August 25, 2013 – Luke 13:10-17
Luke 13:10-17
Freed on the Sabbath, Freed for the Sabbath
14th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 21] – August 25, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I came back from holidays this past week having enjoyed some good time to rest.
We travelled a bit, but mostly I love holidays for the opportunity they give for rest.
When I came back this week, there were lots of sick people to check in with and visit.
One of them – who was not in the hospital but still at home – asked me if I could
perform a healing rite for her and a sick friend with prayer and anointing with oil.
I said sure and thanks for asking.
So the next day we gathered together.
Before the laying on of hands and anointing with oil,
we read scripture together and had conversation about what we read.
One of them read this from Hebrews: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”
The other read this from Psalm 103: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases; who redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.”
And then I read this morning’s Gospel passage,
about the woman who was bent over for 18 years whom Jesus heals on the Sabbath.
When I finished reading I said, “What did you hear in that reading this time around?”
The one said, “I heard that it is something other than God that had bound that woman, not God.
Illness and the suffering that goes with it is not God’s doing.
It’s not what God intends for us. What God intends for us is freedom from
illness and the suffering that goes with it.”
Right, I said.
The other one said, “What I hear in this story is that illness prevents you from functioning
the way you’re supposed to.
Jesus heals the woman and then she can do what she was made to do.”
Which is, I asked?
“Praise and bless and thank God.”
Right, I said.
Not bad, right? Often the very ill make very good theologians.
Now at first glance, you might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus – as he often is – is
simply being provocative in this story.
It’s the Sabbath: it’s the day of rest.
For Jesus – even as for our Jewish friends today – it began at sundown on Friday and
ends at sundown Saturday.
It’s likely Saturday afternoon when our story is told,
when Jesus is at the synagogue and notices a woman in the crowd who is bent over and
who has presumably come with a crowd of others seeking Jesus’ healing.
Now the Sabbath is a holy day for the Jewish people because
it sets them apart from other peoples.
It’s how they maintain their identity.
It’s a day for them to stop work and remember and praise and thank God.
It’s a day for them to remember that on the 7th day of creation even God rested,
so surely they can rest on the 7th day of the week.
It’s a day for them to rest and eat and share and enjoy the good gifts of God in food and
to enjoy the gift of one another and God’s good creation and bless God for it.
It’s a good thing.
The leader of the synagogue simply wants to protect that,
and so we need to have some sympathy for him when he criticizes Jesus for
healing on the Sabbath.
I mean, it’s not that he or others like him are heartless.
Everyone agreed back in the day that if it was a matter of life and death,
helping and healing work can and should be done on the Sabbath.
But this is not exactly a matter of life and death, is it?
I mean, the woman has been bent over for 18 years.
And let’s face it: the Sabbath is going to be over in a few hours.
Why can’t Jesus just wait those few hours?
Well, we all know by now that Jesus is kind of an impatient guy.
There is a sense of urgency about his ministry that I’m sure we could all share.
And we know Jesus likes to be provocative: he likes to stir things up:
Is he just making the point that the law can become cold and heartless without mercy?
I mean, that’s true, but – is that all he’s doing? I mean he could have just waited, couldn’t he?
Well, no: apparently he couldn’t.
It’s somehow important to Jesus that he perform this healing on the Sabbath, and not wait.
The woman I anointed with oil was right: the bent over woman’s ailment is preventing her from
functioning the way God wants her to on the Sabbath.
It’s preventing her from praising and thanking and blessing God.
It’s preventing her from standing upright and assuming the posture of praise and thanksgiving.
It’s preventing her from joining the congregation because her illness has isolated her from
being a full member of the community: notice that Jesus names her
“daughter of Abraham” after she is healed,
something she presumably wasn’t considered to be while she was sick.
The thing is: Jesus doesn’t just cure her on the Sabbath, he cures her for the Sabbath.
She wasn’t created to be bound and held down by demonic forces.
She wasn’t created to be weak (literally the Greek here says she had a “spirit of weakness.”)
She wasn’t created to be isolated from her community – and neither were you, nor any of us!
When Luke tells us she “stood up straight” the word he uses is anortho,
which is also the word used to rebuild a house.
Jesus has rebuilt the house of this woman’s body so that
she can do what she was created to do – what we are all created to do – on the Sabbath:
praise and bless and thank God shoulder to shoulder with her people,
and rest from all that has bound her.
She was freed to praise God who is the creator of the world in all its wondrousness and
who is the liberator of the people in bondage.
Of the nearly 3800 verses in the four Gospels,
nearly 800 of them have to do in one way or another with Jesus’ healing.
Clearly the reign of God Jesus invites into our presence has a lot to do with healing.
Clearly God’s intentions for this world are healing from all that would harm us.
Clearly – as our story today clearly indicates – illness and exclusion are not God’s doing.
But – just as clearly – healing is, and is God’s intention for us and for all creation.
And clearly healing takes many forms.
In the story,
the woman can’t praise God as a full member of her community because of her illness.
It wasn’t allowing her to function the way God created her to function.
Well: what are the things that are getting in your way?
Take a moment to name it, and to ask God for healing.
Sometimes – in our culture as in 1st century Palestine – work really is the problem,
and you need a day off from it:
we need to be healed from our need to always be productive.
Just as often, though, the need to entertain ourselves gets in the way of setting aside time to
enjoy the people and gifts around us.
Sometimes the problem is an almost literal kind of bondage, the bondage of an addiction that
enslaves us and binds us to a version of ourselves that is clearly not what God intends.
And some of us know the great disease of despair that robs us of the ability to act,
to praise and thank God, and to love God by loving our neighbours.
There is great healing in the hope that God intends healing for all creation,
the hope that God intends the wedding together of all the disparate parts of this world into
a smoothly functioning harmonious whole.
It’s a hope that comes to us here, in a small way, on this our Christian Sabbath day,
as God’s intentions for the future come into our present.
As we gather in community and embrace one another in peace,
in the shalom and healing God intends.
As we function harmoniously in the undertaking of this beautiful liturgy.
As we thank God for the gift of creation, the gift of our bodies, the gift of Jesus,
the gift of the Spirit, the gift of one another, the gift of food.
As we stand upright, and look in one another’s eyes, and share that food,
and strengthen one another.
As we are healed here from what inhibits us from doing what we were created to do:
to love God and serve our neighbour and participate in God’s loving mission to
love, bless, and heal this world and every person in it.
Physical cure may or may not come, but that is not the same as healing:
we can be physically sick, but still spiritually healed as we praise God and
serve our neighbours – even by simply praying for them every day.
Before I left the two women the other day, we prayed the Lord’s Prayer together:
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
God’s will is healing, with the exclusion of none.
On this Christian Sabbath day, may you come to the table of God’s gifts,
may you be freed from bondage, may you be rebuilt by hope,
and may you be healed of all that harms you.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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