Luke 13:10-17
“Freedom”
August 21, 2022
Think back to how you experienced sabbath as a child.
I’m old enough to remember blue laws being in effect in the 60s when the only stores that were open was a little corner store until noon – expressly for selling the Sunday newspapers and the bakery – also only open in the morning where we would sometimes stop after Sunday Mass.
A special treat was their halfmoon cookies which you may know as black & whites. That’s it – there was nowhere else to go but home.
It was a day of just hanging out at our house, procrastinating until the evening with any homework and we’d have our dinner in the early afternoon.
I didn’t really think of it as a day of rest so much as a day of doing nothing (and there is a difference – especially to a child) except for my mom who was a nurse and worked the 3-11 p.m. shift every other Sunday.
I never truly appreciated the concept of Sabbath-keeping until I began my ministry here at the Federated Church.
Mondays to the rest of the world looked like my day off but I have tried hard in the past almost 15 years
to make it a day of restoration.
That is what Jesus in his healing of the bent woman is doing in today’s account that David shared.
Here Jesus is adhering to the foundational idea of sabbath, as found in two books that this leader in the synagogue would be well-versed in.
The commandment to observe the sabbath is found first in Exodus, where the practice is taken from that of God who rests on the seventh day of creation.
The other place we find a reference comes in Deuteronomy where the sabbath is intended to serve as a “little exodus” each week, remembering the exodus from Egyptian slavery and intended to be a preview of the Promised Land – for everyone with no exceptions.
It’s intended to be a way to help all of us – even donkeys and oxen and other livestock – thrive.
Jesus here is in the liberation business.
Even more important than rules is our religious duty to care for each other – at all times.
The image of the bent over woman could certainly apply to any of us that are carrying so much that we feel weighed down.
Jesus here is offering this woman a release. We are all of offered the knowledge that we can let go of those things that are weighing heavy on us.
This woman, in her bent over state, is missing getting to look other people in the eye or take in a beautiful sunset – all of this missing out through nothing she has done – and yet there she is in the synagogue for worship on the sabbath.
She most likely has gotten used to going unnoticed and even unseen.
And she doesn’t approach Jesus in this story.
We don’t even know if she saw Jesus in the crowd or only his feet along with dozens of other pairs of dusty feet.
But Jesus sees her, and he calls out to her among all those people, and he does the same thing that he repeatedly does throughout his life with the sick, the dying, the despised – he sets her free – and “Immediately she stood up straight.”
Jesus singles out a vulnerable, hurting, and probably lonely woman who has been in this condition for 18 years, and she is the one who, in this house of worship, is set free.
But the leader of the synagogue attempts to drown out the healed woman’s joy with his protest that Jesus is messing with the sabbath tradition by “working” on the sabbath.
This leader is not evil.
He is doing what he thinks is right.
He believes he is honoring the sabbath.
He gets the words of the commandment right, but he totally misses out on the heart of the whole idea of sabbath.
What he misses is that in God’s kingdom, compassion always comes before legalism.
As one writer put it, “It’s a compassion that consistently sees the broken body, the broken soul, the broken spirit – before it sees the broken commandment.” (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus.net)
Many people, including some of us, have been hurt by faith communities that were really good at rule keeping but not so strong at compassion.
We should note that Jesus is not against religious traditions.
What he is against is the self-righteousness and exclusion that some traditions breed.
If a rule stops us from loving other people and having empathy for them, that is what Jesus is rejecting.
In today’s story of the bent woman, we again witness that Jesus is most embraced by the ones who are most vulnerable.
The ones with power and resources tend to be the ones spending all their time defending religion.
Jesus was embraced most by those who were most weighed down by their own brokenness because what they saw in him is the God of love – a love that includes, a love that is limitless, a love that sets people free.
What Jesus does, first by referring to her as a daughter of Abraham, is remind her and this community that she is worthy because she is a human being and part of them.
It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who said, “All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity of others.”
As we continue to be church to each other and the world, let us think about how we go about making sure that the people whose lives we touch know that they are worthy and that they are loved – for no other reason than that they are a child of God.
Let us then offer up this prayer from Ruthanna Hooke:
Liberating God, we give you thanks for sending Jesus among us, to bestow upon us the freedom that is life with you.
Open our hearts, our minds, our bodies, and our souls to receive this freedom and to live it, to stand boldly as witnesses of your abundant life to a world bowed down in suffering and brokenness.
Give us grace to be seeds, to be yeast, to be bearers of your transforming reign, that this world may be drawn more and more into your peace and your glory.
In the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, we pray. Amen.