Pastor's CornerDr. George A. Purnell
September 5, 2010
“A Day Like Any Other”
Luke 13: 10-17
I will never forget my first trip to Israel. We actually began in Jordan, and spent the first three days traveling across the desert into Israel; the way Moses and the Hebrew people had come nearly fifteen centuries before the birth of Jesus. We looked from atop Mount Nebo – where Moses died and was buried – across the Jordan River into Israel. We could see Jericho and the fruit trees and vegetation in and around the city, which is fed by underground springs. The Jericho Valley looked like a paradise…
We showed our passports to the border guards, crossed over into Israel, and traveled up the Jericho Road through that city and on into Jerusalem, arriving about 5:30 on a Friday afternoon. We had an hour to freshen up in our rooms before supper and a lecture introducing us to the customs of Israel.
As I was getting ready in my room, I discovered that I had left my toiletries in my hotel room in Jordan. So I went down to the lobby of the Jerusalem Hilton, where I was staying, to buy replacements. On my way down, all the floor buttons had been pushed, and since I was on the fourteenth floor it took awhile to get down to the lobby. (I figured a child had pushed all the elevator buttons as a prank.) When I finally got to the lobby, all the shops were closed, which I attributed to the fact that it was almost 6 PM.
I went to the front desk and asked the clerk where I could buy some toothpaste, a tooth brush, and some shaving supplies. He looked at me as if this was a very peculiar request and then said, “it is the Shabbat, sir, you will find nothing open…”
I didn’t take his word for it. I decided I could find a convenience store or something open within walking distance. After all, I was in the heart of a large city. So, I set out on foot to look for myself. After walking several blocks I gave up. Everything was closed.
At the lecture that evening I learned some things. I learned that Shabbat means to rest or to stop. I learned that custom listed countless activities prohibited on the Sabbath, many of which we would find silly. Clapping hands and lighting a fire were prohibited, I remember. And, I learned that the elevator buttons were all punched when we arrived because punching the button to direct the elevator where to stop was viewed as work prohibited on the Sabbath. I learned that the shops in the city would be closed until sundown on Saturday.
That night, as Diane and I sat on the balcony of our hotel looking out from the fourteenth floor, the city was dark and quiet.
After sundown on Saturday, however, things changed! The hotel shops and restaurants were open, the elevators did not stop at every floor, people were dancing in the lounge on the main floor, and downtown was alive.
Today’s gospel lesson from Luke is a critique of the Sabbath work prohibitions. How to keep the Sabbath holy was one of the most discussed religious and spiritual issues in Jesus’ day. Many people looked at how well someone kept the Sabbath as the single best indicator for how well the person observed all the law. The Sabbath was a day set aside for rest and worship, and work was not allowed. But what exactly was work? Then as now, there was ongoing debate and interpretation about scripture between clerics and people in the pews.
So, the question about the Sabbath put to Jesus here is not spurious, nor is this the only place in the gospels that questions about Sabbath observance are put to him. The question was important, because the fourth commandmentwas very specific:
“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20: 8-11)
And the Ten Commandments were at the heart of the Hebrew faith.
In our story today Jesus is in the synagogue teaching on the Sabbath. As he taught, his eyes fell on “a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.” Jesus called her over, told her that she was “set free” from her ailment, “laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
I can only imagine how this woman must have felt at that moment. She had been unable to stand up erect for almost two decades, suffering most likely from what we know to be either osteoporosis or a form of rheumatoid arthritis.
While the woman was rejoicing, the leader of the synagogue was not happy with what was happening. In healing this woman, Jesus had upstaged the worship service. The leader of the synagogue “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.’”
Over time, the Pharisees had compiled a number of laws about Sabbath observance. These rules required that any work that could be postponed must wait until after the Sabbath was over. If there was a health emergency, attention was appropriate on the Sabbath. But someone with a chronic condition would not receive treatment on the Sabbath, since help could have been sought the day before, or could wait until the day after. (In this case, the woman had been suffering for 18 years from this condition.)
Jesus did not react mildly to the leader of the synagogue’s objection. Luke records Jesus as saying: “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?” If it is okay for you to water and feed your animals on the Sabbath, Jesus is saying, surely it is permissible to show mercy to this woman on the Sabbath.
“When he said this,” Luke writes, “all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.”
It is easy for us to ridicule rigid adherence to religious practice regarding the Sabbath. The elevator stopping at every floor because punching the elevator button designating floor selection would be viewed as work. Please! Letting your livestock go and be watered and fed, but not allowing a woman to be healed on the Sabbath. Ridiculous!
But when we summarily dismiss adherence to tradition and law, I think we lose much in translation. Whether it is the Jewish Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday – or the first day of the week, which we Christians designate as holy – a day of rest is an essential symbol of faith. Sabbath is a time set apart to remind us that God has already done for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Increasingly influenced by secular culture, the church has lost any real sense of Sabbath. By making Sunday like any other day, we ignore the Fourth Commandment.
It was never Jesus’ intention for us to ignore the legal requirements of Jewish faith. To the contrary, Jesus was a faithful Jewish man who understood himself within the law and traditions of Judaism. In his most influential teaching –The Sermon on the Mount – Jesus taught us about the importance of law:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
The conflicts Jesus had with religious leaders in his day had to do with interpretation of the law, not with the sanctity of the law. The leader of the synagogue in today’s story found Jesus too liberal in the way he interpreted law. There was no reason this woman could not have waited one more day to be healed in the mind of the synagogue leader. Jesus felt that she should be set free from her suffering immediately.
Leaders in first century Judaism found Jesus too liberal in other ways:
- he violated table customs by eating with known sinners
- he associated with Gentiles
- he ignored cleanliness codes by touching the sick
- he openly spoke with women to whom he was unrelated (including
"foreign’ women and women with questionable reputations)
Accusations about being too liberal or too literal, too lax or too fundamentalist are tossed about in the name of Jesus, each side believing that they are in the corner of truth.
Meanwhile, lost in the shuffle is the fact that one of the sacred truths of our faith has been abandoned in virtually every Christian camp, conservative and liberal. We have convinced ourselves that the Fourth Commandment is out of date, because the pace of today’s world is too furious to take a full day off. Since things change in an instant, we submit, we must be accessible and plugged in – by cell phone or Blackberry or laptop – so we can receive and send messages, even when “off duty”. We also argue that our children must be available for competitions on Sundays, because it is the way of the world today. And finally, since Sunday is the only day we have to attend to the things left undone the rest of the week, such as laundry and shopping and yard care, these things must be done.
Our list could go on, because our reasons are many and growing. Maybe in Moses’ day it was possible to take a day off to chill. Maybe in the nineteenth century, or in the 1950’s, or even in the 1980’s a day off could be worked in…but this is just not possible in 2010.
But of course, we can take a day off. We hide from God and from ourselves when we ignore the Sabbath. We deny the instinct God placed in us when we ignore the Sabbath. We become impoverished in many ways when we refuse to rest…
Ignoring human suffering in the name of compliance with law is absurd. But to ignore our need to take time to seek to know God more fully in the name of our self-imposed schedule is equally absurd.
As we prepare to leave this sanctuary place, let us ponder the words of Saint Augustine: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee.” Amen.
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