Trinity 11 Bale 26-08-01.
Luke 13:10-17: Sabbath Prejudices.
Story: In 1981 the film, Chariots of Fire, won an Oscar - the Academy Award for Best Picture.
It tells the true story of two atheletes:
Harold Abrahams - a man of the world and Eric Liddell - a committed Christian.
Eric Liddell was one of the favourites to win the gold medal for the 100 m in the Paris Olympics in 1924.
However the quarter finals for the 100 m were scheduled to be run on a Sunday.
And Liddell made it a principle never to run on Sunday, the Lord’s day.
So he pulled out.
His coach, and some other including the Prince of Wales, try to convince him to change his mind.
But he would not participate in the semifinals, because they were being held on Sunday.
Liddell believed that to run on Sunday violated the 4th Commandment...to keep the Sabbath day holy.
However God honoured Liddell’s stand to make Sunday a special day for God. Liddell got his gold medal in a totally unexpected way
After turning down the chance to run in the 100m semifinals, Liddell was surprisingly given a place in the 400 m finals.
But it was a race that he had never run before.
And against all the odd, Liddell won the race.
Just before the race, one of the Great Britain team masseurs sent him a note that said:
“In the old book it says: He that honours me, I will honour” (referring to 1 Samuel 2:30)
Liddell won the 400 m finals with a world record and that day transformed the 400
Many race commentators said he ran like a man inspired. His sister Florence later commented:
Eric always said that the great thing for him was when he stood by his principles and refused to run in the 100 m, he found that the 400 m was really his race.
He would never have dreamt of trying the 400 m at the Olympics.
For Liddell Sunday was a special day for God and so he would not run on Sunday.
Today’s Gospel reading also deals with
the same issue.
Our day set aside for God is the Sunday - the day the Jews kept special was called the Sabbath.
And the question Jesus raised was: Is it right
to heal on the Sabbath?
In answering this question, I would like to focus on the two cripples who met Jesus in our Gospel reading this morning.
I would like to ask “which one went away healed”?
The Two cripples
Two cripples, you might ask – I only saw one.
Yes, two.... The two people that met with Jesus that morning were - I would suggest to you - both crippled in their own way.
1. The first cripple was, obviously, the woman
She was physically crippled.
One Bible Commentator has said that her deformity was due to “having the bones of her spine fused in a rigid mass.”
The Scripture tells us that she had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years.
Her disability was obvious. It was a real miracle to heal her. She went away from Jesus healed.
2. The Ruler of the Synagogue
The second cripple might surprise you. It was the ruler of the Synagogue
He too was crippled by a spirit – the spirit of legalism.
The spirit of legalism can be a real killjoy.
Instead of rejoicing that God had worked a wonderful miracle, he set about to denigrate it.
You might ask, who was he?
The Synagogue was the Church in Jesus’ day.
It was the place God’s people went to worship God.
And the Synagogue ruler was the man who ran the services - in today’s parlance the vicar.
The people would look up to him for spiritual guidance.
Why did he decide to take issue with Jesus.
Part of the reason might be that he felt miffed that Jesus’ healing was an invasion of his prerogative.
But I think the major reason was because what Jesus did - offended his understanding of the law of God.
3. What was the issue?
The issue wasn’t that Jesus had healed the woman.
No one claimed that Jesus’ healing was other than from God.
No one disputed that that was a good deed.
Rather it was the day that Jesus chose to perform the healing that caused the furore.
He did it on the Sabbath and the Pharisees had defined that as work.
It is almost derisory in today’s society – to be offended by someone healing on a Sunday. But in Jesus’ day it would have been a “hot potato.”
Let me explain why.
Israel had been overrun by the Romans and the Jews were struggling to keep their identity.
Their identity was bound up in their God and the covenant (what we now call the Old Testament) that they had with him.
And they believed that only by slavishly keeping the rules of that Covenant could they satisfy God.
The issue for the Ruler of the Synagogue was that by healing on the Sabbath, Jesus was breaking the fourth commandment – set out in Ex. 20:8-11 as follows:
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
You might ask, what’s the issue? Jesus isn’t working on the Sabbath – is he?
He’s not charging for his services!
Indeed he is helping a human being.
Well, in order to avoid breaking the Commandments, the Pharisees had fenced the Commandments around with more severe rules.
Example 1
For example, one Pharisaic rule regarding the Sabbath held that an animal could be led out to water - provided nothing was carried (Shabbath 5:1).
A man could draw water for the animal and pour it into a trough for an animal to drink from, but – to avoid breaking the fourth commandment - could not hold a bucket for the animal to drink out of! (Erubin 20b, 21a).
Example 2
Another such Pharisaic rule was that you were only allowed to medically treat a man for an illness on the Sabbath when the man’s life was in danger.
It was held to be OK to break the 4th Commandment in a life threatening situation.
However, you could not break the fourth commandment just to alleviate suffering! (Mishnah Yoma 8:6).
4. Why is Jesus so hard on the Synagogue ruler?
Jesus said to the ruler: “You hypocrite”. Hard words. Not the way “to make friends and influence people”
But why did he do it?
I think it was because the man was implicitedly claiming to act on God’s behalf and yet flatly contradicting the spirit of God’s law.
It is the spirit of God’s law that counts not the letter of it.
Look at Jesus’ reasoning.
“If on the Sabbath you untie your donkey and lead it to water, why should this woman, who has been bound 18 years not be set free.”
Legalism had so crippled the ruler’s mind that he could not see how inconsistent his words were.
He was abiding by the spirit of the law for animals but abiding by the letter of the law for people.
Instead or reacting as he did, the ruler should have gone away rejoicing at the woman’s good fortune.
5. Conclusions:
We all have our Sabbath Prejudices, which hinder us from seeing Jesus’ work in other people’s lives.
What are these - the rules that we add over and above what is in Holy Scripture.
Story: I remember reading of a little church in the US, who had invited a good preacher to come and preach.
However, they withdrew their invitation on the morning of the sermon, because he did not appear in belt and braces on his trousers.
Their reasoning was that without the braces, if the belt slipped - the preacher’s trousers would fall down while he was preaching - and that would be a scandal.
So they instituted a rule that all preachers had to have both belt and braces on before they preached.
Their spirit of legalism caused them to miss out on what God wanted say to them through that preacher that morning.
Legalism is heavy. It is usually a killjoy but the fruit of the Spirit is different.
Look at what St. Paul says in Galatians 5:22
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
The Christian life is meant to be joyful – not heavy.
The woman went away rejoicing in her healing; the synagogue ruler missed out.
Jesus said: I have come that you might have life and life in abundance (Jn 10:10)
I am a Christian, because Jesus gives me abundant life.
Let us not lose out by putting up unnecessary barriers - like the Synagogue ruler did - to the work of Jesus.
6. A Reflection added on 26-07-07
What was the difference between Liddell running on a Sunday and Jesus healing on a Sunday?
1. Was Liddell on the one hand was called to stand up against the excessive “godlessness” of 20th Century Western society - where nothing was sacred
And Jesus on the other hand was called to stand up to the other extreme – excessive legalism?
2. Was it because Jesus was doing good to a person but Liddell considered running as simply “another day in the office”
3. Was it was simply that both were listening to God – and they did as God told them.
What do you think?
Perhaps that is something we can go away and think about.
