We have this crazy little dog, a Jack Russell mix. Every night we let her in the house and she runs in and leaps into this dog crate that we have and waits expectantly with great joy for us to close and lock the wire cage door so she can’t get out. The next morning all we have to do is to barely turn the lock and she bursts out of her tomb dancing about singing that she has been set free at last. We go through the same drama every day, the same liturgy.
She leaps into her prison, and then she is set free with joy.
In the Gospel According to Luke we are all just like my dog, we get ourselves stuck, tied up, bound, bent, we can’t help it, it is the condition of a broken world and a broken humanity. And then we long to be set free. And Jesus is the one who breaks the chains and leads the great prison break, leaping from the tomb singing about freedom.
Today’s Gospel lesson shows this drama of God and humanity, this liturgy of fallenness and redemption with simple masterful storytelling, an artist who illustrates salvation with deep gut felt words, all it takes is a few sentences.
I told Susan, my wife, that it is interesting that the first Gospel lesson after returning from my sabbatical is about Sabbath keeping and Sabbath breaking. The root meaning and purpose of sabbaticals is all about Sabbath. She then said it’s actually more interesting that the Gospel lesson is about a bent over and crippled woman because after walking a 500 mile pilgrimage I’ve been walking around just like that.
We are all this crippled woman, bent over and bound by our broken humanity, our broken freedom. We are sought out and healed, the hands of Jesus touch us, and we are set free from our ailment so we can stand up straight, our lips are finally opened that our mouths may show forth praise.
And then comes trouble, Luke tells us that expectations are not met, there is concern that the character of God’s people is being compromised. The healing happens on the Sabbath, a day that is to be different, set apart. Jesus condemns the leader of the synagogue as hypocrite for unbinding his ox or donkey and taking them to water on the Sabbath, while not allowing this woman to be unbound from her ailment so she can be led to the waters of praise and thanksgiving.
Questions are left floating in the air. Who is the bent over and ailing one? The woman or the synagogue leader? Who is more in need of heeling from being twisted up by broken freedom of the created order?
And then there are the questions about the Sabbath itself. What is God’s Sabbath about? What is it to live and share in God’s Sabbath rest? Is Jesus eroding the character of that rest with a necessary compromise? Or is he showing us something deeper and essential about God’s Sabbath rest?
Perhaps this healing, perhaps this unbinding of our bent over humanity is revelatory, revealing what God’s Sabbath is all about…the gift of freedom, of being set free, unbound, bursting from the tomb and singing and showing forth praise. Perhaps something essential of who God is and what God is all about is being unraveled and shown to us with great clarity.
And then comes the question of where are we in this story? Are we being unbound? Or are we binding up others? Does God’s Sabbath have a claim on us, on how we live? Are we sharing in the gift of God’s Sabbath rest that we may become creatures of freedom and song and praise? What does it mean to be free anyway? And just who is Jesus to me? Do I accept his healing touch like the woman? Or do I reject Jesus like the synagogue leader because he doesn’t meet my expectations, because he wants to change me and how I live?
Such questions.
Will we accept freedom’s burden of praise and Sabbath rest? Will we take part in the great liturgy of unbinding the many chains that tie down our world? Will we seek out the infirm and offer the healing touch of Jesus?
When the cage bursts open, will we leap from the tomb and sing and show forth praise?
This is who God is, this is what God does, Jesus is that leap of God’s freedom, that song, that praise showing forth.
Be that song, be that praise shining forth, be that unbinding of our bent over and broken humanity.