Set Free on the Sabbath
Luke 13:10-17

 My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light! 
—Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Does that sound like you or someone you know? Such a lifestyle can lead to tension, which can lead to high blood pressure, heart attacks, and depression.  If we don’t take time off, we are in danger of having time off overtake us.  Tension and stress can also cause impaired brain function, so that we might not to be able to remember facts, names, and appointment times.  We literally get so tired we cannot think.    

Why do we think we can run on and on like the Energizer Bunny?  Don’t we know the human body can only take so much?  Or do we think it can take more than that?  Somehow we are prone to think we are the exception.  We don’t want to admit our limitations.  It’s the American way.  Sadly, some people feel they will endanger their jobs if they take a day off, or a week off.   

Do you realize that we take less vacation time than our European counterparts?  To begin with, we get about half as much vacation as they do, and in some cases less than half, and then we don’t even take all of that.  One of my favorite workaholics recently told me, just as she took a second job, “Weekends off are over-rated.”  Even God rested on the seventh day in a creative sort of way.  Maybe that’s why “recreation” looks like “re-creation.”  Centering prayer experts speak of “resting in God” and you definitely have to sit still to do that.   

If we take vacations, we renew ourselves.  We don’t have to go very far to be “away from it all.”  Any change of scenery or change of pace for a day or so can be refreshing.  If we don’t do that, we are endangering our health, for which we are responsible to God.  But aside from vacations, we can obey the fourth Commandment and “remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.”  If we take one day a week and spend it renewing and refreshing ourselves, we will contribute greatly to our overall health.  When God gave us such commandments, it was because God loves us and knows what is best for us.  When ever will we learn that God knows what God is talking about?    

By the time our Lord Jesus lived on earth, the Commandments were ancient and his people had lived by them through thick and thin.  The guardians of the law had tried to interpret the law in such a way that the people could live by it day by day.  This would see them through the times of exile when they could not go to the Temple to worship, and especially later on, after the Temple was destroyed. There were certain things you could do on the Sabbath and still keep it.  You could walk within a mile of your property.  You could untie your ox or donkey and lead it to water.  But apparently you could not heal someone.  Jesus was always getting into trouble for bending the rules.  There didn’t seem to be a rule for getting healed on the Sabbath, so the authorities made up one on the spot.   

How do I reconcile the fact that Jesus healed (worked) on the Sabbath?  Was Jesus once again behaving according to the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law?  Let’s look again at the actual commandment, before anyone put a fence around to make absolutely sure no one broke it.  The commandment says, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.”  Set that day apart from other days of the week, and remember to do it every week.  The original plan was that one day in seven would be a day of rest; one year in seven would be a year of rest for the land, which would lie fallow with no crops being grown; and finally after seven times seven years, on the fiftieth year, there would be a year of Jubilee.  In that year debts would be forgiven and land restored to its original owners. To my knowledge that never happened in the history of Israel.    

I can imagine that to the woman who was healed of her eighteen-year infirmity, that Sabbath day was very holy.  The day that Jesus healed her was probably set apart in her mind forever.  Jesus was indeed a Sabbath keeper, because scripture tells us that it was Jesus’ custom to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath.  Jesus knew that the Sabbath would have a healing effect on anyone’s life and he was simply sharing his healing love with this “daughter of Abraham.”   

I am not sure just when it was that Christians in the main started thinking that the Sabbath was Sunday, but to the early Christians that was not the case.  The first Christians kept Sunday because it was the Lord’s Day – the weekly celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  In those days Sunday, being the first day of the week, was a work day.  They met early in the morning for worship before going about their working day.  Somewhere in Medieval times after Christianity became legal there was a shift in perspective about Sunday and it became the “Christian Sabbath.”  For many Christians who work in churches, this is a day when we do not have large blocks of time for reflection and rest.  Many priests take either Monday or Friday off and disappear from sight.     

God knows that we can’t burn the candle at both ends forever.  That leads to what is known as “burnout.”  There are ways to guard against that, and I highly recommend developing a good prayer life and good worship habits as a buffer zone between yourself and the things that frustrate you.  Of course that takes time, the commodity of which we have the least.   

If you practicing spending time with Jesus in prayer, your life might change.  You might ask God how you should be spending your time and let Jesus set you free just as he did that woman who had been bound by an evil spirit for eighteen long years. 

If you do that you might realize what it is that is keeping you from standing up straight, and ask God to remove it.  If you continue in your present state of hurriedness, you might not ever get around to wondering what it is that binds you.  Sometimes those issues rise to the surface if we take time for quiet reflection.  We can be so busy that we mask our true needs.  Spending time before God will help us to unearth our true needs and our true identities.  

If you are always skating on the edge, you might want to look around and see how you can simplify your life.  How can you pare down your schedule so that you can spend more time with your family?  What burden have you been carrying around for eighteen years?  What do you need to get off your back so that you can stand up straight and give glory to God? 

            Amen.