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| "L'Oiseau bleu Forest_03" by ajari, on Flickr |
Isaiah 58:9b-14
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;
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.
Luke 13:10-17
Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
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"Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight" (Luke 13:10-11).
In pondering today’s gospel reading about the woman bent-over by a crippling spirit, I was reminded of the poem, “Troubled Woman” by Langston Hughes:
She stands
In the quiet darkness,
This troubled woman
Bowed by
Weariness and pain
Like an
Autumn flower
In the frozen rain,
Like a
Wind-blown autumn flower
That never lifts its head
Like the troubled woman in Langston Hughes’ poem, the hunched woman in today’s gospel hovers in the dark shadows of the synagogue, bowed down not only physically, but mentally and emotionally, weighed down by weariness and pain, eighteen years frozen in time, unable to lift her head.
Eighteen years. Eighteen years held captive to a spirit of brokenness. Eighteen years held in bondage to the pain of warped bones. Eighteen years held prisoner to a body hunched by gravity and the weight of unfulfilled dreams. Eighteen years chained to dependence on others. Eighteen years trapped beneath the back-breaking weight of the world.
In this bent-over woman in the synagogue, we see all bent-over women.
We see the Syrian mother in a refugee camp bending over to cover her sleeping children with a blanket. We see the woman with Parkinson’s bending over the walker she clutches in her hands. We see the teenage girl whose shoulders slump over as she tries to make herself invisible from the gaze of bullies. We see migrant workers in the fields who pick produce with infants bound to their backs. We see women crippled by spirits of fear after experiences of abuse and exploitation. We see young women shrink under the pressure to fit a certain standard of beauty. We see women throughout the years hunched over by the back-breaking work of enduring mistreatment for their race, their gender, their “unladylike” ambitions or hopes or dreams.
The bent-over woman in today’s gospel, carrying on her back the weight of all who are bent over, comes to the synagogue on the sabbath day, hoping to find there, in some measure, a word of sabbath rest and release for her soul.
Jesus sees the bent-over woman from across the room, and calls her over, and places his hand on her, and she is miraculously raised up. The leaders are indignant because, “C’mon, Jesus, there are six days each week to do the work of healing. Can't you give it a rest one day a week? Don't you know that sabbath is for rest?”
Ah, but sabbath is not for mere rest, Jesus tells them. It is for something greater. Sabbath is for liberation.
“Do you not untie your oxen and give water to your donkey on the sabbath? So sabbath is not just for rest, but for untying and unburdening.”
Notice that Jesus does not say to the woman, "Woman, you are healed." He says to her, "Woman, you are set free.” Because he does not just heal her back. He releases her from bondage to a crippling spirit, he releases her from bondage to pain and shame and marginalization. He doesn’t just make her body feel better, he gives freedom to her soul.
The connection between sabbath and liberation runs deep, and it is the shame of the religious leaders to have forgotten that connection.
Sabbath has its origins in two places in the Bible: 1) Genesis, where God rests from all his work on the seventh day of creation; and 2) Exodus, where God gives the Sabbath commandment to the people as not just a commandment to rest, but a promise of rest for all people and all creation.
In our busy culture, we often hear the word "sabbath" invoked as a holy blessing given to rest and relaxation. We hear "sabbath" as an invitation to drink some tea and do the Sunday crossword, or to head to the beach for a day with our family; a day to pursue our hobbies or passions or interests, to take what we need from life, to turn inward. Certainly, sabbath is about rest and renewal. But sabbath is not merely about rest and renewal, at least not in a personal or private sense.
In Isaiah, God says that what violates the sabbath is not the question of work versus rest. What tramples the sabbath is the inward curve, the pursuit of self-interest, the human inclination to use rest and leisure as a shield from the needs of the world. God makes it clear that sabbath is not meant to be a self-centered exercise.
According to Old Testament law, the command to keep the sabbath (and the benefit of keeping sabbath) applies to everyone and everything. Masters and slaves, animals and land - everything gets a rest on the sabbath. This is a far bigger reality than just getting a day off. It is an economic and social statement about the dignity of all created things. Rest is not just for the privileged. Sabbath is not just for the self-interests of those who can afford it. Sabbath guarantees that on one day a week, no one is coerced or forced to work, that everyone gets space to rest and recover and worship - even plants and animals are given a break.
The law expands the concept of sabbath by then establishing a sabbath year every seven years, in which the land is to lie fallow and rest and recover for future plantings. In this year, not only does the land rest, but also those who work the land. In this year, all fruits that grow of their own accord are considered "ownerless" and can be picked and eaten by anyone. In this year, people and land alike are liberated from work for the sake of rest and restoration.
And if it weren’t enough to have a sabbath day and a sabbath year, the law also then establishes an extra-special sabbath year at the end of seven cycles of sabbath years. Every 49 years, there was to be a year deemed the "Sabbath's Sabbath," or the "Jubilee" year. In this year, not only is it commanded that fields lie at rest, as in ordinary sabbath years, but in this year all land is redistributed and returned to its original owners; slaves and prisoners are set free to return home to their families; and all debts are forgiven. It is a great leveling. It is a year of liberation and rest for all people and all creation.
Sabbath days, sabbath years, and jubilee years make it clear that the concept of sabbath is far greater than merely taking a rest day. Sabbath evokes values of interconnectedness, justice, equality, dignity, economic compassion, and above all, the value of liberation. Sabbath is meant to speak a word of freedom to all God's created order. It is a demonstration of bondage being loosed and oppression being lifted, whether for a day or a year or a lifetime.
This is why Jesus healing the bent-over woman on the sabbath is such a big deal. Because he recovers the true meaning of sabbath as liberation. Sabbath as rest not just for the religious leaders or for those with enough privilege and security to walk upright to the synagogue; but liberating rest also for the bent-over woman, for those begging outside in the courtyard, for the ailing and the lonely and the disenfranchised and the forgotten.
"Woman, you are set free!" Jesus proclaims to the bent-over woman. Jesus, who is proclaimed by John the Baptist as the one by whose coming “the crooked shall be made straight.” Jesus, who at the beginning of his ministry, declares that he has come "to proclaim release to the captives" and "to let the oppressed go free" and "to proclaim the [jubilee] year of the Lord's favor."
Jesus comes to bring sabbath freedom to the earth. And he calls all who follow him into this way of speaking freedom into the world.
Jesus remind us that God intends holy and liberating rest for all creation, and so our calling as people of faith is to loosen all the bonds of captivity that we see around us, even as Christ himself has loosed us from the bonds of sin and death and promised us everlasting rest with him.
We are called to speak freedom into the world, to lift one another's burdens, to raise up those who slump under the griefs of this world. We are called to forgive one another, thereby loosing the chains of hatred and revenge. We are called to love one another, thereby destroying our prisons of fear and mistrust and cynicism. We are called to care for our earth, thereby freeing creation from captivity to human exploitation and domination. We are called to share all of God's blessings, thereby freeing ourselves from bondage to materialism and greed and freeing one another from bondage to poverty, hunger, and lack of opportunity. We are called to see ourselves as intimately joined to God, to one another, and to creation, thereby freeing us from prisons of self-interest and selfish individualism.
The sabbath freedom that Christ offers us is the freedom to hope for the world as God intends it to be; the freedom to step confidently and graciously into the future; the freedom to give up ourselves, and in doing so, to gain back our souls. Sabbath is our space to imagine an open-ended future, full of possibility, full of good things for all people, full of flourishing.
So what word of freedom is God calling you to proclaim to the world? How is Christ using you to lift up those who are bowed down and to raise up those who have fallen? How is faith calling us not only to bear one another’s burdens but also to lift them?
For Jesus reaches out to each one of us, whatever holds us captive, whatever weighs us down, and he places his hands on us, and raises us up, and he offers us not just healing, but the freedom of sabbath rest. May we go forth to offer that same holy, liberating rest to all creation.
God bless you as you speak freedom into the world. God bless you as you speak justice and equality to all who need holy rest. God bless you as not only receive sabbath, but create sabbath in this world.
Amen.
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