Luke 13:10-17
Our scripture this morning is on a subject that is very near and dear to my heart…Sabbath. We’ve kind of forgotten what Sabbath is, haven’t we? Lou Gherig, the great baseball player was once arrested and jailed because he played baseball on a Sunday. Blue laws still dominate some of our headlines as certain cities are allowing the sale of wine and beer in restaurants, but only if you bring it in yourself. Well that’s not really Sabbath, is it?
When I traveled over to Israel my senior year of high school. I once accidentally wandered into their Sabbath elevator. You see, in Israel, there are two elevators in hotels. Six days of the week, both operate as normal elevators. But on Saturday, on the Sabbath, one elevator turns into the Sabbath elevator. Where it stops and opens its doors on every floor. It does that from sunup to sundown, just goes up and down all day, because pushing a button on an elevator is considered “work.” Well when your hotel room is on the 15th floor, and you can’t figure out why the doors keep opening and closing on each floor, it can be quite confusing, and take you a long time to get to your room.
In our story today, Jesus cures a woman on the Sabbath. She had been bent over, looking only at the ground for 18 long years, and he cures her. He does what is considered work, and the leader of the synagogue gets mad about it.
Now, Jesus of course makes a strong defense about how we must let people loose so that they can attain life, especially on the Sabbath as it is a celebration of their creation. But I noticed something about this text that I have never noticed before.
The leader of the synagogue does NOT get mad at Jesus. We always talk about how the authorities get mad at Jesus because he cured on the Sabbath, but that is not what happens here in this passage. Take a look at the second half of verse 14. He says, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”
He yells at the crowd for coming to be healed.
So after I noticed that, I began to read the situation a little more carefully, and the woman who has been healed never asks to be healed. She is afflicted and bent over. Jesus saw her, called her over, and embraced her as his sister and healed her.
She didn’t come to be healed, she came as was her good Jewish duty, to come to the synagogue on the Sabbath. To fellowship and to learn. But this time, she encounters Jesus, and she is set free.
So in essence, the leader of the synagogue is yelling at the crowds because they came to the worship service, where it is possible that they might become whole. They came open and willing to be healed. To be changed.
Why do we come to worship on the Sabbath? We believe the Sabbath is on Sunday. The reason we do that is because Christians believe that Sunday is both the 1st and 8th day of the week. So it is the beginning, and the end. The basis on which we mark our time. With the beginning, and the end. It is a sign that Jesus has risen…and that Jesus will come again. The Kingdom of God has already happened, and the Kingdom of God is still to come. It is both the 1st and the 8th day of the week.
You will hear me at other times preach sermons about the importance of Sabbath, and the importance in taking a break from your work and communing with God. It is something that I try, and most often fail, to incorporate in my life. But what I’m interested in with this text is the question of why we come to worship? Do we come because it is our duty, or do we come to encounter the living God?
My hope it is the latter. There are a lot of things we do at church. We sing songs, we listen to sermons. We discuss things with one another. We give. We have programs at church for our children, youth, and adults. We fellowship with one another, and catch up with one another about our week. And all of these are wonderful things that the church can provide.
But, I think there is one thing that is essential in all of these things being a part of why we come to church on the Sabbath…To encounter the living Christ. We come to be healed.
And, like the woman who is bent over, we don’t expect Christ to notice us. We have been living with ourselves for so long, it becomes a part of us. We just hope that we can come, hear a good word, then leave. But Jesus’s penetrating eyes search our souls, call us forward, and heal us.
Why don’t we come to church expecting to be healed? Is it because we don’t think there is anything wrong? There is. The very fact that children go to bed hungry and that there is war in the world is evidence that there is something wrong. That families are divided against one another, and pain is something we all know is evidence that there is something wrong. So I go back to the question, why do we not come to church expecting to be healed?
Because we should. There are stories that you all know, and stories that I know of people and communities being healed. Of people’s lives being turned around because of the healing power of Jesus Christ. We should come to church week after week expecting it to happen.
When I was a youth minister, I used to come up with games all the time, and used to come up with program ideas that I would always think would be so much fun. But I was working with some very cynical kids, who always seemed to hate everything that I was doing. So, one time, when the game I had created was falling flat, I stopped the game and talked to the kids. I said, listen, how much fun you have here is directly related to how much effort you put into it. If the attitude that you have going into youth group is that you aren’t going to have fun and you aren’t going to learn anything…then you won’t. But if you come with excitement about being here, and put effort into the things you are doing, I guarantee that you will enjoy it. And you know what, I was right. From that point on, the kids that understood that had a blast at youth. And the rest…well they just kept being miserable, which is I guess what they wanted to be in the first place.
When we come to church, what do we expect to happen? Do we come with energy and enthusiasm for the possibilities that our faith will have in our encounter with God’s creation? Do we come with the heightened awareness that we are God’s children, and so are others? When we come to church, we should come with the attitude that we are coming to meet Christ. And Christ will heal us and make us whole.
The woman who was bent over could never look up. She could only look at her feet. I akin it to the weight of the world weighing on her so much that she couldn’t even stand up. We feel that. We feel that weight. We call it stress. We call it the economy. We call it loss of morality. We want to take care of our families and those we love. We want to take care of our families and the future generations.
Christ knows that. And he calls us forward, to heal us, to free us to do his ministry in the world. So that the weight of the world, of it all being on our shoulders, is lifted, and we can see the world for the beautiful joy and opportunity to serve our brothers and sisters that it can be. When we come, expecting to be healed.
The leader of the synagogue became indignant at the crowd because they had come to be healed on the Sabbath. Jesus becomes indignant at us when we come NOT to be healed on the Sabbath. That is why we come. It is our chance for freedom. Freedom to find the life-giving water that is in God’s world.
I have three best friends that I have grown up with who are all minister’s kids. You will hear a lot about them because we are an eclectic group and it is where I learn so much about God’s world as we discuss our different spheres of lives. One of those friend’s grandfather’s name was Bob Lanford. He is a United Methodist minister who saved Camp Glisson. Glisson was in quite a bit of financial trouble, and he took over as director, and rescued it by taking on all jobs himself. So he was not only the director, but he was also the program director, the housekeeper, the maintenance manager, and the cook. Like a lot of you, he did everything. He made it possible for thousands of children and youth to come to the woods in Dahlonega, and be introduced to Christ. And where many of our ministers in North Georgia heard their call to the ministry, including the one standing here preaching this sermon.
I got to meet Bob one year when I was invited to his house to make gingerbread houses at Christmastime. It was amazing. He had built this house with his bare hands, and he was still going full speed. Writing music, writing poems, and singing. There was this beautiful wrap-around porch at his house, which was brand new. It was a gift for his wife for their 50th wedding anniversary. The house was neat and functional with all kinds of quirks. It was beautiful.
Bob died last January, and Camp Glisson put out a newsletter honoring him. In it, they included a poem he had written in 2005, and I think it says perfectly how we should come to Sabbath;
I can’t change the entire world,
And set all the captives free.
I can’t turn all wrongs to right
As I’d like for them to be.
But there’s one thing I can do
And this shall be my goal
To open up my life to Christ
To cleanse and make me whole.
When we come to worship, we open our lives to Christ. If there is any area of our lives that we have closed, Christ will find a way to open them. And through it, we might become healed, and we might become instruments of healing for the transformation of the world.
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