We get free too
August 21, 2022 + Lectionary 21 + Rev. Dr. Brooke Petersen
Wealthy citizens are oppressing their workers and not even paying them minimum wage! People are neglecting the homeless and the hungry, hoarding for themselves what is supposed to be shared among the community. People are so familiar with the yoke of oppression, so familiar, in fact, that they choose it because it makes more sense to punch down to whoever was below them than upend the entire system. People might do the work that feels right, but only if they can be noticed for being the good ones who “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke.” What is the point of loosing chains of injustice if no one sees you doing it?
These are not quotes from the latest opinion page of the newspaper, but the words of the prophet Isaiah in the 58th chapter we read for today. The people come to God and say, ‘Why have we fasted, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’” And God tells them that one cannot fast and oppress their workers. One cannot hoard food to break the fast when the unhoused and poor beg for bread. One cannot show up and ask where God is if the people refuse to act like God, refuse to cloth the naked and feed the hungry.
And yet, despite all of their misguided fasts and their selfishness, their God is not far, and where they will discover God, Isaiah tells us, is when they observe the Sabbath, when they take what they have corrupted with their own selfish desires and make it the Lord’s day, if they delight in the sabbath again.
I’m fairly certain that most of us probably don’t think about sabbath practices all that often, unless we have reached a stage of burnout where thinking about a sabbath break feels more like an opportunity to get back to our self-care routines. But for the Israelites receiving this prophetic word from Isaiah, it is no surprise that the observance of the sabbath takes a central role here, because we are encountering God’s people after their temple and central city had been destroyed. The Israelites had been in exile for more than 50 years, and so who they would be on the other side of their exile mattered. They were a community who had lost their central symbols, and when that core is shaken, it was the traditions of their community that could hold them together. Speaking their language, telling their stories were one part of keeping their community together, but so was the observance of the sabbath. Taking this day, returning it to the Lord, was what set them apart and made them one when their places of gathering were gone. The sabbath was not only what they gave to God, but what God gave to them. The sabbath wasn’t some kind of self-care exercise, the sabbath was central in making a community when the community had been shaken.
So it is no surprise that the observance of the sabbath is so central to our gospel passage from Luke for today. But, before we get into this scene, we first ought to remember the Jesus we encounter here. Even in the womb, just as we celebrated his mother Mary last week, we hear her already calling God the one who will bring the mighty down from their thrones and uplift the humble of heart. Jesus’ ministry in Luke begins as he unrolls a scroll in the temple in Nazareth and proclaims that he has been anointed to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
This is the Son of the God we greet in Isaiah, one who is inextricably tied up with the freedom and liberation of all of God’s people. This is a God who has a preferential option for the poor, who is constantly showing up where people are lost, where they are abandoned, where they are imprisoned, where they are alone. Healing isn’t just about a surface level change, it is a restoration to the values of a kingdom built on love, liberation and freedom. Jesus, in Luke, is a healer- he has already spoken a powerful word of healing over the disciple Simon’s mother in law, a man who had be lowered through the roof of the house that Jesus might see him, Jesus has already healed a man who was cast out and lived among the graves of the dead, Jesus’ word had already raised the dead from their graves.
This Jesus we meet as our story begins in the temple on the sabbath is one who has already shown us that healing is primary to his ministry. Restoration to community matters to God. But, before we go further, I want to stop here with a word of caution. Because sometimes, when we hear these stories of healing in our gospels, we can start to think that healing is the same thing as curing. We can start to imagine that what God, what Jesus wants for all bodies is for them to be free of disability, that God is one of ableism, where disability is not of God. And I want you to hear me clearly, that to read these stories as ones that are about cure when all bodies, yours, mine, have been redeemed and are beloved of God is a misinterpretation of these stories. Disabled people are made in the image of God. However you are sitting here, your body, and you are beloved by God. Curing is limited, but healing comes in many forms, and primarily, over and over again in these texts we see that healing means restoration to community, and many times, it is the community that is changed.
But in this story, we find ourselves in the temple on the sabbath and a woman who has been bent for 18 years shows up. Many sermons on this text make the mistake, I think, of imagining that this woman has made a slow journey to the temple to meet Jesus because she wants to be healed despite how she has been treated in the world, that she wouldn’t have been a part of this community. But we don’t know that here, and I think it is important to complicate our vision of this story by recognizing that she might have been at the temple because that is precisely where she went to receive care. She may have come every week as a faithful Jew because the sabbath mattered to her, and her community mattered to her, and they were good people who loved and desired to know more of God. She may have been at the temple not because Jesus was going to be there, but because her own people would be, people who already cared for her.
Jesus sees her, and calls her over, proclaiming with his powerful word that she has been freed from her ailment, and in that very moment, she straightens her long bent back and begins to praise God for all that God has done. This is the God we have seen through all of scripture, one who works for mercy, justice and liberation, and who is worthy of praise. This woman responds to what God has done by praising God for all of God’s works. She was set free, liberated into life, but…
It isn’t entirely surprising that there is a pause in this story, because seeing others get free often comes with a “but maybe not exactly that way.” I think many of us have been on the side of this leader of the synagogue. Remember, keeping the sabbath holy, refraining from work was a way of staying connected to God. To work on the sabbath meant ignoring a very important a sacred part of the day. It isn’t because this synagogue leader is anti-God, or not smart enough to see what is happening, it is precisely because of his love of God that he turns to the crowd indignant. There are 6 other days to work, but this day is holy.
I think it is easy to read this story and to imagine ourselves as Jesus, committed to freedom and liberation and healing, or to imagine ourselves as this woman, bent low with the difficulties of this life and dreaming, desiring healing. But, all too often, we aren’t either of those characters, but instead the synagogue leader, or the crowd that gathers around him. How many times, when we have seen people demanding their freedom, standing for their own liberation, have we said to ourselves, well, freedom and liberation is one thing, but I really don’t think they should act that way. I really don’t think they should be marching in the streets with their fists held high. I really don’t think they should use that kind of language. I believe in the project, but it would be better if they were nicer about it, or if they appreciated how hard it is for us to change. It would be better if they waited for another day, a better day, one where we didn’t feel like it interrupted us.
Because, you see, as Martin Luther King reminded us in his Letter from a Birmingham jail, all too often we white folks say wait, when what we really mean is never. We say wait until the right time, the appropriate space, the correct day, but what is buried deep in our hearts is the word never. And as King writes, justice delayed too long is justice denied.
But, if we can see this text through a lens of empathy, if we can understand that synagogue leader as one who is trying to be faithful, who isn’t ignorant or heretical, we can see in ourselves that same truth. When our rules get in the way of freedom, when our rules become more important to us than the liberation of God’s people from bondage, then hear me now, our rules have to change. When keeping the sabbath is more important than healing, then how we understand the sabbath has to change. When niceness and right time becomes more important to us than the liberation from oppression of our black and indigenous siblings of color, then our values have to change.
It would be easiest if I could end this sermon presenting you with a simple checklist of the things we ought to do when in our hearts we find ourselves in conflict with the rules and the traditions of our community and the freedom and liberation that is at the heart of God. But, our faith is not one of easy answers, and I can’t pretend that I have them. I can see before me Jesus, this synagogue leader, this woman who has been brought low, and no one is evil here. Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. But when we know better, we do better. Our faith is not meant to be rigid, but alive, growing and changing. And at the heart of it is always love. Is always freedom, because that is what God is about.
So, together, fed at the table and united as a community I hope that we can go from this place willing to do that dangerous and scary self-reflection. The kind that sometimes just hurts, because we realize that we’ve messed up as much as we have been faithful. The kind of interior work that requires us to look inside our own hearts, to see where our rules and values and traditions have become a blunt object we wield against ourselves and others. But here is what I believe God promises us, and I will promise it, too. If we are willing to do the work, if we are willing to reflect on what we are choosing instead of love, instead of freedom, that when we give it up, when we truly remember the sabbath, we will find that our insides can expand beyond what we ever imagined. That when we come alongside God in this project of liberation, we get free too. Free to love and be loved more. It is hard, and it is beautiful, and it is a gift from God for us. May it be so. Amen, and thanks be to God.
