Learning from Jesus: Learning to be Free

Luke 13:10-17

Chronic illness in Jesus’ day was seen a little differently than it is seen today. Today friends and neighbors would do what they could to help and support a person who was hindered in day to day life. In Jesus’ day a person who had a chronic condition such as the one this lady suffered from would cause that person to be ostracized and avoided. Her illness would effectively render her invisible to the greater society. She would pass through life alone and unseen. It would almost be as if she were not a person at all but another part of the scenery, an object which needed to be gotten around in order to go about your day.

This woman went to the synagogue that day as she would have on any other Sabbath. Perhaps she was coming especially to hear the new rabbi who had come to town. Jesus’ presence would have caused quite a stir and nobody would have wanted to miss being a synagogue that Saturday, since it was his practice to speak in the synagogues on the Sabbath. This woman would have come to the synagogue that day with little more expectations than to hear the new teacher who was in town and participate in the weekly worship service. But this turns out to be far from a normal Sabbath for this woman. Not only did she get to hear the new rabbi speak, but she got to have a life altering encounter with Jesus.

She was not coming to the synagogue that day with any thought about getting healed; one could expect that this was completely outside her expectations at this point in her life, after spending nearly two decades suffering from this problem. While Jesus was there he saw her. Not only did he actually see her, but he walked over to her and spoke to her. You can only imagine how amazed she must have been at that point, the amazement she felt at him simply coming over to her would have then paled when compared to that which she felt when Jesus reached out, touched, declared to her that she was healed and she was. For the first time in 18 years she could stand properly.

She came that morning to worship and expected to leave as she always had, unnoticed and ignored, but instead she encountered the Son of God and here life was changed, forever in an instant. Most people, who saw her that day, if they saw her at all, saw an undesirable. Someone to be avoided and ignored but Jesus, Jesus was different, when Jesus saw her he saw someone who was in need of his touch, in need of his healing. He saw a person who was suffering and he reached out and alleviated her suffering. He saw a woman who was bound and enslaved by something completely beyond her control and he acted to release her from that bondage and set her free from that slavery.

What do you think it felt like to be this woman? What was her life like before Jesus touched her that day? What do you think her life would be like after? What were the major differences?

The passage begins by looking at this woman, her suffering and how Jesus stepped into her life and set her free. She did not ask for it, did not coming looking for it but Jesus transformed her life, forever, restored her and her life in ways that were truly phenomenal. And that would be enough. That’ll preach! That alone right there would make us all feel good. But it is not enough, the passage cannot, does not end there with this truly miraculous thing happening to this woman, it does not end with Jesus doing this wonderful, kind, merciful thing for this woman. No there has to be a twist, there has to be some meat on these bones, something we can sink out teeth into and chew on for a bit. Cue, the leader of the synagogue, who steps into our delightful scene, into this heartfelt moment between Jesus and this woman, to come in to make sure that everyone knows that a grievous offense has occurred here. A woman has been healed on the Sabbath.

This is not the proper time and place for healing. There are six days one which Jesus can go about healing but the Sabbath is a day of rest given unto the Lord and no one is to do any work on the Sabbath. The synagogue leader needs to make sure that everyone needs to make sure they always keep the Sabbath in its proper place in their lives. So lets’ do that real quick, let’s take a look at the purpose of the Sabbath.

First of all we must remember God set up the Sabbath. In the very beginning of Genesis the author explains to his readers that, “On the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work God had

done in creation.”(Gen 2:2-3) It was supposed to be a day which was different in all others in that on all the other days you worked to live and to survive. On this one day you were supposed to lay all that in the hands of your creator and rely on God to sustain you. To stop all work, to trust God, knowing that even if you rested all, that needed to occur, would still happen. It was about relying on God and it was about stopping all that you did, taking a break from all that you did and allowing yourself to slow down and enjoy the life God had given to you and creation which God created. Part of the thought process was if God needed to rest, surely we humans who are not God, are far less than God and therefore do not have the eternal stamina of God, must also need to rest.

The Sabbath was a day given by God, which God intended to be a day given over to God. Not only was it a day pointed to in the creation narrative but it was a part of the covenant which the Israelites had made with God. “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the Seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” (Ex. 20:8-10a) It was a day to remember that God brought them out of slavery in Egypt. It was God who heard them cry; it was God who came to rescue them when they were enslaved; it was God who said, “My people will suffer no more!” Therefore, they were called to, “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work-you, or your son or your daughter, or your male for female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord you God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deut. 5:12-15)

The Sabbath was about resting, it was about respecting God and it was about trusting the creator to take care of creation. It was a day which called for people to rely on God. It was a day which allowed people to rest and rejuvenate. It was a day during which all the other cares of living were stripped from the people and they could focus on what they were created for, that is relationship with God and with each other. It was a day where nothing which HAD to be done could stand between you and your God. Traditionally it was also a day during which nothing which HAD to be done could stand between you and spending time with the people God had placed in your life, your family and those closest to you.

In the Gospel this morning, the synagogue leader calls Jesus out for misusing the Sabbath, for doing something which had been forbidden by God to do on this day. The leader tells the crowd God allows for these things to be done on all the other days of the week but they were not to be done on the Sabbath. Jesus did not see things this way. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says the Sabbath is made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath. That is to say the Sabbath was set up for the Good and for Benefit of humankind. Humankind was not set up to serve the Sabbath.

The rest we are to take on the Sabbath was not a rest we were to take for the benefit of God. God does not need a day dedicated solely to worship. God does not need for us to rest. We need the Sabbath. We need a day which says, “STOP!” Everyone needs a day during which we can set aside all that worries and presses in on us. God understands our nature, and our weaknesses and knows unless we are ordered to stop, to rest, to take a break, our inclination is to go and go and go and never stop. God knows this is not good for us. God also knows that in our go, go, go nature we tend to begin to rely on ourselves, we tend to begin to believe that it is us who are making things happen that it is our work, our labor which keep the world spinning. God knows that we fear that if we stop, everything will come tumbling down. God knows that we, whether we admit it or not, believe that the world just might stop spinning if we do not work to keep it going. God knows that we need the reminder that God is God. God knows that we need acts of faith to help us rely on God. God knows that our relationships with each other and with our God suffers when we are not practically ordered to take time, to rest, rely on God, and focus on our relationships with one another and with our God. The Sabbath was created for us, for our good, for our benefit and not the other way around.

Now, wait and hold on before make accusations and all gang up on the leader of the synagogue, shake our heads disapprovingly and scorn him because he is yet another Jewish, scribe, Pharisee, teacher of the law, who was wrong and against Jesus, let me stand up and speak on his behalf. After all I don’t like it when anybody gangs up on anybody, especially if that person probably does not deserve to be tried and executed (so to speak) by a group of people who did not know him and lived 20-odd centuries after his death. Yay, I am the one who thinks, “Poor synagogue leader! He is just so misunderstood.” The leader of the synagogue, although misguided, has a very good point here. Sabbath was not a day during which people were supposed to seek healing. If someone was actively seeking healing on the Sabbath, this would require the “healer” to do work on the Sabbath. It simply was not fair to tell some people they needed to let go, relax, take the day off and rely on God and then tell other people this does not apply to you. You don’t get to rest, you don’t get to let go, you don’t need special time to rely on God. You do work 7 days a week because your work is too important to get a day off. 

Now there were some things which could be done on the Sabbath; in fact they were things which really could not be put off for another day. God made a list of these things and guess what, healing people was not something which God had seen as something which could not wait until the Sabbath was over. So when the leader stepped in he was actually upholding what God had said. The leader wanted to protect the Sabbath and by doing so was in fact protecting people. The leader did not want people to start coming to the Sabbath worship service expecting to be healed, thus imposing on another person’s Sabbath and not allowing, healers to have this one day when they could set that aside, rest, worship and rely on God.

So here’s the thing, Jesus was not so concerned about what might happen. Jesus was not concerned about someone imposing on his Sabbath. This woman had not come seeking to be healed but Jesus had chosen to heal her and he would have done it whether it was the Sabbath or the fourth of July (if they had cared anything about the fourth of July).

Jesus was not concerned about what day of the week it was; Jesus was concerned for the freedom of this woman. Jesus saw a woman who was enslaved to an illness and he desired to set her free and this was something which, in his mind, was completely in line with the spirit of what the Sabbath was all about. Jesus argues his case by looking at the acts which God had allowed people to do on the Sabbath. God made allowances for animals to be set free to be able to get to the watering trough on the Sabbath, if God felt it important for an animal to be set free then, how much more was God concerned about the freedom of human beings whom God created and loved. Basically Jesus was asking, “isn’t the freedom of this woman from the bonds of this illness, so that she may able to move freely more important than releasing the bonds of an animal so that it may be free to move to get water and food as it so choose?”

The Sabbath was not merely about sanctity and rest. It was also a day about being set free. It was a day which reminded the people about how God had set them free when they were slaves in Israel. It was a day in which a person was set free from the day to day grind, a day which was free, free of work free of worry; a day to be free to rest, worship and reunite yourself with your creator and with those around you. When you think about it that way, healing this woman is a part of the spirit of the Sabbath

I firmly and whole heartedly believe God calls us to take one day, just one day out of each week to, STOP; to stop our normal routine, to take a break from that which drives us and causes us to go, go, go and rest, relax, take a day long deep breath, rejuvenate, focus on our relationships with one another and focus on our relationships with each other. I firmly believe that the call to Sabbath is just as strong as a call on the people of God today as it ever was.

The point of this passage it not that Jesus does not think that it is important that we have a day set aside for worshiping God and for rest, as commanded in Gen, Ex, and Deut. This passage is not here to show us how legalistic the Jews in Jesus’ day were, so we can look down on how they were wrong and completely misunderstood the intentions of God and pat ourselves on the back because they were so legalistic and hypocritical and we would never be like that. The point of this passage is freedom, that God desires freedom for all those who are called by Christ’s name, that God desires freedom for all humanity, that God desires freedom for all creation.

The key words in this passage are “set free” and “bound.” Jesus tells the leader, as well as us, that this woman was bound by her illness, just like the animals God made provisions for in the OT law, just like the Israelites in slavery. Jesus tells the woman that she is set free, just like the animals, just like the Israelites. Jesus himself tells us this, when he read from the scroll of Isaiah when he taught in the synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus is concerned about setting the captives free.  Setting the captive free is one of the things Jesus himself declares to is a part of his mission here on earth.  And here we have Jesus doing just that.

We would never say it this way but often times people think about Jesus as in the do’s and do not’s. When we think about what it means to become a Christian we think about how when we become a Christian we have to give up what we want to do. We have to give up our Sunday mornings and spend that time at church. We have to give up our time, so we can spend time reading God’s word and praying. We have to give up getting to act in the ways we want to and give up simply saying whatever we want to say and instead we need to allow God to work in us and through us, acting as Jesus would act and saying the things Jesus would have us say.

As Christians it is easy to get caught up in all the “rules.” And at their heart they have our best interest in mind. They are there to help us have a concrete understanding of what someone who is living and acting in Christ-like ways may act. But when we start focusing on the rules or laws for their own sake and not looking to the heart of the matter or to the real purpose such guidelines were laid down, we can be just like the leader, worried that laws have been broken and that the breaking of the rule this one time will lead to continual transgression and soon utter chaos.

So often, we are trying to do the right thing and are trying to simply encourage others to do the right thing, just like the synagogue leader. But too many times, we have our focus on the wrong thing. Our hearts are in the right places, we want what is right for God and for those around us, but our focus is not on God, our focus is not on the heart of the issues our focus is on the rules and the breaching of laws, as if the rules or laws themselves are an entity which need to be protected and shielded lest they be harmed in any way shape or form.

This passage is here to show us that Jesus did not come to bind us up with a set of rules, laws or even guidelines, but came to set us free. The “rules” that we get so focused on are not and should not be the focus of our lives as Christians. In fact they can not be the focus. Least we loose who Jesus is and what Jesus came to this earth to do. Jesus is freedom focused; focused on our freedom to love God, our freedom to live in relationship with him, our freedom to live lives that are worthy of the God that we love so much. Living life as a Christian, not a set of rules, it is that ability to live life the way it was created to be lived.

Being free is about allowing yourself to be free, as well as about allowing others to be free. It is easy to not only judge ourselves, but it is all too easy to begin to judge others by a set of standards and rules. We inhibit not only our own freedom but we try to enslave others in the same bounds in which we bind ourselves. Not only do we beat ourselves up but we make sure others know when they have done things wrong.

Jesus simply did not come so that we could live our lives bound by a set of rules, no matter how right those rules may be. Jesus came so that we can know the freedom of living life for Jesus, the freedom of living life the way we were created to live, reunited in relationship with one another and reunited in relationship with our God.

Living life as Christian may mean that the way in which we live our life will align with a list or a set of guidelines but that is not because we live by that set of rules or guidelines but because when we are living life reunited with our God, loving God and neighbor the way we were created to love, it just so happens to align with that list or set of guidelines. We live differently because we are compelled to live differently, because we are living lives marked by love; marked by love of God and love of neighbor. We live differently, but we live this way freely out of love not obligation and living life this way results in a life marked by joy.

Luke tells us that the lady and the crowd rejoiced after the healing and this whole discussion, because they were truly free to love, to worship God and to honor the Sabbath, not because God commanded them to do so, but because these things are also a part of living life the way God calls for us to live life.

Following the commands of Jesus should be a freedom which we embrace because we love him, not a chore that we do because we must, because we are commanded to do so, or because it is on a set of rules or a set of guideline which tell us what it looks like to love Jesus. So allow yourself to rejoice in your freedom, allow yourself to follow Jesus, allow yourself to love the way God calls you to love. You are free to live, you are free to love you are fee to be the people God called you to be to be the people you were created to be and now THAT is something to rejoice because about because YOU, like this woman, have been set free. How can Jesus set YOU free this morning?