The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 58:9b-14, Psalm 103:1-8, and Luke 13:10-17.
The Jewish Sabbath was unique in the Ancient Near East. All the other cultures had holy days, of course. They celebrated new moons and harvests and seasons and days devoted to certain gods. But the Jewish Sabbath did not correspond to any natural phenomenon. And no one had a holy day that occurred every 7 days. In fact, in Mesopotamia the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of the month were considered unlucky. Where did the Jews get this idea?
The command to observe the Sabbath is found in the 10 commandments. In Exodus 20, the reason for the Sabbath is that God rested after the 6 days of creation. In Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath is also supposed to remind the Israelites that they were slaves in Egypt until God liberated them. So not only are they not to work on the Sabbath but neither are their slaves nor their animals nor the resident aliens. And that was something else unique to the Sabbath. Generally speaking, in the Gentile world people had to work even on holy days, especially slaves. What's interesting is that the Sabbath is to be kept holy, that is, set apart for God's purposes, yet the real beneficiaries are the people who are given a day off in order that they may rest. (Deuteronomy 5:14) As Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
And that gives us the background for today's reading from Isaiah. In fact, I wish the people who decided on the lectionary passages had started the reading a few verses earlier. The chapter starts with God telling the prophet to confront his people with their rebellious deeds. Though they say they want to know what God requires and wonder why God doesn't respond to their fasts, God says, “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” (Isaiah 58:3-4) That kind of fasting will not get you heard by God. He goes on to say, “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Deuteronomy 5:6-7) We are told, “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.” (Deuteronomy 5:9a) In other words, truly worshipping God leads to helping and not harming your fellow human being.
So it's really odd how people keep separating what we do for God from what we do for others. As we see in our gospel reading, religious people were even doing this in Jesus' day. It's the Sabbath and Jesus is teaching in the synagogue as usual. He sees a woman who is bent over and unable to stand up straight. He lays hands on her and heals her. The president of the synagogue gets upset over this, insisting that the woman could have gotten healed on any other day of the week. And then it's Jesus' turn to get indignant. He points out that the prohibition on working doesn't mean doing nothing. Animals have to drink the same as people do. And to do so meant untying the animal. Now tying and untying were classified as one of the 39 categories of work that the Pharisees said were forbidden on the Sabbath. But unless you wanted your ox or donkey to get dehydrated, you needed to technically break this restriction.
And Jesus says that if folks can release an animal from its bonds for its health, he can free this woman from the ailment that has restricted her life. Human commands should not trump compassion for humans. I wouldn't be surprised if Jesus wasn't thinking of the passage from Isaiah that talked of loosening the bonds of injustice.
Now to be fair, the religious leaders did not object to saving a life on the Sabbath. In fact, rabbis held that if it were necessary to save a life, you could break any of the 613 laws of the Torah, except idolatry, sexual immorality and murder. But Jesus was not saving a life; he was making a disabled person's life better by healing them. And various schools of Pharisees debated if that was allowed. Some Pharisees even said you could not pray for the sick on the Sabbath, while others disagreed.
In another place Jesus' critics brought a man with a shriveled hand to the synagogue to see what he would do. Jesus tells the man to stand next to him and says, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save a life or destroy it?” Then he heals the man. He is showing that God wants us to do good on the Sabbath. But more than that, I think Jesus is saying that doing nothing when you can help someone who is suffering is evil. In his sermon on the last judgment it is the people who do nothing for those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, imprisoned or a resident alien, who are denied entrance into the kingdom of God. The point of that parable is that what you do or neglect to do to those in need you are doing or neglecting to do to Jesus, the Son of God. (Matthew 25:31-46)
Throughout the Bible our duty to God is linked to our duty to other people. And the reason goes right back to the first chapter of Genesis. We are told that God made humans, both male and female, in his image. (Genesis 1:27) We are told that the reason for the flood was that God saw that the world was ruined by violence. (Genesis 6:11) And after the flood God makes a covenant with Noah that for his part he will not flood the whole earth and our part is not to shed each others' blood because we are made in God's image. (Genesis 9:6) God is essentially saying that, like Jesus, what we do to each other we do to him. (Proverbs 19:17)
Again, when Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, he gave not one but two. We are to love God with all we are and all we have and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. He says that no commandment is greater than these and that all the other commandments come from these two. (Mark 12:28-31; Matthew 22:35-40)
As we saw in Isaiah, God's message to his people through his prophets is usually two-fold: you are not treating God as you should and you are not treating other people, especially the poor and powerless, as you should. (cf. Jeremiah 5:28-29; 22:16; Ezekiel 16:49; 22:29-31) As it says in 1 John, “If a man says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn't love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20) Remember that we are to see and serve Jesus by seeing him in and serving others.
And lest you think that you only have to love your neighbor and your fellow Christians and no one else, Jesus said we are to love our enemies as well. (Luke 6:27-28) There is no one left that we can hate and still call ourselves Christians.
Jesus called us to be peacemakers. (Matthew 5:9) And if we are not at peace with someone, we are to fix that before worshipping God. Jesus said, “So then, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother and then come and present your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24) We are supposed to take the first step even if we are the one sinned against. (Matthew 18:15) And Jesus wisely says to do this while you two are alone together. Only bring others into it if it can't be resolved privately. Today people go right to the internet and tell everyone what their beef is with someone else. That makes it very hard to reconcile with that person later.
Speaking of the internet, people are isolating themselves with their screens. You've heard that church membership is declining. But as it turns out, membership in all voluntary organizations, like service, fraternal, recreational, political and civic groups, has also been plummeting. And, surprise! We are suffering an epidemic of loneliness. As well as an epidemic of deaths of despair, like suicide and overdoses. God said that it is not good for humans to be alone. (Genesis 2:18) We are social animals. I don't think it is a coincidence that people who aren't maintaining their relationships with others are also not maintaining their relationship with God. What I don't understand is how people do not see that you can't have a good relationship with God and treat other people, who were created in God's image, badly.
From the beginning God has told us that, yes, we are our brother's keeper. (Genesis 4:9) A better translation is “protector.” We are to look after one another. We are to help those who need it. As we see in today's psalm God cares about justice for all who are oppressed. You cannot be right with God if you are not trying to do right by others. You cannot be the apple of God's eye if you are at someone's throat. And if you turn away from those who are in need, you will not find God. He is with those who are neglected by other people. As Psalm 147 says, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)
The Bible tells us repeatedly of God's love for us. The most famous verse in the Bible tells us that he loved the world so much that he sent his unique son to bring us eternal life. The next verse says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.” (John 3:17) There are a lot of religious people who seem to think their job is to condemn people, if not by doing something to them, then by standing by and condemning them to suffer neglect, hunger, homelessness, illness or injustice.
I think it is those people who on judgment day will say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name and in your name drive our demons and perform many miracles?” And Jesus will say to them, “I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!” (Matthew 7:21-23)
What's the law they broke? The one thing they don't mention doing in Jesus' name: loving other people. Over and over we are told to love our neighbor, our enemy and one another. (Leviticus 19:18, 34; Matthew 5:44, 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 6:27, 35; John 13:34-35, 15:12, 17; Romans 12:10, 20, 13:9-10; Galatians 5:14; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; James 2:8; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 3:11, 23, 4:7; 2 John 5) The commandment to love others appears in scripture more than 20 times, as if to emphasize that it is twice as important as the 10 commandments.
And this explains why Jesus doesn't know them. Because as it says in 1 John, “The person who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8) If they had shown love to the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned and the resident alien, they would have seen and known Jesus and he would have known them.
Today we atomize everything. We take things apart, look at their pieces and try to put them in separate containers. The way you do when you autopsy something. But that's not how they exist in life. In a living faith, what you think about God is connected to what you think about human beings; how you relate to God is connected to how you relate to people. God is love. When we show him love in worship we remind ourselves of how he loves us and we feel his love. When we see other people, we are reminded of how they, like us, were created in his image and we approach them with love. When we see how that image has been damaged by sin and evil, we seek to repair and heal those who are damaged. That's what we do if our faith is living, if we are living in the love of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, who loves us and heals us and gave himself for us.
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