Refrain from Trampling the Sabbath - August 26, 2007

Luke 13: 10-17 and Isaiah 58: 9b-14

There‘s nothing like the good old days, is there?  Do you remember the good old days?  Now, my good old days and your good old days might be a little different from each other, but one thing’s for sure—the good old days aren’t coming back, are they?

On the thing about the good old days that I remember growing up is that the stores used to be closed on Sunday.  Remember that?   Sunday was not a day for shopping—Sunday was for church in the morning, then dinner around the family table, then we’d all pile into the car and head out to grandma’s house, where all our cousins and aunts and uncles would be, and we kids would play out in the apple orchard, or walk down the road to where there was a pond.  In the evening we would have some light supper at grandma’s house, the we girl cousins would do the dishes, the one by one the families would leave for home.

But the good old days can only be the good old days because they don’t exist anymore.  Sunday is now much more like any ordinary day.  Many of you don’t have to report to your paying jobs in Sunday, but there is still plenty that has to get done, isn’t there?

I remember the first time I ever got a request for one of my kids to report to school for a function on a Sunday.  It was a pancake breakfast, and the junior high band was to play as entertainment. I wrote a letter to the band director explaining why the child in question would not be able to attend the Sunday morning function—that I was a pastor of a church, and that our Sunday mornings were already spoken for.

To his credit the band director phoned me after getting the note, and explained that the Sunday morning scheduling of the event was not intended to make any child choose between religious practice and the school---that in fact the overwhelming number of students in the band were of a tradition that attended worship services on Saturday night. He’d never had a parent that upset at the Sunday morning schedule for religious reasons, but that it did often interfere with soccer practice.  He apologized and said that of course the child in question would be excused.  For a brief moment, I found myself longing for the good old days.

You might think that a pastor would be the last person who should preach about observing the Sabbath, something at which we are notoriously bad.  If you ask any preacher when they take their Sabbath, most will say something like, “I know I should take one—in fact I know that I would benefit and my congregation would too—but it’s hard to find the time.”   It may be that this is another in a line of things about which I will preach when I might just as well go ahead and preface the sermon with “Do as I say, not as I do.”  But maybe there’s a theology of hope and of transformation in that statement.  Maybe the Church should not wait for her pastors to be accomplished in a thing without trying it on for size herself.

Jesus found himself, once again, in a position to do something that would be counter intuitive to those watching.  Teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, he found himself observing a women bent over.  The text tells us that she had been bent over for eighteen years.  Eighteen years spent looking at the ground, eighteen years unable to take care of her own basic needs, and—I think it bears repeating—eighteen years as a societal outcast.  Eighteen years ago I was a young mother with a toddler.  To think that I would miss out on my son’s growing up years, and miss out on having my daughter altogether is unbearable.  That’s how long this woman had been trapped in her own body.  What would you have missed out on in the last eighteen years of your life?

But with the laying on of his hands Jesus set this woman free—she was in an instant free to stand up, free to look others in the eye, free to join society once again.  It was a miraculous thing!  She once was trapped and now she’s free!

There was just one problem.  It was the Sabbath, and one the Sabbath, no miracles could be performed.  No healing, no setting free, no release from bondage, no exorcism of demons, because to those watching and keeping score, miracles were work, and work specifically was prohibited on the Sabbath.

Surely the leader of the synagogue might have been thinking of the passage in Isaiah in which a proper observance of the Sabbath is held up as the way to access the fruits of righteousness. In Isaiah’s world, the Sabbath had a very particular meaning—the Sabbath was a time set apart for worship, and by worship, it was meant a refrain from thinking of one’s own needs for a day—a time spent apart in worship of God.  That is a powerful tradition, one still observed by Jews all over the world.  Orthodox Jews in particular observe the day by not performing any work—no cooking, no cleaning, no driving.  Everything that a family might need on Saturday must be taken care of on Friday—before sundown, the official beginning of Shabbat.  That way there is no time spent on personal needs or wants on the Sabbath.  It is a time of holy observance, of reflection, and of spending time with God.

I have to admit, when I think of a day spent on nothing but worship and reflection—a holy day observance—I get a little twitchy.   Sure, God did that, after creating the world, as it is recounted in Genesis 1—but God didn’t have laundry to do, either, or bills to pay, or dry cleaning to pick up.  And as for modern day Jews, if one’s own culture expected that a family would take an entire day to think about God, then I suppose it would be a whole lot easier to make it happen.  But what about us—21st century Christians in a world where Christendom is a thing of the past, where commerce—the chase for the almighty buck—doesn’t stop, even for a Sabbath?   And just what about the example of Jesus, who was famous for doing some of his best work on the traditional Sabbath—what are we to make of that?

I think the leader of the synagogue has made a fundamental error in understanding what has happened here—in observing Jesus healing the woman, setting her free on the Sabbath, he has assumed that what Jesus has done is an act of work, not an act of faithfulness.  For Jesus, healing the woman surely was not work—it was what he was born to do.  It was more about who he was.  It was not doing, it was being.

What if in our own way of recognizing Sabbath, we focus less on doing and more on being.  What if we began to think of the very way in which we lived out lives as worshipful and reflective of our relationship with God.  What if the gospel was not something the church enacted every Sunday for an hour or so, but instead was the way that disciples lived every day of their lives?  What message would that send to the world?

Still…there has to be some time set apart for what I call refilling the spiritual tank.  In the midst of this transformed living, this being a disciple instead of doing Christianity, there still has to be a time set apart for concentrated reflection and maintenance of the relationship with the Holy.  To live our lives in any other way must be what the author of Isaiah spoke of when he admonished God’s people to “refrain from trampling the Sabbath”.  Trampling the Sabbath to me sounds like living constantly on the merry-go-round of modern life, never taking a spiritual breather now and then.

How do we do this within the constraints of our lives?  It might be as simple as taking a few moments each day to think about God, and to appreciate God’s faithfulness in our lives—to imagine ourselves as irresistible to God, the object of God’s passionate love for us.

I want you to try something with me this morning.  Find a comfortable way to sit in your pew.  Put your bulletin aside—you don’t need it right now. Close your eyes if you are willing to do so.  Closing your eyes is helpful for shutting out every thing but your thoughts and prayers.  It feels a little vulnerable at first, but our point here is to make ourselves vulnerable to God’s love.

  • After you are comfortable, concentrate on your breathing.
  • If you can, breathe in for a count of five, and then out for a count of five.  If five is too long try a slow count of three.
  • Once you have done this several times, and the rhythm is natural to you, so natural that you hardly have to think about it, I want you to think of God.
  • Picture God however God is familiar to you—the image itself is not important, only your willingness to imagine this.
  • Think about the things that distract you as stones at your feet.  Put words on them if you want to—name them after people you are worried about, or stresses you have at work or home.  They don’t all have to be negative—even joyful things can be a distraction.
  • Look at the stones and think about how heavy each one is.  Are they round or square?  Are some larger than others?  The stones are not bad—they are part of who you are, but they distract you from your relationship with God.  They keep you bent over.
  • One by one, pick up each stone in your imagination, and hand it to God.  God has arms outstretched to carry them, and no stone is too heavy for the Creator.
  • As you hand the stones to God, tell God briefly what the stone represents to you.  Just a word to two is enough.
  • After you have cleared the stones away, if you look at God you will notice that God has put them down as well, putting them out of the way so that they cannot distract you.
  • God’s arms are wide open, and empty.  If you are willing, let those arms wrap around you, and feel supported by them.  Let yourself sink into them, knowing that you don’t have to support the full weight of yourself plus your stones all the time.   Know that hose are the arms you can always return to, all the time, as often as you need to, for as long as you need to.  Know that that feeling is Sabbath.
  • Hear these words, from the prophet:

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.

The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. 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; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; 58:14 then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Thanks be to God!