m compelled to ask. So we come to Scripture and to each other today to discover what it really means to honor God’s ways within us and among us, to understand perhaps in a new way the mercy of God and what is really going on when our time off becomes holy time, Sabbath time.

My guess is we don’t have much, if any, truly holy time. Although most Christians worship at least one hour a week and some are blessed with the gift of leisure time, technology, deep cultural assumptions, and a lack of a solid theology of work make it possible for us to toil 24/7 if we choose. So in a strange way, we can understand how radical a day of rest might have been in the ancient world, though for different reasons. Only the wealthy ruling classes of our biblical sisters and brothers would have had time to rest and reflect. For slave and other underclasses, the idea of rest each week would have been inconceivable. The Greeks thought Jews were lazy because they insisted on having a “holiday” once a week! But it was much more than a day off for them. One rabbi notes that for observant Jews, Sabbath was and is a gracious gift from God, the day they wait for and look forward to all week...a time to put aside all of the concerns of the previous days and to be devoted to “higher pursuits.” A day, I would think, to remind them what the kingdom of God looks like, here and now.

All of the readings we’ve listened to or sung this morning say something about what the kingdom of God is like. Isaiah tells of honor and selflessness and the joy that comes from delighting in the Sabbath. Psalm 103 sings of God’s mercy and love. And Luke, the beloved physician, writes of healing, of unlikely grace, freely given and focusing on what matters most: taking away the suffering of another human being, another child of God. God’s kingdom is full of mysterious and holy things. And time spent experiencing those things is indeed holy time.

The portion of the gospel we’ve heard is part of a larger rhythm in Luke’s writing. Through a series of four healing stories, we hear how Jesus addresses the growing challenge he faces from the Pharisees, as they unrelentingly attempt to discredit him and glorify the Law, and so elevate themselves, for so dutifully loving it and faithfully following it. “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”

I don’t mean to say that the law in and of itself was a bad thing. We, like these religious leaders, like all people, need to know where the boundaries are and how we are to live respectful lives. The Pharisees weren’t bad people. They just missed the larger, more important meaning. Imagine how Jesus turned the world on its side.

The story of the healing of the crippled woman is the third in the series and like its companion story in chapter 14—the healing of the man with dropsy—involves the leader of the synagogue, a healing, on the Sabbath, and a comparison between behavior toward an animal and behavior toward another human being. His technique in this third story is a direct challenge to temple leadership, not only regarding the relative importance of Sabbath law, but also regarding the status of the woman he heals. To the Pharisees, and probably to most of the community, she is nothing. A stooped, weak, shameful, diseased woman, unable to stand up straight. But to Jesus, especially in Sabbath time, she is everything! She is more important than everything else, including the law! She is a daughter of Abraham, a child of God! What could be more right and good than to heal her on the Sabbath, the day when she, and Jesus and the crowd and even the Pharisees, should have been drawn closest to God’s love? What a blessing! Imagine how Jesus turned the world on its side.

How many times have we’ve been this woman? Stooped from the weariness of working every day with our own weaknesses, feeling unlovable, unable to stand up straight even if only inside ourselves? Unable to find holy rest in a God who chooses us over everything else? A God who heals us because, law or no law, it’s the only good and right and loving thing to do?

And how many times have we been that Pharisee? It’s not an easy question and the answer might not feel great. We get wrapped up in work, moving fast, thinking heady thoughts, feeling awfully good about ourselves and perhaps following all the rules, without realizing how much we’re, as Isaiah writes, trampling on the Sabbath, pursuing our own interests, running over God’s grace and love, leading our animals to water on the Sabbath but refusing to recognize our own weaknesses and seemingly unable to recognize our great capacities to be compassionate and loving as well.

If we could just look at ourselves and others through a graceful lens, that holy lens, perhaps we could see the Sabbath not just as a day, or just a prayer, or just behaving lawfully. Perhaps we could see it as God at work in our lives in all those things, at all those times. Sabbath is most importantly about honoring God in and through the ways we care for each other, how we love each other, how we know each other, how we help God to heal others and allow the same healing in ourselves.

O Lord, you have made us for your own and we are restless until we find our rest in you. Amen.