Foothill Congregational Church The Rev. W. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ Summer Services

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022 August 26, 2007

OUT OF THE SHADOW

Psalm 103:1-8; Luke 13:10-17

I have a confession to make. I didn’t go to church on my vacation. The first Sunday I went for my grandson’s baptism, but the next three Sunday’s I didn’t go anywhere. Going to church, sometimes, feels like work, and since some people think I only work one day a week anyway, it didn’t feel like a vacation. Though I did not find a sanctuary for worship, I did find Sabbath.

Sabbath, or the Hebrew - Shabbat, or the Babylonian – sabbatu, literally means “a day of quieting the heart.” Barbara was away on the weekends tending to the conference camping program. So, on Sundays, I got up, read scripture, spent time in meditation, and then went out for a long walk with my dog. This was my Sabbath practice.

Today’s gospel story is about finding Sabbath, and we are lead on the pathway to Sabbath-practice by the story of the bent-over woman. This scene comes out of a world that still remembered that days were different. Each day had its own meaning.

It wasn’t so long ago, really, that the week was ordered by certain tasks (for women, at least). Each day was distinct. Monday was laundry day. Tuesday was ironing day. Wednesday was market day. Thursday was baking day. Friday the bills were paid, and Saturday there was mending and cleaning up, and the weekly evening baths. Sunday was a day of rest to honor the Lord.

With the advent of the industrial revolution that took men away from home to do repetitive jobs in factories. Generally income levels were raised and, in consequence, labor saving devices were developed, which led to a blurring of the carefully ordered days. Now you can do laundry any day, and buy cheap bread in a bag.

In an ordered world both Christians and Jews observed a day of rest. Each day of the week had its place and rest was just as important as mending or washing, or paying bills. When the days became disordered, so did the Day of Rest. Now, Sunday, is just another day, and church is another optional activity, just one of many choices. So where is Sabbath and how can we find it?

In Jesus’ day the Sabbath was not only honored it was commanded. You were not to work on the Sabbath. Laws were passed to proscribe what activities were acceptable and what was not. They were not all negative, however. It is wrong to think of the Sabbath as a day of “Thou shalt nots.” In fact, the commandment to “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy” is one of the positive commandments. Richard Swanson (Provoking the Gospel of Luke) comments the Jewish tradition is far from grim. “It is, for instance, a mitzvah (a commandment, but not on the level of the Ten Commandments) that husbands and wives who love each other ought to make love on the Sabbath. It is a good thing, a gift from God.”

Sabbath day was important because it marked the day God rested from the work of creating the world, and so should you. But, there is another reason, equally important. Only slaves worked on the Sabbath, a free person could enjoy their leisure. Sabbath observance was a statement that Jews were free – even if enslaved by Egypt, Babylon, or Rome. In God’s eye they were a free people. They could rest.

Why did slaves in America take to Christian worship, the religion of their oppressors? Because, even though the slave-owner’s preacher was telling them of their duty to their owner, the good news could not be hidden. Gospel truth leaked out. We are all made in the image of God, and in Christ we are all one – slave and free, Jew and Gentile, men and women.

Sabbath practice is subversive. This is the prophetic element of worship. The people of God are commanded to remember the Sabbath, to sanctify it, and be sanctified by it. Worship for American slave became an act of resistance, as it was for Jewish exiles in Babylon, for base communities of El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the confessing church in Germany.

On my first trip to Russia in 1990, the Russian Orthodox churches were just being allowed to open again after 70 years. In one little town, far, far away from Moscow a church was being reconsecrated. The iconostasis was being rebuilt with beautiful, priceless icons. We asked the local priest where they got the icons? He told us that when the churches were closed, 70 years earlier, the farmers hid the icons in their root cellars and were now bringing them back to the church. This is just one example of how difficult it is to destroy faith and people’s deep need to find Sabbath.

Luke tells us that on this Sabbath day a woman, bent over and unable to stand up, came to the Synagogue where Jesus was teaching, as was his practice. She was an observant Jewish woman who came regularly to Shabbat services. It should be noted that she didn’t actually come into the sanctuary, this was reserved for men. She, most likely, stood with the women in the courtyard outside.

The story tells us that she was crippled for eighteen years. And later in the text the reason is given that she was “bound by Satan.” Biblical Scholar Sharon Ringe translates the word “bound,” as “a spirit of weakness.” Ringe says, “Her weakness itself is regarded as the power that holds her captive to restricted movement, to the inability to meet another person face to face, and to a world defined by the piece of ground around her own toes, or looked at always on a slant.” This was a woman who lived in her own shadow.

The fact that Jesus heals her is not the issue in this text (though it is interesting to note that she never asks to be healed), the healing is simply an act of compassionate grace, done in the moment.

The issue is over when he did it, and whether it was appropriate to heal on the Sabbath day. The leader of the synagogue says, “Couldn’t you have waited until sundown? There are six days of the week to do work, this is the Sabbath.” The question was one of timing. The leader of the synagogue asks, “Why now?” Jesus responds, “Why not now?”

Jesus message, his challenge to the synagogue leader, and his challenge to us today, is not only to keep Sabbath, but also to find the substantive, core meaning of Sabbath, and live it out today. As an observant Jew, Jesus makes a prophetic claim for Sabbath worship. Richard Swanson describes the traditional Sabbath meanings: “Sabbath is not just a day of rest. It is a day of promise… Sabbath provides a foretaste of the culmination of all things, a glimpse of God’s dominion, a little slice of the messianic age dropped in the middle of regular time. Sabbath offers a remembrance of God’s promise of peace and freedom for all creation… Sabbath is a symbol of the resistance of God’s people offered to tyrants of every sort and time…. Sabbath is a day that lifts peoples eyes to God’s promise in the midst of the most unpromising circumstances” (Swanson: Provoking the Gospel of Luke).

Certainly, this is the day for this poor woman to be unbound - this day that the Lord has made - to lift her eyes out of her own shadow into the world of light and love. The point is not “whether” but “how” to keep Sabbath.

The issue, for us, is how do we, appropriately, observe Sabbath? Often we worry over little things, such as the behavior of children in the sanctuary, or people speaking up in the service, or the disturbance of a mentally challenged person. Is the music right? Is the minister on his/her game that day?

Lutheran pastor, Thomas G. Long tells of a church where the confirmation class, a group of about a dozen fourteen-year-olds, had come to that great day when they would stand before the church, profess their faith, and be received into full membership of the congregation. In good Lutheran tradition the young people had spent two years in preparation, studying the catechism and memorizing the correct answers to the questions.

The parents lined the pews and waited proudly as the pastor moved down the line of young teenagers, asking each a question. Each question and answer was based on Romans, chapter 8. What has set you free from the law of sin and death? asked the pastor. A handsome blonde boy still growing into his oversized feet answered, The law of the Spirit of Life has set me free from the law of sin and death. Next a short and serious young woman, with a buzz cut and multiple piercings stepped forward. How does God support our prayers? the pastor asked. The Spirit prays for us with sighs too deep for human words, she answered, just above a mumble.

And so it went on down the line, but as they neared the end the congregation started twitching nervously in their seats. Some cleared their throats and looked anxiously at each other. At the end of the line waited Janice, a girl whose distinctive features signaled that she was a Downs Syndrome child. Janice’s mental challenges were severe. She had little sense of social appropriateness, and even now she was making faces at people in the pews and had to be guided repeatedly by the confirmation leaders back to her place in line. It was a little embarrassing to have her up there, so visible. Could she really understand what was going on? Usually she was seated with her family in the back, where her behaviors were not so distracting. How could she participate meaningfully in this ritual? Would she spoil it for the rest?

Finally, it was her turn. The pastor touched her arm, getting her attention. Janice grinned at him and clapped. What can separate you from the love of Christ? asked the pastor. Janice looked him straight in the eye and announced, Nothing!

I don’t think it takes Janice long to find Sabbath, do you? I think she gets to the core meaning, the joy of the day, quickly, while the rest of us have to work hard to become unbound from all that binds us down to live in our own shadow. Pray, today, that Jesus will bless you, and lift you – as if on eagles wings – to rest your eyes on the gift of creation, and your soul in the love of God, from which nothing can separate us.