Repairer Of The Breach

August 21, 2022

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Luke 13:10-17; Isaiah 58:9b-14

Repairer of the Breach

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

In chapter 58, the prophet Isaiah is speaking to a people newly returned to Jerusalem after their long exile in Babylon. They returned to a Jerusalem much different than the one they’d left behind. Jerusalem was a wreck. Its fortress walls had been breached when the Babylonians conquered the city 70 years earlier. Her walls had tumbled down and her streets were filled with rubble.

It was much like the situation of any war-torn city: Atlanta after the Civil War; Hiroshima and Dresden after World War II; and now what the people of Kiev and Mariupol will be facing whenever the protracted conflict with Russia concludes. Israel had the arduous task before them to restore Jerusalem into a livable city. The city’s breached walls needed to be repaired. The book of Nehemiah describes the challenges Israel faced in the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls.

In the passage we hear today Isaiah speaks of another kind of breach in need of repair: the way the Israelites regard and treat one another. He speaks of a yoke. There’s a yoke of injustice and hunger. Something has been broken within Israel’s regard for one another. There’s a breach in the fabric of the human web.

Isaiah proclaims that when Israel restores their right relationship to their neighbor, then the vitality of their community will return. “You shall be like a watered garden,” he says. Then he says how they’ll be remembered: “You shall be called the repairer of the breach.” Such a noble name! How blessed to be known as a repairer of the breach!

This is a long-standing virtue within the tradition of Judaism. The Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam” means “repair of the world.” Our world is broken, and Jews understand that they are obligated to repair it. Picture a mirror that’s been dropped. It’s shattered into a thousand shards. We each pick up a piece and now we work together to restore them into their proper order. Each small shard reflects the brilliance of the sun. That original light which God spoke into being on the first day of creation is reflected on each small shard. And as we bring them together, each small piece next to its neighbor, the full light of creation is restored.

That’s tikkun olam. That’s what we do when we repair the breach of a broken world. That’s what happens when compassion for our neighbor outshines callous disregard and injustice.

We are called to repair the world. And when we do so, we are repairers of the breach.

We hear a story of Jesus visiting a synagogue on the Sabbath day. While Jesus is teaching, he notices a woman who’s terribly bent over. Luke gives us her back story. She’s suffered from this structural deformity for 18 years.

When Jesus sees her, he’s filled with compassion. He immediately stops his lesson and calls her over. Jesus declares that she is set free from her infirmity. He lays his hands on her and suddenly, she straightens up. What was bent becomes straight. His healing of this woman helps to repair the world.

But there is another breach in need of healing. The leader of the synagogue isn’t pleased about Jesus healing this woman on the Sabbath. He’s no stranger to this woman and her deformed spine. He knows her well, just like you know the people you see here at church every week.

But as the leader of the synagogue, it’s his responsibility to enforce that the commands of God are followed. The Sabbath is to be remembered and kept holy. Some actions were permitted. According to Sabbath laws, if a person was threatened with a life or death health crisis, it was all right to come to their aid on the Sabbath. But if their situation was merely chronic, if it could wait until the next day, then it SHOULD wait until the next day.

The leader of the synagogue had a job to do. He was holding the line. One Sabbath exception would lead to another, and soon the holiness of the day would fade.

But something essential had diminished within this man’s soul. He had just witnessed a tremendous healing! This woman wasn’t some stranger to him. He’d known her for years. He’d seen her struggle, he’d watched her prolonged agony from her infirmity. With the passing years, gravity had slowly pulled her over more and more.

And now, in the presence of the whole congregation, he and everyone there just witnessed a remarkable moment. This woman was finally freed from her ailment. They were witness to a miraculous healing. Jesus touched her, and she stood up straight. But instead of rejoicing, he grumbled.