Sunday Musings

Jesus kicks some ox and ass

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TODAY IS ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The summer season of readings on the Kingdom of God moves through its paces.

This week, the stories take us to the centrality of a single commandment and its importance to a community of mercy and justice: Remember the sabbath and keep it holy.

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Isaiah 58:9b-14

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;

if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;

I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Luke 13:10-17

Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."

But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 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?"

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.

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On this Sunday, we move from Luke 12 to Luke 13. But we haven’t left the overall late summer theme — What is the Kingdom of God? The lectionary skips over two stories about suffering (those are typically read in Lent) and jumps immediately to a miraculous healing that elicits a response from a dogmatic religious leader.

When reading today’s passage, it is easy to get fixated on Jesus and the synagogue leader and forget the other two characters in the story: the woman and the crowd.

The crowd is important to the story. Jesus was a guest teacher at a synagogue and is still being followed by mobs of people. In the last chapter, a man shouted a question from the crowd that prompted an extended discussion on wealth and power dynamics. On this occasion, a woman stepped forward and attracted Jesus’ attention. She “was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight,” afflicted for eighteen years with a condition believed to have been caused by a malevolent spirit. The Greek says that she was “bent double” with frailty.

The woman was, most likely, a beggar of some sort — exactly the opposite of the questioning man in Luke 12 who was worried about his inheritance. It is hard to imagine that she worked. Who would employ her for any work? Her twisted body couldn’t handle lifting or planting or shepherding. If her hands were also “bent,” she wouldn’t be able to weave or sew or prepare food. It is difficult imagining her carrying water or hauling firewood. If she wasn’t a beggar, she was a daughter isolated at her parents’ home, cared for by others — and hoping her caregivers didn’t die and send her to a life on the streets.

She was functionally imprisoned by her body.

She asked for nothing. She said nothing. It seems she moved to the edge of the crowd, perhaps just wanting to see him. Or, perhaps wanting him to see her.

And see her, he did. He beckoned to her (a radical shift from most of the healing stories where the infirm call for Jesus) and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment!”

The Greek word, apoluó, means to be completely released, pardoned, set free. It is the same term used for “divorced.”

Her crooked body straightened and she stood up, and “began praising God,” literally “glorifying God.”

She was liberated from the enslavement of her body, in a society that treated disabled people as sinful or evil. When Jesus healed her, she was, in effect, freed to an entirely new life. No longer a beggar or unwanted daughter, she could find her way anew in the world — and follow her dreams.

The crowd must have been thrilled. They got what they came for and witnessed a really good miracle.

But the dogmatic religious leader wasn’t pleased. “You can’t do that, Jesus. The commandment to keep the sabbath forbids the work of ‘curing.’”

Sigh. How often have I heard those words from a religious leader? You can’t do that, Diana. It is against the rules. Our polity doesn’t allow for that.

Or, more broadly: Women can’t teach or preach. The Bible forbids it.

Or, heard from a disabled friend: They didn’t invite me because the event space wasn’t equipped for my needs.

Rules, rules, rules. There’s always some rubric-crazy dogmatist or fundamentalist gatekeeper prepared to stop those deemed inadequate, unworthy, or unfit from coming forward and claiming their wholeness.

Jesus got mad: “You hypocrites! You are purposely using the sabbath commandment to limit God’s own glory!”

The religious leader criticized Jesus for “curing” the woman on the sabbath. The word in Greek is therapeuó. But the story doesn’t say that Jesus cured her; she wasn’t simply relieved of a particular condition. It says that Jesus liberated her, with its use of the word, apoluó. She wasn’t just cured. She was completely, fully released from that which had bound her.

And, as Jesus pointed out to the blinkered religious leader, liberation was the entire point of sabbath. The sabbath was meant to be a day of release from enslavement to worldly economic and social systems, intended to ground Israel as a community formed by the principles of God’s Kingdom. A community of Exodus. The command to keep the sabbath had been given them while their newly freed bodies were still bent by Pharaoh’s yoke. When Moses came down from the mountain with the law to keep sabbath, the people barely knew the meaning of full release.

Sabbath wasn’t just about taking time off from work and resting. Sabbath was a weekly practice of God’s economy of generosity and gratitude — and learning that sacred provision was, indeed, abundance. Sabbath is what a truly freed people should not only do — but what they should be.

What could be more appropriate on sabbath than liberating those held in bondage? Unbending the bodies of those twisted by corrupt systems of economics and religion?

Jesus chided the dogmatist, “Don’t you untie your ox” (a working animal) “or donkey” (a service animal) “and lead them to water on the sabbath?”

Isn’t she, a child of Abraham and Sarah, an heir to God’s promise, worth more than that? What day could be better than the sabbath for her liberation?! Sabbath is freedom from bondage; sabbath is full release from slavery.

The crowd cheered. And they joined the woman in praising the glory of God. She understood. They understood. Liberation shows forth the glory of God. She can be freed. You can be free. We all can be fully released from what twists our bodies and soul.

Every day. Any day. But especially on the sabbath.

Read the story through the experience of the woman and the crowd. Jesus did something they’d probably wanted to do for years. He kicked that religious leader’s ox and ass.

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INSPIRATION

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
— Emily Dickinson

Praise "family values," "a better future for our children," displacing meanwhile the familiar membership to be a "labor force" of homeless strangers. Praise work and name it "jobs." With "labor-saving technology" replace workers at their work and hold them in contempt because they have no "jobs." Praise "our country" and oppress the land with poisons, gouges, blastings, the violent labors and pleasures of the unresting displaced, skinning the earth alive. This is the way, the truth, and the life. Welcome the refugees set free from the "nowhere" of rural America, from the "drudgery" of the household and the "mind-numbing work" of shops and farms, into the anthills of "liberation," the endless vistas of "growth," of "progress," the "limitless adventure of the human spirit" rising through inward emptiness into "outer space." Welcome the displaced naturally "upwardly mobile" to their "better world" as they gather bright-lighted in "multicultural" masses in the packed streets. Catch those who inevitably fall from the light-swarm in meshes of "safety nets," "benefits," "job training," the army, the wars, mental hospitals, jails, graves. Forget vocation, memory, living and dying at home. This is the way, the truth, and the life. Flourish your weapons of official war where they are needed for peace, bring death by chance but needfully to small houses where children play at war or a wedding is taking place so that the bride and the groom will not be separately killed, for you have an enemy somewhere, who must be killed. Therefore forgive the unofficial entrepreneur who brings your weapons to your school, your office, your neighborhood theater, bringing death randomly but needfully, for his enemies are his as yours are yours. This is the way, the truth, and the life.
— Wendell Berry, New Sabbath Poems, “XIV” (2012)

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A BEAUTIFUL YEAR: Comes out November 4

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CLICK HERE for preorder options (from a variety of booksellers, including independents).

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Keeping sabbath is a decidedly different way of living:
it is deeply counter-cultural.

It is living out an intentional witness, a resistance to the way things are.

— Donna Schaper

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