22 August 2010

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

Hear the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke:

Now Jesus was teaching in one of the congregations on the Sabbath.

And just then there appeared a woman

who, for eighteen years, had a weakness of spirit.

She was curved in on herself and was quite unable to raise herself up.

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said,

“Woman, you are freed from your weakness.”

When he laid his hands on her,

immediately she became right and began praising God.

But the leader of the congregation,

indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath,

was busy rabble-rousing:

“There are six day on which work ought to be done;

come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”
But the Lord answered him and said, “You who are under judgment yourselves! Do not you on the Sabbath untie your ox or your donkey from the feed trough, and lead it away to give it water?

And ought not this woman,

a daughter of Abraham,

whom Satan did indeed bind for eighteen years,

be freed from this bondage and precisely 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 Jesus was doing.

This is the Holy Gospel.

(translation by K. Maly)

The Sabbath Day: for us – Sunday, the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. And the Commandment tells us that we are to remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy – observe it differently than we do all other days. Now, in some traditions this has meant absolutely no work whatsoever is to be done. I remember how, when I was a kid – no stores or malls anywhere were open on the Christian Sabbath; some of you remember like me how nobody did laundry on Sunday (or if they did, they hung it up in the basement, hiding their transgression from the sight of the neighbors); you couldn’t go to the movies; and you certainly couldn’t play cards. And you had to go to church – for some people it was all morning, a little break in the afternoon, and then church again at night. And we had one Lutheran pastor who absolutely forbad parishioners to read the paper before coming to mass and receiving communion – and Holy Communion, he said, should be received on an empty stomach.

Martin Luther, however, has other concerns when in his Small and Large Catechisms he explains the keeping of the Sabbath. In the Small Catechism we hear that the command to keep the Sabbath holy means that we are not to “despise preaching or God’s Word, but instead gladly hear and learn it.” By all means, says the Large Catechism, one ought refrain from work as much as possible on the Sabbath – you, your animals, your employees – Sabbath rest is a gift from God – and we ought use that leisure time to learn the catechism and to dwell in the Word – and the Word, for Luther, is first, Christ; second, the proclamation of the Gospel in the preaching and sacraments; and third, the Scriptures. We don’t, however, do these things to seek holiness in our own works, Luther explains. In spite of what some contemporary liturgical scholars might say, in the Lutheran tradition, the liturgy is not and must not be, “the work of the people.” Indeed, a central tenet of the Augsburg Confession is that the Mass is most assuredly not our work – rather, the Mass is always and only God’s work . . . for us. And, says the catechism, we are most assuredly not come to the liturgy, the preaching and the sacraments, either to be entertained or out of culturally conditioned habit.

Isaiah, in our first reading, speaks in a vein similar to Luther. We are not to come to the Sabbath assembly to pursue our own interests, with our own particular wants, needs, and expectations; we are not to come to the Sabbath to pursue our own agendas, laying them upon others like some yoke laid upon a jackass; we do not come to complain, gossip, cavil, criticize, or point fingers. And – when all of you refrain from all of that, promises the prophet in words of Sweet Gospel – all of you actually will find a whole lot of delight in the Sabbath – your collective gloom will lift as the morning fog in the presence of the sun’s light, and as a community your life together will become a thing of beauty.

So – in today’s Gospel, we hear it’s the Sabbath day and Jesus visits a local congregation. And in that congregation there is someone who is spiritually weak – who has, seemingly forever, been curved in on self. And it is precisely this curved-in-on-self-ness that is the root of all evil, that is the essence of all sinfulness. The curved-in-on-self life is all about me, me, me, I, I, I, myself, myself, myself, what pleases me, what doesn’t please me, what my needs are, what makes me angry, what I think should be done, what I feel or don’t feel, and the list could go on and on and on. To be curved-in-on self is to have one’s gaze directed at one’s self – to gaze at one’s own navel. Or, to be curved-in-on-self is to want to be in control – to know in one’s self what is best for others – to see one’s self as just a little bit (or maybe a whole lot) better than others – in a nutshell to want to be a sort of god – and, of course, the best god, the most powerful god, the god who gets to tell the other, lesser gods what to do, what they’ve done wrong, and what they had better start doing differently. . . or else. But the curved-in-on-self self isn’t just in the congregation Jesus is visiting in today’s story from Luke – curved-in-on-self selves are everywhere – and if we want to know who they are – well, it’s probably best that each of us begin by . . . . looking . . . into the mirror – not to see how pretty we are or who’s behind us – but to see who’s in front of us – to see ourselves judged – not by the neighbor, but by God’s Word.

So – what does Jesus make of the turned-in-on-self self come to church on the Sabbath? (And this – this is the really, really good part.) Jesus does not summon us over to us to chew us out, to knock us upside the head, or to scare the everlivin’ crud either out of us or into us. No – Jesus comes summons us over and says to us, “You’re freed from your spiritual weakness. Not by anything you do, not by meditation, or yoga, or exercise, or by any pious action – but,” says Jesus, “because I said so – because the Word – the announcement of the Promise – says you are healed. It really is just that simple.” Which of course is why the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther tries to get it through our thick skulls that we really do need to be where Jesus can get to us – through the preaching, through the sacraments, through studying the Word together. We come here to be touched by Jesus, so that we all be freed from our spiritual weakness, freed from our will to power, freed from our self-absorption. We come to be made right – to become un-curved-in-on-our-selves – to be uncurled – to be opened up – to be outside of ourselves – ecstatic in praise of God. And when we will not listen, nor allow ourselves to be touched – well Jesus isn’t just about being sweet at all times. Jesus needs to be stern with us when we stand around like one of the people in the congregation in Luke’s story – stand around rabble-rousing and pointing fingers. “Listen up, bucko,” demands Jesus. “You’re under judgment too – the Sabbath – the Assembly of God’s people – it’s not about pursuing your own agenda and judging those around you – the Sabbath is precisely about healing – about everybody’s healing, yours included.”

And in the story, a good stern word was all it took – and all of the rebellious lot of them in that particular congregation, synagogue, assembly end up rejoicing – which means that they were all healed – ‘cause you really can’t rejoice unless and until you are opened up. And just as then, so too now. Jesus continues to heal: in this congregation, synagogue, assembly – continues to hear – in the words of Absolution we spoke to one another at the beginning of this liturgy – in the real touch of Jesus’ own living body and blood that each of us receives in the Holy Communion – and in these words – the Word – that I am ordered to speak to you: People! You are being freed from all your weaknesses, today and in God’s eternity you are already freed, healed from your weakness, made right and raised.

And it’s not about whether you feel any of that or not. It just is. And in order that you continue to be being freed from the turned-in-on-self self, we will all be back again and again, fulfilling the command not to despise preaching or God’s Word, but instead keeping that Word holy and gladly hearing and learning it. It’s what God wants. And God always, always, always, gets in the end exactly what God wants – namely – you and all of you, healed and raised. In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.