August 25, 2013. (Proper 16, Yr. C. Text: Luke 13:10-17]
The Ten Commandments are very popular in this country. There are about 4,000 public displays of them in various places, including the Supreme Court building and the Library of Congress. Maybe there’s one here in Sheridan somewhere.
Zeal for the Commandments runs high among Americans, but the zeal is diluted by ignorance. A few years ago a poll showed that nearly 80% of Americans oppose removing displays of the Ten Commandments from government buildings, even though another survey the same year showed that fewer than 10% can name more than four of the ten. (I wonder which four commandments people know? The poll didn’t say. Apparently it’s more important to post the Commandments in public than to remember them. —And what does that tell us?)
Most people say that the function of the Ten Commandments is to help us know the difference between right and wrong. They say the Commandments show us what behavior to punish and what behavior to reward. They say that obeying the Commandments will make us a more moral society. Maybe so, maybe so. But those are modern answers, not Biblical answers, because none of them make any mention of God. The Biblical answer is different: the Ten Commandments reveal the will of God for his People. They identify the kind of behavior that sets God’s People apart and marks them as God’s own. Thus, the Commandments are about holiness--about “being holy as God is holy.” To keep God’s law is to belong to God. All the commandments were strictly observed by Jews in our Lord’s time—as they are today—and the Fourth Commandment received particular attention: “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” Observance of the Sabbath and the dietary laws were part of the Jewish way of life that set them sharply apart from everyone else.
The commandment to keep the Sabbath demands positive action. It isn’t a “thou shalt not” sort of commandment. The People of God are to mark the seventh day as “holy” (which literally means set apart in Hebrew). The law doesn’t command worship on the Sabbath, but rather rest --a cessation of all labor for everyone. The Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt, and slaves must work every day. They work till they drop. They work till they die. But having delivered his people from slavery, God now not only permits but commands them to rest from their labor, just as God himself had rested after his great work of creation. Israel’s rest on every seventh day was to be a perpetual reminder that God had delivered them from slavery, a testimony to their freedom from human masters and their submission to God. And the Sabbath rest was for everyone—men and women, children and adults, Israelites and foreigners living among them, masters and slaves alike. Even animals were to rest. The Sabbath created equality in the community.
Although the Fourth Commandment didn’t designate the Sabbath as a day of worship, that custom evolved on its own. I suppose it felt logical to treat the Sabbath as a day to thank God for Israel’s deliverance and to gather together to hear and meditate on God’s word.
Thus it was that Jesus often preached in synagogues on the Sabbath, as we see him doing in today’s gospel. Into that Sabbath gathering comes a crippled woman. She seems to enter after the service has already begun, while Jesus is speaking. This is understandable. The poor woman probably moves slowly, since she is bent over and unable to stand up straight. Walking in a crowd is very awkward for someone who is permanently bent over at the waist and can only look straight ahead with difficulty. The synagogue is packed, since Jesus always draws a crowd, and since it is small—as village synagogues usually are—she can’t make her way into the room and find a place without being noticed.
The woman doesn’t want to call attention to herself. Quite the contrary, she doesn’t want any more attention than she already gets. The people of the village know her well because she is their neighbor, and she’s almost certainly doing exactly what she does every Sabbath day—joining the community for worship, arriving just a few minutes after everyone else has gone in. But Jesus sees her, and he interrupts his teaching to invite her up to where he’s sitting on the speaker’s platform. He lays his hands on her and says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Immediately she stands erect and with a sudden broad smile and in a very loud voice—for an old lady—she begins to praise God for her deliverance. She is healed.—Hallelujah! Glory to God!—And all her friends, all the people in the synagogue, are happy for her. It is a moment of great joy for the whole village.
However, although he may be happy for the woman’s healing, the chief officer of the synagogue immediately starts complaining, muttering to the elders sitting with him on the platform. He regards Jesus’ healing people as Jesus’ work. He says, “This man used to be a carpenter and now he’s a healer, isn’t he? A professional healer, like a physician. And no one is supposed to do his work on the Sabbath, not carpenters and not healers.” He may have added, in a stage whisper audible to everyone nearby, and especially to Jesus, “This woman has been crippled for eighteen years. Her affliction did not just strike her this morning. Why can the Teacher not wait and heal her after the Sabbath is past? She has been waiting many years to be healed, what possible difference might a single day make? Does the Teacher not honor the Lord’s commandment? God himself gave Moses the Sabbath law, and though the sages permit a worthwhile exception if it is necessary to save someone’s life, this woman’s life is not threatened! The Teacher works as a healer. That’s part of what he does. Fine. But let him do his healing work on one of the other six days of the week, not on the Sabbath of the Lord our God. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy!’ ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’”
I am sure Jesus heard this and rolled his eyes. He has heard it all before, in other places, and he will hear it again. And every time it makes him mad. —But, from the perspective of the synagogue leader and most of Pharisees, “the rules are the rules!” This healing is not an emergency. If people start making exceptions, then the law will ultimately stop being a law and become merely a suggestion. This must not happen.
What do you think? What does this conflict about Sabbath observance mean to us? It is absolutely true, as Jesus points out in the gospel, that those in the synagogue who are scandalized by his healing on the day of rest regularly lead their own donkeys and oxen to water during the Sabbath, even though the animals would not die of dehydration if their owners chose to wait until sundown, when the day officially ended. So why, then, shouldn’t Jesus’ simple act of setting a woman free from an awful physical affliction be acceptable on the Sabbath? The Sabbath observance was established to be a weekly celebration of God’s deliverance of the children of Abraham from slavery. That’s why Jesus says to his critics, “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan enslaved for eighteen long years, be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day?” This miracle is the grace of God in action. And every Sabbath is meant to be a reminder of God’s grace.
That makes sense to us, doesn’t it? But how do we square law and grace? This is one of the classic questions of Christian theology.
Lutheran theologian and preacher David Lose says that all law is essential “because it gives order to our lives and helps maintain peace. It sets boundaries that create room in which life can flourish. The law matters because it encourages us—sometimes even goads us—to look beyond ourselves so that we might love and care for our neighbors.” Lose writes:
“Important as law is—and notice that Jesus doesn’t set aside the law but rather offers a different interpretation of it—[the law] must always bow to mercy, life, and freedom. Law helps us live our lives better, but grace creates life itself. Law helps order our world, but grace is what holds the world together. Law pushes us to care for each other, but grace restores us to each other when we’ve failed in the law.
“Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, and while the law helps us make sense of and get more out of life in the kingdom of the world, it must always bend to the grace that constitutes the abundant life that Jesus proclaims. For above and beyond all the laws ever received or conceived, the absolute law is love: love God and love your neighbor. Or, perhaps, love God by loving your neighbor.”
And so, of course, Jesus heals on the Sabbath.
And, of course, the woman gives thanks.
And, of course, the crowd rejoices.
And, of course, all of us here say, Amen!
For a pdf version of this sermon, please click here.