A Day for Healing, Mercy, and Grace

The idea of work on the Sabbath has changed in my lifetime. I grew up in Connecticut when it still had strict Blue Laws: no stores open on Sunday, except for pharmacies and some grocery stores and gas stations—and then only for a few hours. William Willamon, a theologian and ethicist, wrote in his book Resident Aliens about the day the movie theater in his little Southern small town showed a movie on Sunday for the first time… he said it was the day the world changed forever.

And he was right: if in his little town, where traditional values were held so strongly could tolerate—even encourage—the opening of the movie theater on a Sunday, then anything was possible.

The idea behind the Blue Laws was to keep the Sabbath holy, and to build in some time for quiet rest. But it was never 100%--there were exceptions to certain professions. Hospitals, for example, were always 24/7 institutions but little by little culture chipped away at the idea until the laws came tumbling down.

Today, of course, even banks are open on Sunday. Given the hectic nature of our lives today, we might be excused if we give in to some nostalgia here and there.

And we might also be excused from understanding exactly what the problem is in today’s Gospel. Jesus heals a chronically ill woman from her illness in the Synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus is teaching in a local synagogue on the Sabbath, he looks over sees this woman who is bent over because of some kind of chronic malady that is clearly painful. He calls her over and heals her. This causes the leader of the congregation, to complain to those around him about Jesus (interestingly not to Jesus)—he did “work” on the Sabbath, couldn’t this have waited until this evening or tomorrow.

I mean, really, is this any way for a respectable Messiah to act?

The rules to "do no work on the Sabbath" had exceptions, as surely the leader of the synagogue must have known. You still had to feed your livestock on the Sabbath. I mean, a cow only knows she needs milking, not day of the week it is! And you still had to bathe and care for yourselves. You still had to feed yourselves—which meant someone in the household (guess who?) was always working.

What’s remarkable to me is that, according to the Gospels, Jesus apparently had to deal with this issue a lot! An awful lot! I mean, he deals with the question of working or healing on the Sabbath six times in the Gospel of Luke alone!

Given that Luke’s Gospel is rooted in a Church that is increasingly Gentile, and rooted more and more in Roman culture, I think something else is at work—and it is not simply a diatribe against first century Blue Laws.

Jesus is teaching us that the Sabbath, rather than only being a place to rest and refresh, is telling us something about how God works. Jesus is saying that the Sabbath is the time when work—healing work—can happen, and that there is no better time to see healing work happen than on the day God rested.

Jesus—and Luke—are putting forward the notion that when God rested after creating everything in six days, God not napping but was instead a day of appreciation and connection. The Sabbath was the day God stepped back, and looked at all creation and marveled at the extent of its goodness. It was the day God blessed creation in its fullness.

So it’s not a day to nap; it’s a day to appreciate. And for Jesus it was a day to show and appreciate that God’s Reign is amongst us, right here, right now, and that the completion and wholeness we long for is in fact available to us right here, right now.

When we refrain from normal work on the Sabbath, it is so that we can appreciate the wonder and the power and the miracle of God’s work that we take part in everyday.

Jesus would say elsewhere that the Sabbath is made for us—so that we can remember that everyday we are apart of God’s creation.

The Sabbath reminds us that God’s work never ends. God’s work does move in cycles, though. In a cycle of rest and activity—in a go-go world such as ours we often forget how to rest and what it is for. Rest is not only to reenergize the body, but periods of rest is where we renew the mind and spirit as well. Our prayer, our study, our community life are all part of the rest we undertake. The times of reflection and study, our times of play, of art and music, are all times we need to be full, whole people. These periods of rest may be a day, like a Sunday, or they may be times we take in spiritual retreat or even the moment we take to say a simple prayer or the moment we take to reflect on the blessings of the day before we drop off to sleep.

Our work is where we engage the world—our public lives, our work, our participation in civic and community life, our outward relationships, these are the places where our lives as baptized people.

To be healthy people, to be fruitful friends of Jesus and healthy apprentices we need to remember that we need to live this cycle of renewal and action. Of rest and activity.

Jesus heals and works on the Sabbath to remind us that everything we do rests in God’s grace and when we rest, we rest in God’s grace. In the action of rest and activity, mercy never takes a holiday—neither does God’s power. That is why we come here—to lay before God all that we have and all that we are, all our pain and all our hopes, knowing that God in Christ heals us and that in Christ we are the healers—and bringers of rest—to those who seek after God.