22^nd August 2010

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley

Lessons -- Genesis 1:26 - 2:3; Hebrews 4:1-11; Luke 13:10-17

Jesus said to them, 'And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?' (Luke 13:16 NRSV)

In 1952 Holland experienced severe storms and floods. On Sunday a sea wall threatened to collapse. Desperate measures were needed to strengthen the wall and save lives. Members of a nearby parish faced a dilemma. Should they honour God on the day of 'rest' or 'work' to save the town? The pastor appealed to those who were reluctant to work by referring to Jesus breaking the Sabbath. An old man stood up: 'I have always been troubled, Pastor, by something that I have never yet ventured to say publicly. Now I must say it. I have always had the feeling that our Lord Jesus was just a bit of a liberal.' (E Kasemann, Jesus Means Freedom, p17.)

This story told by Ernst Kasemann is a fitting commentary on the incident in Luke's Gospel. Jesus ignores the strict regulations governing the Sabbath, which were designed to ensure that God was honoured as God, and heals a woman of a crippling condition. The leader of synagogue worship is aghast at what he regards as a blatant disregard for the divinely instituted 'Sabbath rest'.

A generation ago, with the introduction of Sunday trading, there were lively debates about Sunday Observance. Today, the issue is largely irrelevant to the general public and Christians alike. Rest and recreation isn't confined to church activities. We have plenty of opportunities to relax with friends and family and to enjoy films, sport, shopping and so on. This has led some people to conclude that the 'conservatives' lost the fight to those, like Jesus, who had more 'progressive' views!

But Jesus' scathing criticism of devout people who are more concerned to obey religious rules than to do good is not a ringing endorsement of broadmindedness. It is an invitation to take delight in God's mercy towards those who need healing and wholeness. He thus restores the Sabbath to its original purpose.

By the time of Jesus the festive elements of the Sabbath had become buried under a pile of rules and regulations. Threatened by extinction from outside forces and internal doubt, Jewish observance became more regulated to try to ensure fidelity to God -- over 700 rules governing the 'day of rest'. Instead of being a day of joy and thanksgiving for God's mercies -- a time to rejoice in the faithfulness of God and experience a foretaste of the world to come -- it was a day of prohibition.

In healing the woman, Jesus restores the Sabbath to its purpose. It was 'necessary' (vv 14,16) that she be released from the terrible satanic affliction on the Sabbath as a sign of whom God is: the God of love whose purpose is that we are healed and made whole.

'So far from being the wrong day, the Sabbath was actually the best day for such works of mercy. For the Sabbath -- the day which God had given to Israel as a weekly release from the bondage of work -- was also a weekly foretaste of the rest which awaited the people of God in the (coming) kingdom, the final release from all bondage.' (GB Caird, The Gospel of St Luke, p171.)

By healing the woman, Jesus also exposes the pharisaic interpretation of the law as 'burdensome'. Ironically, the 'upright' Pharisees are 'crippled' but the 'crippled' woman is made 'upright'. They suffer from a terrible, self- inflicted spiritual condition. They are 'bent over' -- curved in on themselves - - instead of 'standing up straight' to praise God for this sign of the promised 'Rest'. Whereas they are 'indignant'
that Jesus breaks God's commandments, she 'praises God' for what Jesus has done.

No wonder Jesus angrily calls them 'hypocrites' (v15) -- not because they are insincere, but because their attitude to the commandment contradicts the word of hope and healing which they profess to believe.

This is brought out in the story by the fact that Jesus not only heals on the Sabbath but heals a woman! At the time, women were not allowed to attend the synagogue. After the service Jesus sees the woman and, without any word from her or anybody else, rids her of her crippling condition. She then 'praises God' (v13). Reactions are mixed. Jesus is accused of blasphemy, but the bystanders are delighted.

Today, in contrast to the 1950s, we usually side with Jesus. Many of us think that 'doing good' is better than 'being religious'; that helping others is more important than attending worship. How often do we hear the boast that 'I can be a Christian without going to church'?

Neither Jesus nor the Pharisees divided life up in this way. They upheld the sanctity of the Sabbath, as a special day consecrated to God, precisely so that all Jews would acknowledge God's past mercies, seek God's present will for them and look forward to the coming of God's 'Rest' when all suffering, persecution and death shall be at an end. Keeping the Sabbath was the first responsibility of all members of the community called to honour the one true God. In fact, this commandment comes before the commandments to 'do the right thing' by other people.

They didn't think 'doing good' was optional. They had no objection to healing on other days of the week. But they insisted that all 'work' must flow from faith in God whose gracious love had accompanied his stubborn people and who called them to be a sign to the world of God's ultimate purpose for humanity. Therefore, the Sabbath must be observed!

The whole incident shows us that so much more is at stake than whether or not we are 'conservative' or 'progressive' in our attitude to Sabbath observance. Jesus does criticise 'narrowness' but he doesn't replace it with 'broadmindedness'. Instead, he draws us into a way of life that rejoices in God's triumphant suffering love -- so strongly displayed in Hebrew history -- and looks forward to the time when what is true for the crippled woman shall be true for all who have experienced evil, for all who are 'bent over' by affliction, tragedy or sin.

This ultimately is what it means to celebrate the 'Sabbath Rest'. Quite the opposite of boredom or idleness! The Sabbath should be marked by a sense of awe at the splendour God's goodness and mercy that is expressed in worship, fellowship and concern for others. It is a time to take pleasure in God. It is a time to enjoy the life in the world for which God has created us, to experience what B Jacob calls a 'heightened sense of life' (cited in K Barth, Church Dogmatics Vol III, 1, p221. See pp 212-228 for a marvellous treatment of the Sabbath Rest.). It is a time to give thanks that Christ has taken our burdens on himself and given us rest (Matthew 11:28). It is a time to look forward to the time when the whole creation and all humanity shall be rid of affliction, evil and death (Hebrews 4:1f).

In Christian celebrations, this sense of adoration, festivity and generosity is brought out even more clearly by the fact that, unlike the Jewish Sabbath, the Lord's Day -- the 'day of resurrection' of the crucified Lord -- is the first day of the week. The promised 'Rest' is fulfilled in Christ's whole ministry. In his life, death and resurrection we are given a 'foretaste' of God's final triumph over affliction, evil and death.

It is our pleasure to experience something of the freedom and joy that the resurrection of Jesus has brought into the world. 'Come to me,' says Jesus, 'all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.' (Matthew 11:28.)

It is a privilege and a joy to have this 'Day of Rest'. It is a day to praise God for the blessings of his grace displayed in creation and to the nations through the Hebrew people and in Jesus Christ. It is a day of healing and hope for a world that is 'crippled' by affliction, evil and death.

We should think of it as the first day of the week: the day that gives significance to all other days, that puts our lives, our work and our politics into perspective. On this day we are privileged to share in God's Sabbath -- the day on which (as the imaginative account in Genesis puts it) God did not withdraw from the world but took pleasure in what he had created and united himself in love to the human race.

Instead of being the last day of the week on which we may either do nothing or whatever we want to relax, the Sabbath Rest is a time to look ahead in the light of what has gone before. It is a time to rejoice in the creative and healing love of God, the Creator and Redeemer of all things. It is a time to give thanks for being called to share in Christ's healing ministry among folk who are 'restless until they find their rest in God' (St Augustine). And it is a time to look forward to the Sabbath Rest which awaits a restless world.

We may bemoan or welcome the loss of Sabbath observance. But we won't have observed the Sabbath properly until we find our rest in God's goodness and mercy revealed to Israel and embodied in Jesus Christ as the sign of hope for all.
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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.