11th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C) - August 25, 2019

11th Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
August 25, 2019
Luke 13:10-17, Isaiah 58:9b-14

Running through the first reading from Isaiah and our Gospel reading from Luke this morning, is Sabbath and what it means to keep the Sabbath and keep it holy. In the tradition of Martin Luther, this week, I found myself asking, “What is this?” or “What does this mean?” For Luther, when talking about Sabbath in the Small Catechism, he writes “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not despise God’s Word of preaching, but instead keep that Word holy and gladly hear and learn it.” As much as I love Luther, and have gained so much from the Small Catechism over the years, I find that his answer to “What is this?” falls a bit short - at least in in so far as we’re digging into today’s passage. There’s nothing “wrong” with Luther’s definition of Sabbath. It fits well when we think about church or bible study, but I think that today’s passages are dealing with a different aspect of what it means to observe the sabbath. In other words, Luther’s definition in the Small Catechism gives us a piece of what it means to observe Sabbath, but we’re dealing with something else today. Afterall, Jesus was in the synagogue teaching and people were there to encounter God’s Word (perhaps not quite in the way they would expect). Yet this question of observing sabbath remains. So again, I ask, “what is this?” “What does this mean?”

As most of you all know by now, my background is in Biblical studies, so that’s the logical place for me to start. In the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, we get not one - but two - different listings of the Ten Commandments. One in Exodus. One in Deuteronomy. And they’re slightly different.

Exodus 20, when talking about the Sabbath says this:

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8-11)

My guess is that this is what most of us were taught when we were taught the Ten Commandments. At least this is the version I learned. And it fits really well with Luther’s answer to “what is this?” when talking about Sabbath. It connects Sabbath rest to the first creation story: We rest on the Seventh Day because God rested. It is a day to dwell in relationship with our God, the one who created us. It is a day to the Lord your God.

But this is only half of the story of Sabbath. When Deuteronomy talks about Sabbath, it says this:

“Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)

Out of the two “versions” recording the Ten Commandments, this one, scholars believe is the more ancient of the two. Here, remembering the Sabbath is about Liberation; it is grounded in God’s liberating work, bringing the Hebrew people out of the land of Egypt, claiming them as God’s people. This mode of keeping the sabbath connects us intimately with our neighbor. Because God brought you out of slavery, because God brought you liberation, you give others rest and freedom. It is a weekly reminder of their independence and their freedom, a weekly reminder of God’s work of liberation for them and for others.

Looking at Deuteronomy and Exodus together, the Sabbath commandment orients us both to God and to neighbor. These two views of Sabbath are intimately connected. “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… 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… then you shall take delight in the Lord.” These two go hand in hand. We don’t live in the light of God without offering food to the hungry and satisfying the needs of the afflicted. We don’t honor God without honoring the neighbor, made in the image of that God. We don’t love God without loving the alien and the stranger, made in the image of that God. This morning, Isaiah connects these two parts of Sabbath so beautifully.

In an article for the Christian Century this week, Shai Held puts it this way, “Both of Isaiah’s requirements—social reform and sabbath observance—thus share a common religious and ethical vision: a society worthy of receiving God’s light is one that recognizes the inestimable worth of every human being, even and especially the vulnerable and downtrodden. It is a tall order, and one shudders to think how far we fall from it. But we are not free to desist from the spiritual and political work God places before us: to serve God and to embrace human beings are two tasks that are eternally and inextricably intertwined.” This is what it means to keep the sabbath and make it holy: to serve God, to worship God, and to embrace and liberate our fellow human being. These go together.
(Shai Held, https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/sundays-coming/dignity-and-rest-isaiah-589b-14).

This intermingling of serving God and embracing human beings is what Jesus draws on today. It was a seemingly normal Sabbath day, which had begun Friday at sundown. Jesus is in the middle of teaching. He is interrupted by the sight of this woman that was bent over. He stops preaching. He interrupts the flow of the service. He sees her in ways that likely no one has in many years. He sees her worth; he sees her as a beloved daughter of Abraham. He calls to the woman. “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” And when Jesus is confronted by the leader of the synagogue, he doubles down, “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?” The call to observe Sabbath is deeply intertwined with setting this woman free from that which has held her captive for so long.

From the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells us that this is his mission. Describing his own mission, Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). And for this woman, Jesus liberates on the Sabbath - the day in which they gather in remembrance of God’s liberation. Jesus doesn’t abolish Sabbath law, but Jesus acts faithfully on the Sabbath, enacting God’s liberation that they gather to commemorate. In other words, Jesus lives out the Sabbath command, as he tells this woman that she is set free.

In Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus sets us free. As we gather for worship each Sunday - the commemoration of Jesus’ resurrection, as we gather around font and table, Jesus sees each one of us - really sees us fully as we are -, Jesus calls us worthy, and Jesus says to each one of us “you are set free.” Wherever we are, wherever we’ve come from, whoever we are, “you are set free.” Free from sin. Free from our turned-in-on-self selves. Free from death. Free from the powers of this world that may try to keep us down. Free from the need to make ourselves worthy before God. We are free. That is the good news today. Jesus came to liberate us, and that liberation belongs to us. It cannot be taken away.

As people set free by the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ, we get to free others. We don't

have to, we get to. Who among us still needs to be set free? Who in our society and in our world still needs to be set free? Where do we see oppression still keeping our neighbor from living in freedom? Where do we see the weight of racism, of sexism, of homophobia, of xenophobia (or any other phobia or ism) weighing down our siblings, others made in the image of God? Today, we hear a call to live out that sabbath command that links serving God with liberating those around us. With the help of God, we get to loose the bonds of injustice and set the neighbor free. In freeing others, we live out the liberation that we’ve already found and experienced. Because Christ has freed us, we can imagine and live into a new kind of world - that Kingdom of God that is continually breaking in - a world where everyone finds liberation, freedom, and healing.

Amen.