Tenth Sunday after Trinity – St. Bartholomew the Apostle
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Readings: Isaiah 58:9B-end and Luke 13: 10-17
In the opening years of my ministry there was a great debate about the Sabbath. Not that many people talked about it using that term ‘Sabbath’ – except Jewish people, who, of course, were referring to a different day of the week.
But in the 80s and 90s – maybe even a bit earlier – Sunday trading was becoming more and more popular and sporting events more commonplace on Sundays. I remember from childhood how quiet roads were on a Sunday. How that has changed. I often think the roads around here are busier at the weekend than they are on some weekdays.
Churches reacted with dismay to the change in Sunday trading laws, and this growing popularity of Sunday as a day for shopping, sport and more leisure activities. Not, I think, that Sunday trading has made so much difference to church attendance, but the increase in sporting activities on a Sunday, particularly for young people, did make a difference. A former Bishop of Rochester suggested that church school playing-fields should not be used on a Sunday. Whether he thought this would persuade people into church, or whether he was just making a point, I don’t know. But now, most churches would not want to be seen as kill-joys in preventing activities on a Sunday that many people would enjoy. It would be a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face. Folk are not going to be attracted to churches whose continual message seems to be “Thou shalt not….”
Of course, the battle over Sunday trading is now way back in the past, and the clock won’t be turned back on that or on any of the other Sunday activities now available to us. Churches have been challenged to provide alternatives to Sunday worship, such as ‘Messy Church’ for families after school or on Saturdays. Saturday evening Masses are almost as well-attended by Roman Catholics as Sunday morning services, and some C of E churches now provide Saturday evening worship. And, since the pandemic, a huge range of on-line worship opportunities IS available, which, in most cases, you can take part in at a time that suits you.
It would be interesting to know what Jesus would say about all this. Today’s gospel finds him in dispute with the authorities over the proper keeping of the Sabbath. There was a movement called ‘Keep Sunday Special’ about thirty years ago. I’m sure Jesus would agree with that. That Sabbath, in the synagogue, a crippled woman was present. Entirely on his own initiative, Jesus calls her to him, and heals her so that she could stand upright again. He set her free from her ailment, as the text says.
I’m sure had we been present as onlookers, or friends or neighbours of hers, we would have rejoiced as they did. But the synagogue leader didn’t, because this miraculous healing had taken place on a Sabbath. What kind of religious leader would make objection, apart from one over-protective of the laws that bound him; or anxious about his own position, insecure, or just not interested in the well-being of his people? In another place, Jesus gave instruction that ‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’ He wasn’t interested in the Jewish laws that held people back from enjoying life or giving life fulfilment. He came that people might have life, and have it abundantly. I don’t think he would have been closing school playing fields on a Sunday. But, of course, it is right that we take time out to rest in the Lord, to worship, and to stand back from the usual pressing daily activities.
Jesus’ teaching about the Sabbath was not entirely unprecedented. The writer of Isaiah chapter 58 criticizes the misuse of the Sabbath in his time. He sees the Sabbath as a day on which you should turn back to God and towards others, and so away from yourself. One writer notes, “Without a day to remember what you are for, and who your God is, you can just get into the habit of thinking only of yourself and your own needs.” For Isaiah, the Sabbath day was one when ‘you shall take delight in the Lord.’ Of course, to this day, the Jewish people remember their great deliverance at the time of the Passover at their weekly thanksgiving meal on the eve of the Sabbath.
But perhaps the more important message to take from the gospel today is that Jesus came to free people from whatever burdened them or held them down. Consider the woman who was healed. Her distorted back forced her to face the ground, and she would have been unable to look at people’s faces without huge effort. She probably carried a heavy psychological burden as well as a physical one. I am reminded of that verse in Psalm 31: “I am forgotten like one that is out of mind; when they see me in the street they shrink from me.”
Jesus remonstrated with the synagogue leader. “Should not this woman, whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage?” We are not told the woman’s name, but Jesus describes her as ‘a daughter of Abraham’ – an heir to the one to whom a promise was given that a great and blest people would come through him. Perhaps we can see this ‘daughter of Abraham’ as a representative of all whose beauty is not seen because of a label put on them by others: disabled, immigrant, gay, pensioner, ex-offenders, trans…..the list could go on.
William Barclay suggests that “In Christianity the individual always comes before the system. If ever Christian principles were banished from political and economic life, there would be nothing left to keep at bay the totalitarian state where the individual is lost in the system, and only exists, not for the individual’s sake, but for the sake of the system.” Which was really the standpoint of the synagogue leader in the gospel account. You might think that although William Barclay was writing quite a while ago – 1953, the world is as impersonal now as it was then, maybe more impersonal. I was listening to a radio programme this week exploring the sad facts of loneliness amongst young people.
The Church, at its best, is a welcoming, loving and serving community, bringing meaning and purpose to many lives. The acceptance we can offer to people from all backgrounds and from whatever situations they come from, is something that is so increasingly lost in this impersonal, isolating and difficult world.
The people in that synagogue certainly knew the presence of God in their midst that day; the gift of God’s healing freely offered to a woman unimportant by the world’s standards. Notice too that Jesus thought it vital to take the initiative that day. He could have sought her out afterwards or the next day when the Sabbath was past, and healed her then quietly and without controversy. But by healing her there and then he made it clear that it is not God’s will that any human being should suffer one moment longer than is absolutely necessary; that it shouldn’t be allowed to continue tomorrow if it could be sorted today. Maybe there is a message for us, not to put off a helpful or important deed for another time if we can do it now. A Latin proverb says, “He gives twice who gives quickly.”