Pentecost 13/Proper 16 (C), St. Luke 13:10-17
• Summer Sabbath, the comparative leisure of these weeks, is drawing to a close…
• From days of my youth anticipating school to start, I long remember the subtle, dull foreboding… Shorter days, cooler temperatures… New routines and harder work just around the corner…
• Cf. routines associated with leaving Cape Cod and returning to non-vacation homes…
• Labor Day approaches – to remember and appreciate the gift of work, workers, etc., but a fulcrum kind of day, pointing also less literally to the end of summer leisure and the coming labors of new program year, increasing pace of work, etc.
• As for me, I’ll be on sabbatical this fall, sabbatical having its root in Sabbath, rest… While the fall term will represent a break in routine (esp. in that I will not have to go to faculty meetings), it will involve for me the arguably more grueling task of writing a book manuscript (pray for me…)
• So it is at this time at the end of the summer sabbath, we find ourselves in the midst of a story about Sabbath – in this case Jesus breaking custom and law to heal a long crippled woman on the Sabbath
• Let’s take a closer look at the woman: she had a spirit, bound by Satan (adversary, the one who plots against us), that had crippled her, kept her in bondage for eighteen long years; bent over, unable to stand up straight… And Jesus, having laid hands on her, set her free. That’s the story, plain and simple.
• Let’s jump from then back to now quickly and explore what she might mean for us…
• Are there ways in which this woman, cured from a literally crippling affliction, can become an everywoman for us concerning the more metaphorical, perhaps literal, spirits that afflict us, keep us in bondage, stooped, weighed down by the weights of the world?
• Toward this end, I ask some rhetorical or not so rhetorical questions of you:
- In what ways might you identify with this woman?
- And/or does she remind you of loved ones?
- If you do identify with her, what are your crippling spirits? Or those of your loved ones?
• Fill in the blanks in your mind’s eye as you need to…
• It’s also important to consider the impeding role of the religious authorities of the day, the leaders who indignantly complained because Jesus healed the woman on the Sabbath day: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”
- In that light, I ask another question: Who are the leaders, the authorities, what are the voices that keep saying to you that you and/or your loved ones cannot be cured, set free, untied?
• Again, these questions are rhetorical for your meditative reflection and consideration. Among this crowd, many crippling spirits might be identified and there may be many different authorities and voices saying in one way or another you cannot be set free…
• But let me venture here to name and explore what I think are some of the crippling spirits of our own age:
- The spirit of our time, the zeitgeist, is one it seems to me of obsessive activity, productivity, overwork, sensory over-stimulation, too much information, noise – so much so that it can be paralyzing…
- More means of communication, staying connected, being at work almost all the time – there’s no downtown in the global marketplace, it’s, as they say, 24/7 (just the emergence of the phrase is curious…)
- I watch people in airports, on subways and buses, on the sidewalks and elsewhere in New York City – people are connected, receiving information, being stimulated…
- Then there’s the saying: ‘Lunch is for wimps’ – very much in contrast to cultures that continue the civility of the mid-day siesta… Even Germany with its ‘Mittagspause’
- Cf. story recently in the New York Times: millionaires who feel they must work harder because they feel they are at risk of not making ends meet.
- Consumerism out of control – cf. the many incarnations of Crest toothpaste (my favorite example of this…)
- Ever expanding markets and opportunities and options in the global marketplace – exciting but also exacting…
- Too many options – the human brain is not biologically designed to deal with the world we’ve created. My theory: more means of communication, the less effectively we communicate; the more information, the less we know…
- Americans are working longer hours, taking less vacation, for some stagnant wages
- Image of hamster on treadmills, but running faster and faster
- Contrast: Africa trip and the notable difference in lifestyle and the saying: “Europeans have watches and clocks; Africans have time” –
- Even seminary and the church: more with fewer people, more programs, a drive to be all things to all people
- Sense of a world out of control… producing and consuming ourselves to death
• And what authoritative voices say that it has to be this way? The media, a constant barrage of commercials, suggests that it must be this way… Curious how we submit, even when we don’t have to…
• The long and the short of it: less Sabbath time, less rest – the leisure to think, to contemplate, to consider the larger things of life, the real purpose of Sabbath, of resting, breaking the routines to study, to pray, to meditate…
• Let’s return to the story in Luke’s Gospel. There’s a curious thing to observe: it’s OK to teach on the Sabbath, but not to do a work of healing…
• But how can you separate the teaching from the healing in the case of Jesus? For him they are one and the same, practicing what he preaches…
• If his teaching is about release from spirits that keep us in bondage, he’s got to enact that release in order to effectively and convincingly teach…
• And he’s making a teaching point here about the Sabbath too in that he chooses to heal, to set the woman free on the Sabbath, free in part from authoritative voices that suggest that religious rules are more important the reason for Sabbath rest in the first place…
• It echoes Jesus elsewhere, “Sabbath was made for humans; humans were not made for the Sabbath.” Cf. our turning rest into work: ‘active vacations’; power naps…
• Or here: “You hypocrites (pretenders, play actors)! 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?”
• So Jesus here is one who counter-culturally breaks into religious routines to invite people to claim our rightful Sabbath rest and freedom, especially from the crippling spirits that otherwise prevent rest
• What better use of the Sabbath than to set people free from the spiritual maladies that keep them imprisoned and free from rest?
• Jesus entered into the woman’s reality and those of the leaders who said it shouldn’t be done and turned her and their world of assumptions upside down. And the woman was liberated.
• Through this same Word, this story, Jesus enters into our world, turning it upside down, saying no to the treadmill, the over-stimulation, the 24/7, lunch is for wimps mentality, revealing to us that it makes little sense in ultimate terms.
• Jesus invites us into a different way, to claim the alternative narrative such that the story touches us, and taking and claiming the story as our own, we may find that we stand up straight and begin to praise God.
• A curious thing about Sabbath rest: it can reveal the folly of our frenetic pace…
• And therein is our potential freedom, our being untied, unbound, set free from our bondage…
• My Lutheran moment: In the Gospel is our freedom: we don’t need to earn God’s favor; God’s grace is lavished on us already. One of the core Christian theological affirmations – justification by faith… We need only trust in God’s grace for salvation. Anything we do is done in complete freedom from anxiety about our ultimate worth…
• So relax: what otherwise are we trying to prove?
• Our new awareness will not change the world we live in or our need to work in a very busy time in world history, but it may take the edge off the anxiety of our age…
• And to proclaim this Word of freedom, of Sabbath rest, to our current frenetic culture, is a central feature, I believe, of the church’s current mission.
• The church is called upon to be profoundly counter-cultural, proclaiming boldly: less is more, seek to be more silent, pursue greater simplicity, find the Sabbath time to really contemplate the weightier matters of life.
• The church is called upon precisely to not imitate the culture and, yes, to resist and say no to the culture’s unceasing demands for more of our time and energy and limited attention spans. We must resist these seductions lest we perpetuate the crippled-ness of our age and be among the religious authorities baptizing the status quo and saying it’s the right thing to still be in bondage to the crippling spirit of our age.
• The church’s Christmas celebrations may be a good place to start… Less is more…
• God through the Spirit give us the courage to be about this new way in Christ.
• May the more leisurely spirit of these weeks here carry over into September and beyond, that you may be witnesses to the beckoning call of Sabbath, of freedom in Christ from whatever cripples you and your loved ones.
• And hear the voice of Christ echoing through the centuries via the words of this story: People of God, ‘you are set free from your ailments, your crippling spirit, your bondage…’
• We can stand up straight and praise God on this Christian Sabbath day… And we can leave ‘rejoicing at all the wonderful things that Christ is doing’…
• Even as I say thank you for the privilege of being here with you on Cape Cod to experience Sabbath rest in the sounds of crickets at night and the gentle breeze blowing through the trees…