Pentecost 14

Pentecost 14 (Luke 13:10-17) “You are set free from you ailment.”

Jesus set people free.

The people in Jesus’ day were no different from the people of our day. They were oppressed by many fears. They suffered from illness, depression, conflicts and the knowledge that the only certainties in life are death and taxes.

Many in Israel cried out to God for help. Sadly, most people most of the time were looking for God in all the wrong places. They were looking for God in generals and kings. They were looking for God in the whirlwind and the lightning. They were convinced that God demanded rigid inflexible and uncompromising submission to laws that governed every detail of every aspect of life.

God indeed answered their cry for help. God sent Jesus to deliver the people from sin and sadness from fear and death. Jesus is God’s answer to the problems confronting our species and defining our species. Sadly, people rejected the solution God offered. They wanted the power and the glory not the personal holiness and the path of compassion.

Luke tells the account of Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath Day in the synagogue.The story starts well.  The people are where God invites them to be at the time and place God Himself designed into the Creation. The story gets complicated when Jesus sees a woman who was bent over and unable to stand.

Jesus heals the woman. The woman rejoices and gives glory to God. The religious leader protests the healing on the grounds that healing is work and work is prohibited on the Sabbath. Of course, for Jesus, healing is not work. It is not labor. It is the natural state of divine grace.

Moses never taught: don’t help people on the Sabbath Day. Moses delivered the very simple and direct command that God Himself wrote on stone. Keep the Sabbath Day Holy.

A fundamental Biblical principle is that holiness is wholeness. We are less of who God created to be when we depart from the path of Holiness and enter into the distortions of separation, self-will, pride and the will to power. We are most of who God has created us to be as we enter into the Real Presence of God.

Jesus is the Real Presence of God. The Sabbath Day is the Day of Real Presence. Tragically, the religious people lived and moved and formed their being in the categories of rules and regulations. In order to be sure they were righteous within these categories they developed a complicated and detailed set of laws that sought to govern every aspect of life.

They built in loop holes for themselves to pursue their economic interests. So, they defined healing as work but pulling a valuable farm animal out of a pit as not work. The principle underlying the distinction is that money trumps religion.

They blamed other people for any failure to obey their laws and their laws and interpretation of their laws. So, they condemn Jesus for healing a crippled woman instead of recognizing the Real Presence of God in their midst on the Day of Real Presence.

The religious people were so close and yet so far. After centuries of resistance and rebellion they had finally accepted the Sabbath Day. That was an amazing step forward. At the same time, they had rebranded the Sabbath Day from a blessing to a burden. And, they had designed loopholes so they could do what they wanted to do on the Sabbath and still get credit for being righteous.

The Sabbath is not about credits or debits. It is about blessing. The blessing of the Sabbath is the Real Presence of God on the day of real Presence. Jesus is the real presence of God. Our Heavenly Father designed the Sabbath to facilitate the relationship He offers us in the Son. Jesus is the reason for the Sabbath. Jesus is the relationship God offers us on the Sabbath.In God there is only wholeness and healing and liberation. Jesus fulfills the very essence of the Sabbath when he restores the woman to health. Jesus describes this healing in terms of liberation.

From his perspective, the woman is in bondage to her disease and defined by her disease. She is “the cripple”. She is the woman bent over and unable to stand straight for 18 years.Jesus sees the woman as a unique person. She bears His image and likeness in a way no one else can. Jesus heals her in order to set her free to be who the Father created her to be.The Sabbath Day healing reveals the essential meaning of the Sabbath. God the Father set apart one day in seven by the power of God the Holy Spirit to invite people into a personal transforming and life giving relationship with God the Son.

The Sabbath Day of Real Presence is the reset day for us to enter into the original blessing  of wholeness, health and happiness. Jesus healed the woman that day and in that place because that was when and where she met him. The Holy Spirit has used that event to remind us that the principle of the Sabbath is not in the details of rules and regulations people make to define the Sabbath. The principle of the Sabbath is the gift of wholeness God the Father offers us in God the Son.

The world defines people in dualistic categories of right and wrong, sinner and virtuous, righteous and unrighteous, givers and takers. On the Sabbath Day, Jesus liberates us from these dualistic definitions to be who the Father created us to  be: the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved Son of God. That is who we are. And, that is who Jesus sets us free to be.