Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On more than one occasion our Lord has butted heads with the scribes and Pharisees over the Sabbath and how best to honor this God-given day, that is, what constitutes the proper veneration of this holy day. “’Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy’” is integral to the 10 Commandments given to Moses on Mt. Sinai (Ex. 20:1-17; Dt. 5:6-21). It is God’s direct command that is linked in Exodus with the creation of the world, and in Deuteronomy with God’s salvation of His enslaved people in Egypt, that is, with the mighty saving deeds of God in the Exodus:
‘Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou (Ex. 20:8-11; Dt. 5:12-15).
Hence, the synagogue ruler’s not-so-gentle rebuke of our Lord, a rebuke given, not directly to our Lord, but indirectly by way of instructing the congregation. “’There are six days in which men ought to work,’” he says. Along with circumcision, the Sabbath was a key identifier of being a faithful and obedient Jew. It is at the heart of Judaism and serves as a sort of summation of what constitutes all things Jewish. In fact, so critical is it that the breaking of the Sabbath could very well result in being put to death (Ex. 35:1-3)!
The Sabbath, the seventh day, Saturday, is a holy day to be kept at all costs. So, Judaism had to establish rules to govern this holy day by defining what constituted work: what could be done within the parameters of the Law and what had to be avoided. We hear this expressed in the phrase “a Sabbath day’s journey” meaning that an observant Jew could only travel so far on a Sabbath before it became an act of work. For those of you who can still remember, this hallowing of the Sabbath was the basis of Pennsylvania’s now defunct old state “blue laws” prohibiting or limiting commerce on the Sabbath which was taken to be Sunday. Technically, Sunday is Sunday – the first day of the week and commemoration of our Lord’s Resurrection – while the Sabbath is Saturday, the seventh day. Early on the Church honored both days (captured perhaps by our Saturday-Sunday rhythm of Vespers and Liturgy), until Sunday became our day of rest – the icon of the eighth day of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.
So, the Sabbath becomes the setting of this volatile encounter between our Lord and the ruler of the synagogue who, giving him the benefit of the doubt, was doing his duty to protect and preserve the sacred Tradition. Little did he know or maybe care to realize that the God Who said thus-and-so to Moses on Mt. Sinai in the giving of the Decalogue now stood before him in very flesh! Our Lord was no stranger to Sabbath observance. It wasn’t unusual or odd to find Him there. In fact, a striking comment is made by the Evangelist in the early chapters of his Gospel identifying a hallmark of our Lord which, I pray, identifies us all. St. Luke writes that when Jesus came to Nazareth where He had been raised as a lad “He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day” “as His custom was” (Lk. 4:16). It was Jesus’ custom, inculcated in Him from childhood, to attend the services of His Father’s House – be it synagogue or the Temple, to which He was no stranger during the course of His ministry and life.
It was during our Lord’s sermon perhaps that He spies a woman severely debilitated. She is described as being “bowed down [bent over] and could in no way lift herself up.” You can see her bent way over, perhaps hunched back, so that she could look no one in the eye. Presumably, she is in bondage to her age, but definitely in bondage to her physical condition and “a spirit of infirmity,” as St. Luke says. And, she has been forced to live with this debilitation for 18 years – a long time – without relief or remedy!
That is, until this Sabbath day. Whether she is present in the synaxis as was her custom or she decided to make herself “go to church” that particular day because she knew a guest teacher was going to be there Who had a reputation for healing, isn’t ours to know. She is there in God’s assembly and the Son of God fixes His sight upon her. On a similar occasion, in a different synagogue, at another time, our Lord queried those gathered, “’Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?’” (Mt. 12:9-14; Lk. 14:1-6). But, here, He asks no questions, He seeks no permission, He simply calls the disabled woman over to Himself, declares to her that she is set free from her spirit of infirmity, and lays His hands upon her. And the result? Her freedom and her glorification of the mighty saving acts of God on behalf of His people. For is she not “’a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these 18 years’”? Is she not worthy of salvation on this day set aside by God for the sake of His people or does God suspend all saving and sanctifying work on the Sabbath? Does God cease preserving and upholding all of creation by the power of His word on the Sabbath (Hb. 1:1-3)?
Of course, we know the story. The synagogue ruler, as well meaning as he might have been, nevertheless becomes indignant over this egregious infraction and lashes out at our Lord by way of the congregation – an early version of “virtue signaling” perhaps. But, it is the God of the Sabbath Who stands before him in defense of the enslaved woman. She is a human being created in the very image of God the Creator and Giver of the Sabbath. “Is this creature of God’s making less valuable than your ox or your donkey which you lead to water on the Sabbath or help rescue from a pit if they are stuck? What good reason can you give not to intervene and rescue this woman from the spirit of infirmity and make her upright as God has created her on this day that God likewise has created for His people? Indeed, tell Me, how does it dishonor and profane the Sabbath to do good on it and to save life and to heal? Does the Sabbath prohibit mercy and compassion? Was not the Sabbath made by God for man, and not man for the Sabbath?” (Mt. 12:1-14; Mk. 2:23-3:6; Lk. 6:1-10; 14:1-6). And, with this, our Lord silences His detractors and adversaries. But, like Pharoah of old, they harden their hearts and souls even more against God and against His Christ (Ps. 2:1-12).
And, this leads us to another Sabbath – the Sabbath of our Lord’s resting in the Tomb on Great and Holy Saturday – and for what cause He does so. Beloved, what good is the Sabbath if we cannot find God’s mercy and compassion on it? What good is the Sabbath if God cannot work our salvation and healing on the day that He Himself has set apart, blessed, and sanctified “for us men and for our salvation” (Nicene Creed)?
It is true that the Sabbath is the day of divine rest, but is it not equally a day of divine activity? In one of her Troparia, the Church sings (and the Priest and Deacon chant censing the four sides of the Altar), “In the Tomb with the Body, in Hades with the soul as God, in Paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.” As the crucified, dead, and buried Jesus lay in the dark Tomb on the Sabbath of Great and Holy Saturday, He was nonetheless about the business of His Father redeeming our bent over, hunched back, humanity, bound these long years by the corrupt powers of sin, death, and the devil – the spirit of our infirmity. On that Great and Holy Saturday, Jesus enters into the last stronghold of the devil, which is Hades, and He ransacks his abode, smashing the bars that held us captive to death and sin. On this Sabbath day, God seeks rest for belabored sinners, just as He sought rest for the hunched over woman in today’s Gospel. “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,’” says the Son of God our Saviour (Mt. 11:28-30). “’Come,”’ He bids us, “even on this Sabbath day created by My Father for man – to aid him and to set him free from his burden of the Fall wherein sin, death, and the devil have held you captive, unable to stand upright in My Father’s House. If basic livestock can benefit from the Sabbath, why not this daughter of Abraham? Why not this son of Abraham? Why not these fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve?”
Salvation is healing, beloved. Salvation is a loosing from the bonds of sin and death. Jesus comes to meet us here in this holy Temple on this holy day of His Resurrection. It is a day of divine work that bring us God’s rest; it is a day of mercy and compassion, unlike the synagogue ruler who was as merciless as the devil himself! Here in the Mysteries of the Church, God anoints our deadly wounds with the oil and wine of the Gospel. He eases the pain caused by our sin when we surrender ourselves to Him in Confession so that we might receive His Absolution. He comes to us in His Body and Blood to heal the spirit of our infirmity, to bind up the brokenness of our humanity, and to ease the pain of our self-imposed isolation caused by our self-centeredness. He comes in His Church as is His custom to make us upright again, just as we have been created, and to make us His new creation (Ga. 6:11-18).
Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
PROPERS:
Ga. 6:11-18
Lk. 13:10-17