a homily for Proper 16C

Text: Luke 13:10-17

 

The third time’s a charm

Let me start with a conceit. As is so often the case, what Jesus says and does is not heard the same way by everyone. Jesus is breaking the law. For those who benefit from the lawbreaking, particularly the woman in question, this is welcome news. For those who keep the law, well…they aren’t so happy with Him.

We start here because Jesus makes so much sense to us. And the whole teaching on the Sabbath is over, done. We aren’t relitigating how we keep the Sabbath. It is so tempting to paper over this moment and ignore what it is challenging.

For the third time, Jesus challenges convention about how they are to keep the Sabbath. Not conventions, really. Not rules. They are laws. Laws written long ago about how the people are to behave. Laws which carry punishments.

The original law comes from the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” It goes on to say that you and no one related to you, including a sojourner that comes to you, is to work. For GOD created the world in six days and then rested. That is from the first set given in Exodus.

A slightly different set is given in Deuteronomy. It says there to “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” It’s description is that they are not to farm on the Sabbath, because of the Manna GOD provided in the wilderness.

Jesus doesn’t break that law, either of them, but He breaks the laws the leadership created to fulfill those commandments. Jesus is caught red-handed. And worse, He does it on purpose.

The Church is changing

This is the backdrop for Jesus’s actions. He heals a woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He breaks the law. And His response comes off to his opponents like C’mon, seriously. You don’t actually follow this law, do you?

We can relate to this moment, I bet. If we all grabbed a Bible and flipped to Leviticus, none of us could go two chapters without getting condemned.

Anyone have shrimp or lobster recently? Did you fulfill the rites of ritual purification?

Look at the labels on your clothes—anyone waring a cotton-polyester blend?

I’m not going to ask who is menstruating or who hugged their spouse who is.

We can so easily put these things into perspective. And we no longer seek ritual purification for these things or stone each other for having done them. Not literally anyway.

What we might easily overlook, however, are those times that we aren’t the crowd, cheering because Jesus is doing great things for us; liberating us; but the Pharisees being put to shame. We complain about soccer and businesses being open on Sunday. Or when people choose golf over church. We complain that the world doesn’t fit into our needs and we condemn those that chart a different course.

Our biggest sin, however, is that we think that Jesus is nice and wants us to follow the law. But He doesn’t. There is reason that the institution found Him dangerous and still finds Him dangerous. So dangerous that we don’t confront what Jesus is actually doing when He breaks the Law. He is changing the church. Then and now.

Getting creative with the Law

This part of the story ends exuberantly:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

The church leadership is embarrassed, but the church rejoices.

There are two reasons for this.

1. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy. They were selectively keeping the law for which they were condemning Jesus. This is the easy shame.
2. The other reason is more profound: Jesus was teaching something new about the Sabbath: that the Sabbath is to be the day to especially rejoice in the power of GOD. He is arguing what better day than today for GOD to heal this woman. Keeping the Sabbath, then is less about the nothing we do, but the glorification we create.

This is how we are then to see Jesus as law-breaker, because He is bringing the church back to where it is supposed to be. It had shifted so far into abstinence and condemnation that they were unable to truly keep the Sabbath themselves. And more, keep the first commandment to love GOD as god. Four times Jesus teaches this in the gospel we call Luke. Four times. Do you think it stuck? Does it stick now?

Are we shamed by Jesus’s law-breaking or do we rejoice in it? Because Jesus is keeping the real law, not the human ones. And this is good news.

Being liberated

This is the central piece for us in this text: Jesus the liberator: because it reveals to us who GOD is. That we, like our ancestors, so often worry about the angry GOD up there that we ignore the compassionate GOD in our midst—the GOD in human form that walked with us and the GOD in the form of a wind that inspires our time together.

Like the crowd, we can see “all the wonderful things that he [is] doing.”

We have been blessed with baptisms and excitement. We have had time to go camping and swimming. We have celebrated big marriage milestones and another is coming up in two weeks. We are putting a new roof on the church and we are sharing in the responsibility for it. This isn’t institutional stuff—this isn’t mandate from the top of a pyramid—and it isn’t all spelled out by GOD in the beginning of time. These are wonderful things happening now; wonderful things that we are doing with GOD.

Like Jesus, we are changing the church because the church is us. We are doing it here, when we get together to glorify GOD, but more, when we glorify GOD in what only we can do. When we are liberated from the shackles of abstinence and rejoice in the marvelous, creative power of GOD. When we bless GOD and one another for the works being done. When we see in the faces of our children and our elders, not the future or the past, but the present presence of Jesus.

Today, we rejoice for all of the good things and the many more to come. Let us say “Alleluia!”