August 21, 2022
Luke 13: 10-17
The Rev. Deborah Hawkins
Sabbath. Who needs it?
Years ago one Sunday this congregation had a visitor from St. Gregory of Nyssa, in San Francisco. She taught us a liturgical dance to do as we left the service that morning.
More than one person was overheard to say, as we tripped over kneelers and stepped on each other’s feet, “Doesn’t she know we are Episcopalians?”
If the synagogue leader in today’s gospel lesson had been in the congregation that morning he would have have been right in there with them saying, “Exactly!”
What the synagogue leader wants, what many of us want, is to worship with reverence and awe, and also good, decent order. No rukus, no surprises. For most of us here that means on Sunday morning when we come to church no loud hand-waving praise or embarrassed giggles.
For other communities it just might mean loud hand-waving praise and most certainly not quiet composure or predictable liturgical patterns and words. In either case, though, we know what we like, what feels like Sunday worship for us, what is right and proper, and that is what we want.
I have to sympathize with the synagogue leader. He has been entrusted with an important role in the community.
I’m sure he takes it seriously. I’ll bet he thinks about how to ensure a reverent and meaningful sabbath all week. How to help others learn more about their faith, give God thanks and praise, enter into the mystery of God.
Then what happens?
God shows up and in a really obvious way. Through Jesus a woman is healed and everyone is jumping up and down. They are so excited!
What is he going to do? It can’t be ignored, or hushed up.
The poor guy. He must have been really frustrated.
So much so that he didn’t even notice how bent over and stiff he had become. He can see exactly where he is standing and that is all he wants to see, all he needs to see, all he thinks anyone else should see. Augh!!!!!!
It really is pretty funny. And sad. And familiar.
Dancing?!
“It is so much easier to embrace religion than it is to encounter God.”
That is a quote from Paula D’Arcy’s book, A New Set of Eyes: Encountering the Hidden God.
“It is so much easier to embrace religion than it is to encounter God.”
And yet, isn’t that why we come to worship? To encounter God? Maybe?
Sabbath worship, Sunday worship, is not the only place we encounter God, of course. But it does serve as a good example of how we can become so attached to the familiar and customary we miss what is right in front of us.
The synagogue leader says, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, not on the sabbath day.” Okay, so what is sabbath for?
There are 2 basic reasons given in the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible for sabbath rest.
First it is tied to creation and holiness (Exodus 20). Creation was completed in six days of work and a final day of rest. We give thanks for our creation, remember we are created in God’s image, and acknowledge the holiness of God and the holiness we each bear by virtue of being made in God’s image by living according to the same pattern.
Six days of work. One day of rest.
The other reason links sabbath rest to the experience of being freed from bondage in Egypt. (Deuteronomy 5) To quote Dorothy Bass:
“Slaves cannot take a day off; free people can. When they stop work every seventh day, the people will remember that the Lord brought them out of slavery, and they will see to it that no on within their own dominion, not even animals, will work without respite. Sabbath rest is a recurring testimony against the drudgery of slavery.”
That is what Jesus refers to in his response to the indignant leader. She has been set free from bondage. That is what sabbath is about: receiving and giving thanks for the gifts of creation and liberation.
Jesus must have been feeling a little frustrated, too.
Christians add another layer to Sabbath. At first Jewish Christians kept Sabbath on Saturday and celebrated Easter each Sunday – the Lord’s Day. If Saturday was the Sabbath, the 7th day, Sunday had become the 8th day, the day Resurrection, of new creation.
As gentiles joined the church it was decided they were not required to keep the Jewish Sabbath, just the Lord’s Day.
Many of the very early leaders of the Christian church taught that, through Christ, the nature of Sabbath itself has been changed. Now, instead of a specific day kept separate and holy each week, the Sabbath is the eternal rest we always have in Christ.
We are receiving a kingdom that can not be shaken. In the new creation we stand before the throne of God. In that place all time is holy.
As the years went by and Christianity and Judaism separated, some Christians developed traditions that said the Christian Sunday was like the Jewish Sabbath. It was just moved over one day on the calendar.
Still, no matter which way you looked at it, the purpose was to continue to remember and thank God for our creation, our liberation, and our resurrection. And to remember God is God and we are not.
The planets and the stars move without our help.
The actual practices for observing Sabbath have, for both Jews and Christians varied with the circumstances.
Are we in Jerusalem, or Babylon? Is this the 1st century or the 21st century? Which particular tradition do we follow? Orthodox or Reformed, Jewish or Christian? Or…?
In each case the forms may change but the reasons for observing Sabbath remain the same. Thanksgiving for, and enjoyment of, the gifts of our loving, liberating, life-giving God.
Along the way, at every place and time, there were plenty of people who became more fixated on the form of the worship and the sabbath observance and completely miss the purpose. If you want to check out some rather fun examples simply google “puritans, sabbath breaking.”
For example: William Blagden, who lived in New Haven in 1647, was “brought up” for absence from meeting. He pleaded that he had fallen into the water late on Saturday, could light no fire on Sunday to dry his clothes, and so had lain in bed to keep warm while his only suit of garments was drying. In spite of this seemingly fair excuse, Blagden was found guilty of “sloathefuluess” and sentenced to be “publiquely whipped.” Of course the Quakers contributed liberally to the support of the Court, and were fined in great numbers for refusing to attend the church which they hated, and which also warmly abhorred them; and they were zealously set in the stocks, and whipped and caged and pilloried as well,–whipped if they came and expressed any dissatisfaction, and whipped if they stayed away. (Reformed Reader)
Not much release of the captive going on in New England at that time. Although it sounds like there were quite a few sinners finding themselves in the hands of some sort of an angry god. Small ‘g’.
Of course, we say, but that was long ago and we aren’t like those people but on the same web page I found this:
In Belfast, Maine, in 1776, a meeting was held to get the “Towns Mind” with regard to a plan to restrain visiting on the Sabbath. The time had passed when such offences could be punished either by fine or imprisonment, so it was voted “that if any person makes unnecessary Vizits on the Sabeth, They shall be Look’t on with Contempt.
Looked on with contempt. Ooo. That sounds familiar and current and sad.
“It is so much easier to embrace religion than it is to encounter God.”
It so much easier to hold others in contempt than to open ourselves to an encounter with God. Why? I don’t know, but it is.
Well, I do know kind-of why.
To be prepared, willing even, to encounter God we to give up our pride, our sense of knowing what is best for everyone, knowing we are right and by extension others are wrong. That is hard.
Maybe that is why observing Sabbath time, however you happen to need to observe it, is so important.
So is the familiar bad? Of course not! Can you imagine what it would be like if every time you got in your car you had to negotiate a whole new and unfamiliar set of traffic regulations? No one would want to go anywhere.
Customary and good-decent-order is good. The security of what we know can still worries of ‘not getting it right’ while bringing us back to the center where we have encountered God before. Just the memory of those times can be enough most days.
Encountering God, is unpredictable, noisy, silent, measured, shattering.
A consuming fire of continuing creation that is totally out of our control.
What is asked of us is that we put aside pride in what we have learned and made a part of our self-image and instead be like a little child.
Sabbath time helps us open the eyes of the heart. It helps us become quiet enough to hear and see each other as the unique images of God we are, to let go of our pride and our oh so protective contempt so we can hear Christ saying to us,
“You are free. Stand up. Stand up straight and praise God.”
And maybe even, “Want to dance?”
References:
*Paula D’Arcy, A New Set of Eyes: Encountering the Hidden God (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2002, p. 15).
*Dorothy Bass, Christian Century, January 1-8, 1997, pp. 12-16. Also https://www.religion-online.
*Reformed Reader https://www.reformedreader.
