Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 13 2013

Isaiah 58:9b-end
Hebrews 12:18-end
Luke 13:10-17

This week Luke returns to a theme he has visited before: Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath, which causes controversy and opposition, because the religious law said that you shouldn’t work on the Sabbath. This is a theme which is important to the Gospel writers and at its heart is the nature of the Sabbath, what it is for, why it is commanded. 

What the Sabbath is about is the restoration of creation. Christ, God among us, has come to redeem humanity and all of creation from what, in today’s reading, is called the bondage of Satan. This is what the Sabbath has always been about. The Old Testament institution prefigured and foreshadowed this great liberation, and in the New Testament when Christ comes he makes explicit its meaning. But today’s gospel reading is about how this isn’t understood by the religious authorities.

If you’re old enough you may remember the 1940s novel and Ealing film “Whiskey Galore”, in which the devout presbyterian inhabitants of a Scottish island refrain from salvaging a shipwrecked cargo of whiskey because midnight has struck and it is the Sabbath - much to their sorrow. That all seems in a different world now.

But the islanders in that story are making the same mistake as the ruler of the Synagogue in today’s Gospel reading - they are being puritanical and legalistic, making the Sabbath into an oppressive institution instead of a liberating one. “There are six days on which work ought to be done”, says the Synagogue ruler, “come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath”. 

But that is to get it all wrong, as Jesus knows. The Sabbath is about reconnecting with the goodness of creation, about renewal and restoration. Whether that goodness is healing or whiskey - in moderation, of course. The Sabbath rest is about our creatureliness, we are creatures not gods, we have limits and we need to rest and return. Cycles of rest, activity and festivity are part of how the universe is made, and if we resist that we are resisting the good of creation. So healing is a supremely good thing to do on the Sabbath - it is the restoration and renewal of creation to the goodness God intends. 

This is why the Christian Sabbath is now Sunday - the day of resurrection, the greatest healing and restoration in which the new creation is revealed. It is not about keeping a list of rules - this or that activity is banned from midnight. Rather, it is about celebration. The Sabbath rest is to make space for recreation, re-creation in fact: God’s new creation reaffirmed in the weekly day of renewal and festivity.

So we must not take a legalistic approach to the Sabbath, we must not allow it to become an oppressive burden. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, as Jesus has already said in an earlier scene in the Gospel. 

But there is an opposite error to the legalistic approach, one we are perhaps more likely to see in our own society, and that is is to ignore the Sabbath principle. As though we and the earth had no limits, as though we were gods. As though we did not need to be set free from Satan’s bondage. 

There was a tragedy reported in the Evening Standard last week. Moritz Erhardt, a young intern in a major investment bank in London, fell down dead after working through the night eight times in two weeks. He’d seemingly worked solid for 72 hours before his death. There are hundreds of interns working like him. Yes, for high salaries and even higher prospects. But at an inhuman price. One of them told the Standard’s reporter, “Every intern’s worst nightmare is what’s called ‘the magic roundabout’, which is when you get a taxi to drive you home at 7am and then it waits for you while you shower and change and then takes you back to the office.”

Less extreme than that but more pervasive is the ever increasing pressure of work. Having worked at a university for 20 years I know something of what that’s been like in the public sector. Staff numbers have steadily reduced and an ever increasing workload has been placed on ever fewer people. Management practice is now to pool staff in shared offices, where the psychological pressure to stay past your hours and take work home - because that’s what your colleagues are doing - is difficult to avoid.

The result is that leisure is eroded, and rest and re-creation are no longer part of a routine cycle but grabbed as and when, and rarely. Stress increases and families and relationships suffer. The other side of this is those who are unable to find work as those in work do more and more. Unemployment is just as dehumanising, the lack of dignity and purpose and prospects while others are driven ever harder chasing ever inflating house prices, rent and cost of living. 

The woman healed by Jesus in today’s reading is described as having been “bound by Satan for eighteen long years”. “Satan”, as we have seen before, means “the accuser”, the accusatory principle undermining and destroying human life, working against our good place in a good creation. How many people today, I wonder, might identify with that woman, bent over beneath the accuser's burden. And the ignoring of the Sabbath principle results in that kind of bondage and destruction, because it sets human beings up as false gods, idols that demand  even human sacrifices.

And there is more to the Sabbath than just the weekly day of rest. In the Bible the Sabbath principle extends to animals and fields, to the environment, even to economics in the cancellation of debts every fifty years. Everything needs to live within its proper limits if it is truly to live and flourish. Everything needs to discover the liberation that God gives in Christ.

When we read stories like that in the Evening Standard, or consider the ever increasing demands on our own time, it may seem as though everyone is caught in a vicious spiral. How can we break free? Well, first of all we need to remember that it is God’s will and purpose that we should flourish in his creation, and he sent Jesus to free us from the bondage of sin and death and make us a new creation in him. We do not free ourselves, but we are freed by the grace of God. 

But God’s liberation works through us in our co-operation with grace. And that will usually be in the little things of daily life rather than in great revolutions. There is a prayer in the daily office which says, “Lord, lead us to our heavenly home by single steps of self-restraint and deeds of righteousness; through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Those single steps we can make, through grace, can take many forms. If you have contracted hours of work, go home on time, and take your holiday. Perhaps your colleagues will be inspired to follow your example. And then maybe your employer will have to hire more staff. If you need to, join a union or another group to protect workers’ rights - don’t forget the union movement has its roots not in political flag waving but in Christian values and respect for people working in what were extremely inhuman conditions. Have the courage not to fill every moment with activity. Plan down time and put it in your diary. If you live in a family, eat together at least once a week. Eat food that’s in season. 

Undergirding all of this is not allowing the accuser to hold us captive, allowing Jesus to liberate us. Jesus shows a better way, the way of celebration and trust in the goodness of God our creator. Christ shows the meaning of the Sabbath principle, which is woven into the fabric of creation.

Above all this breaks through and becomes real in what we are doing today, in the Eucharist, which is why Sabbath, Sunday and Eucharist indispensably go together. Right from the start, the Apostles broke bread on the Lord’s day, recognising the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread on the day of the resurrection. 

Sunday Mass is not an arbitrary rule but equally it’s not optional. It gives the meaning to Sunday as the day of festivity, and gives meaning to the rest of the week of work and activity, too. The Eucharist is the re-creative principle of the Sabbath in action, whatever our personal circumstances. It is supremely the life of the resurrection pervading our lives in the here and now, giving purpose and joy and delight in the new creation which the resurrection reveals.