On rest and liberation . . .

      It might have been fun to preach on Hebrews like a commercial opportunity, since we are starting Hebrews on Tuesday evenings sometime next month.  I think it was Greg Platt who joked last Tuesday night we could speed up the end of Acts by saying Paul takes a cruise, gets shipwrecked, makes his way finally to Rome, and is acquitted.  There’s a lot in that, obviously, but we are nearing the end.  And Hebrews gives us the two mountains passage this week, which is always good for discussion.  Part of Jeremiah’s passage today is famous, and a few of us might be learning it occurs in the context of God reminding Jeremiah and us that, when He gives us work to do, we would do well not to downplay any thoughts of ourselves.  Though Jeremiah has no real idea how to speak and what to say at the beginning, He is instructed by God that he will be appointed of nations and kingdoms and prophesying destruction and overthrow as well a building and planting.  It will be a heady responsibility, like many assignments God gives His people.

     I was drawn, though, to Luke’s passage for a number of reasons.  I have had an increased share of conversations about miracles at the Y the last couple weeks.  None of them differ from my discussions with Jim Martin over the years, except in terms of obstinacy or perseverance.  For those of you who did not know Jim, he loved to argue that the miracles of Scripture were unbelievable and unnecessary.  For my part, I thought it an act of sorts or a personal ministry.  He would say stuff others were thinking or reading online, especially in Wrestling with Faith.  Our passage from Luke today, though, addresses a number of issues that touch on Jesus’ identity, the teachings of the Church, a lot on the Sabbath, and a commentary on the human will.  I will not be doing a deep dive on all of it, but feel free to ask one of the Tuesday night Bible Study group.  We covered this at length before we read Acts!

     One of the literary devices that Luke is utilizing today is the repeating pattern of a story.  Luke tells similar stories near the beginning and near the end of Jesus’ Ministry in order, among some other reasons, to show us that the human responses we see or experience when telling the stories of the Gospel are no different than those of Jesus’ experience.  They also help remind us that human hearts are human hearts.  Way back in chapter 4, Jesus heals a man in the synagogue who is possessed by unclean spirits.  After that miracle, reports go out among the countryside.  But it is not attractive as we might believe or hope.  People note Jesus’ authoritative teaching and, of course, His authority over the demons, and the fact that He exercises this authority in the synagogue.  That last bit is far more important to Jesus’ audience than to us.  We live in cultures that equate belief in God with superstition.  The ANE culture held as axiomatic the certainty that gods and goddesses had to protect their temples and other worship spaces absolutely!  Were a god to allow anything untoward to happen in his or her worship spaces, they would lose strength needed for the cosmic battles.  Many of those who saw the power over the supernatural and heard the authority in Jesus’ instruction would know for certain that Jesus, at worst, was blessed or commissioned or working for God.  Were Jesus not working for Yahweh, Yahweh would have smited Him there to protect His turf.  Despite the location of the miracle and Jesus’ authority, those who witnessed the event do not begin to follow Him in mass.

     Today, you may be sitting there wondering how people could see such a miracle, hear such authority in His voice, and NOT believe in Jesus.  But such is ever the case.  Human beings are uncomfortable with miracles.  They do not provoke the “deep faith” we like to think they should.  In fact, over time, people tend to convince themselves the miracle was not really what they thought it was.

     Jesus is now nearly three years into His ministry.  The Cross is not too far off.  Once again, Jesus is in a synagogue on the sabbath.  Luke, a physician—in case we have forgotten, blames the woman’s crippled condition on a spiritual attack, just as He blamed unclean spirits on the first miracle of Jesus in a synagogue.  Jesus calls her over and tells her she is set free.  There’s no struggle.  There’s no sweat.  There’s no mumbo jumbo incantation nonsense.  Jesus tells her she is free and lays hands on her.  Immediately she is freed and gives thanks to God!

     One might expect everyone would be amazed or excited by the healing, right?  Once again, though, they are more like us than we would like to believe, especially the leader.  The leader, according to Luke, is indignant and fusses at Jesus for healing the woman on the sabbath.  Jesus reminds the audience and the leader that they are all hypocrites.  I won’t bore you too much, but the Jews had a large number of writings about what work is permissible on the sabbath.  A lengthy discussion in prior generations about agrarian necessities had resulted finally in the ability to walk about 3000 feet on the sabbath.  That discussion and decision, though, had taken place in light of God’s instruction on the sabbath both in creation and in the Exodus.  Sabbath, as far as God was concerned was a reminder of day of rest and of a day of liberation. Mark recounts Jesus’ teaching to that effect, but Luke shares the stories of a man and a woman being freed from supernatural oppression to get the point across to his audience, which includes us.

     I just buried Ellen last week and was reminded of our discussions on the sabbath and her ministry among her friends in the wider Church around us.  Waiters and waitresses, and pretty much any service personnel, hate when Christians enter their doors after church on Sunday.  Many will tell you there is no stingier group of people or people more self-entitled or people more hypocritical than Christians who have just been to church.  They are “enjoying their sabbath,” but that means others are working.  The less than 5% tips are bad enough, but the non-monetary “get a better job,” “if you find Jesus, you won’t have to do this,” “you should get an education,” and other such “helpful” advice was far worse and more dishonoring to God.  One of Ellen’s personal ministries was to get her friends from other denominations to see how that attitude dishonored God and to see how God saw those service personnel, as men and women created in His image.

     Jesus drives His point home by asking, rhetorically, should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, oppressed for eighteen years, be freed on a sabbath.  It is a short, but effective way of reminding the crowd and us that God uses His power to free those oppressed.  The leader and those who agreed with him, we are told, are put to shame.  But the crowd rejoices at all the wonderful things He was doing.  Just to remind ourselves, though, who puts Jesus to death in a few chapters?  That’s right, the crowd.

     One of the great lessons of this story is the instruction we receive on the sabbath.  The sabbath was made, by God, for all humanity; humanity was not made for the sabbath.  It was commanded because He knew the ways in which we would all be oppressed, socially, economically, militaristically, and a host of others.  His people in particular were meant to rest and remind themselves both of God’s past work to liberate them and His future promises regarding freedom.  How many of us forget this during the week?  How many of us, in this country aflush with Protestant work ethic, enjoy our time away from work or productivity?  How many of us use that time to re-ground ourselves in God and remind ourselves of the promises of rest He has made to those who claim Him Lord?  How many of us drag ourselves to church as if it is “just another obligation” or “thing I have to do,” forgetting how God has freed us from the oppression of our sins, how God has given us eyes to see how the oppressions of the world do not have the final word, how we, among all people, should be the most joyful and most thankful because we understand what God has done in Christ Jesus and has promised to do One glorious Day in the future?

     My friends, you and I live and work and exist in a world that is oppressed, in a world where people choose oppression and darkness, where even those who claim to be Christians choose to oppress others, despite God’s instructions to the contrary.  One of the great ways we honor God for the freedom He has given us is to live as He has called us to live, as if we truly believe we have been set free.  The great oppressor, death, has been conquered in Christ’s Resurrection, but so have the innumerable other oppressors of the world.  We serve people in the church oppressed by hunger or by economic circumstance through Body & Soul, we serve people oppressed by homelessness through Room in the Inn, we serve people oppressed by mental illness, we serve any number of people oppressed in ways we may never know or understand.  Through it all, though, you and I are instructed, commanded even, to take a day and give intentional thanks for the freedom for which God has set us free and to remind ourselves as wonderful as that reminder is, it pales in comparison to the sabbath He intends to offer us on the glorious Day when He returns in triumph!  Make no mistake, it is a lesson that gets ignored by His people throughout time and location, but that forgetfulness is no excuse.  We know the freedom that He has offered us in Christ; we know the freedom we have because we need not fear the oppression of our sins.  Better still, we know that He has chosen us, those whom He has freed, to head back out into that world as a joyful people who understand what God has done for them and who know, in the end, that what He intends for our eternal futures will be far beyond our asking and our imagining!

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian+