Proper 16c 2025; Aug. 24
Jer. 1:4-10; Luke 13:10-17
Jack Hardaway
SET FREE
I can’t carry as much as I used to.
I did some hiking last year and confirmed my suspicion.
Heavy has gotten heavier.
It reminds me of a hilarious hiking story that Bill Bryson tells of when he attempted to walk the Appalachian Trail. The first day or so is brutal, and his back pack was just too heavy. It was killing him. He and his friend got to the top of the first serious mountain and they found piles and piles of abandoned hiking equipment, abandoned by previous hikers who packed too much.
So he and his friend emptied out their packs and left behind almost everything. It simply wasn’t worth carrying it. It was easier after that. The humor was in going through it all and weighing whether the added weight was necessary. The definition of necessary became very narrow. They were lighter after that, in more ways than one.
What weighs us down? What binds us? What bends us?
Has God become part of that baggage that stoops us over? Has faith become a heavy weight? Has the Church become a burden?
Heavy stuff.
We are hearing a series of Gospel lessons where Jesus is seen in conflict with religious authorities.
Today it is about the Sabbath.
It isn’t about being strict or flexible.
It is about how and why.
It is important to remember that honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy is more than a commandment. The Sabbath is the pinnacle of creation, the seventh day, where even God rests, and we are invited to enter into that rest. The Sabbath hallows the goodness of every day of creation
So there was much at stake. More than religious and cultural identity, more than institutional control and order, this is about holding creation together.
The Sabbath is part of creation, the final act, and when the Sabbath is forgotten or dishonored, then creation is at risk, the seven days of the ordered universe begin to fly apart, they are unhallowed, Friday happens on Monday and mass chaos ensues.
The synagogue leader had a good point.
But Jesus brings it deeper.
How do we hallow this day? How do we keep it holy? How does the universe become inhabited by the holy?
The daughter of Abraham, a singular title that she is given.
A woman inhabited with pain, stooped down in bondage to Satan for 18 years, a daughter of Abraham violated by the evil one, for years and years with unwarranted pain and torture.
The number 18 is a number with meaning, it is a sign of unwarranted and unpredictable suffering in Luke’s Gospel. It shows up a few verses earlier with 18 people being killed by a collapsing tower, with Jesus’ point being that it was not something that they deserved, it was an unwarranted and unpredictable tragedy, life is full of danger.
Jesus marks the crippled woman as holy by designating her as a daughter of Abraham, the only time that title is used in scripture. A holy woman afflicted and violated by evil through no fault of her own.
That is what Jesus is saying.
To heal her, to unbind her, to free her to stand tall and to praise God, is to inhabit the Sabbath with the holy. It is keeping the Sabbath. It is deliverance from evil. It is evidence of the arrival of God’s kingdom, when as it says a few chapters after this, when Luke tells us to “stand up straight, lift up your heads, for the time of your liberation has come.”
So this is about keeping the Sabbath as holy by freeing people. In the broader context of faith it is about God being the one who unbinds and who lifts the burden. The gift of Sabbath rest.
Is that how we experience God?
Is that who Jesus is to us?
The one who helps us to stand tall?
Is that the faith I bring to others?
Faith that sets free, not as another burden.
Faith that is the gift of Sabbath, the sacrament of Sabbath.
Not a heavy weight that cripples, but the visitation that inhabits the world with holiness.
The Sabbath that is redemptive.
Not a dismissal of Sabbath, but a deepening.
What brings us rest? What restores us? What stands us back up?
What raises us up? Sabbath as resurrection, and resurrection as Sabbath.
The Sabbath that frees us to choose love. True liberation. True freedom. True rest.
May we know Jesus like that.