ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O God, mighty and immortal, you know that as fragile creatures surrounded by great dangers, we cannot by ourselves stand upright. Give us strength of mind and body, so that even when we suffer because of human sin, we may rise victorious through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“…the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.’” Luke 13:14.
“…ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” Luke 13:16.
Technically speaking, the leader of the synagogue was right. Work ought not to be done on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was given to protect us from the tyranny of work. That is not to say that work is evil. To the contrary, the first human beings were tasked with caring for God’s garden in paradise. Work is a blessing. It is the means by which we care for the earth and for one another. Accordingly, when properly directed and exercised, it gives meaning, purpose and direction to life. But like all of God’s blessings, it has the potential to become a curse when the gift is elevated above the Giver or when it becomes a tool of greed and oppression rather than an instrument of service.
Our relationship to work in American capitalist society is complex to say the least. We tend to view labor as a commodity and judge the worth of individuals by the market value of their skills and the work of which they are capable. As a result, manual labor requiring few skills but demanding strenuous effort is considered cheap. The people who perform it are underpaid, overworked, often lack essential medical coverage and are seldom able to save enough to live their final days in dignity and security. These people often work in dangerous and unsanitary conditions doing jobs that upper middle class Americans would never do. Yet without this army of workers who clean our restrooms, collect our garbage, clean our offices, harvest our fruits and vegetables, slaughter and process our meat, deliver goods to the supermarkets and stack the shelves, our everyday lives would grind to a halt. Their value and the labor they contribute far exceeds their compensation.
Work is an obsession with us. The worst insult you can fling at anyone of us is to call us lazy. We take a perverse pride in letting everyone know how busy we are, how much we have to do and how little time we have for anything other than work. I internalized that compulsion early on and brought it with me into my ministerial career. Whenever asked how I was doing by a family member, a member of my church or a colleague, my reflex answer was “busy,” whether I really was or not. When serving my parish in New Jersey, one of my guilty pleasures was taking a walk to the Dairy Queen a couple of blocks from my office to enjoy a small hot fudge sundae. I say “guilty,” because there was always that voice in back of my head reminding me of everything else I could be doing. There were always hospital visits to be made, meetings to prepare for and worship planning to be done. In reality, the half hour I spent eating ice cream had no substantial effect on my ability to get these things done. No matter how many hours I worked or how much effort I put into my job, there were always loose ends, unfinished tasks and more to be done than a day would allow. But something inside me would not accept that. Because there is no end to all that needs to be done, there should be no end to my efforts. I knew, of course, that working too hard makes one less productive, less effective and less satisfied with one’s job. In spite of this knowledge, my compulsive drive to be at work usually won out. Ultimately, this obsession with work takes a toll on our physical and mental health. I had just enough will power to get enough rest to avoid that.
The Sabbath was given to protect us from the dangers of work by keeping it in its proper place. If nothing else, forcing us to spend a day doing nothing reminds us that we can put our work aside and, lo and behold, the sun still rises the next morning. The Bible tells us that God rested on the seventh day following creation. If God can put aside God’s work and rest, can we really say with a straight face that our work is so urgent and so important we cannot afford to put it aside for half a hour’s rest?
Though we in the Christian tradition have associated Sabbath with worship, it is more properly understood as a labor law. Recall that at the time the Torah was revealed to Moses, the people of Israel had been newly liberated from slavery in Egypt. Slaves of imperial Egypt were regarded in much the same way as laborers are considered in late capitalist America. They were fungible units, valued by the amount of work that could be squeezed out of them. God did not intend for Israel to become another Egypt. Accordingly, God mandated a day of rest to be observed by everyone, including slaves, animals and even the land itself. In Israel, labor was to be focused on producing food and shelter for all, including those unable to feed and shelter themselves. It was not to be exploited to enrich the few at the expense of the many or for empire building. No one should be crushed under the tyranny of uncompensated labor.
On its face, the objection of the synagogue leader seems reasonable. There are six days on which this woman could have come to be healed. Moreover, she had only to wait until sundown when the Sabbath ended. Her condition was not urgent-she had been living with it for eighteen years. So why the rush? Why not wait a few hours until after the Sabbath? The answer is precisely because this was a Sabbath day, the day of rest for all God’s people and all of creation. Take it from me, a person does not get much rest when the back is hurting. If you are permitted to water your domestic animals on the Sabbath so that they can enjoy their rest, should not the same apply to a human being deprived of rest by chronic pain and disability? What better time to lift the yoke of suffering than on God’s Sabbath? So far from violating the Sabbath, Jesus was honoring it by extending the rest it promises to the crippled woman in our gospel lesson.
Jesus is not, as some of us in the Christian tradition have maintained, abrogating the Sabbath. He does not regard it as a legalistic burden that can safely be ignored. To the contrary, Jesus takes the Sabbath far more seriously than does the leader of the synagogue. Jesus would extend the reach of Sabbath rest to all who find themselves excluded from it. So we need to ask ourselves, who are those among us excluded from Sabbath rest? Can we recognize them among low wage earners holding down two, sometimes three jobs only to live paycheck to paycheck? Can we recognize those denied Sabbath rest by medical insurers who routinely deny coverage for treatment to the most ill and vulnerable among us? Have we excluded ourselves from Sabbath rest by our manic obsession with success, wealth and recognition? How is Jesus inviting us to enter into Sabbath rest and extend that rest to our neighbors?
Here is a poem by Stanley Bradshaw expressing the longing for the kind of sustaining rest human beings need to be nourished, restored and re-inspired to live will.
Restful Ground
I have known solitudes, but none has been
Such as I seek this hour: a place so still
That the darkened grasses wake to no sound at all
Nor float their shadowy fingers in a wind.
I have known quiet in places without dark trees;
But after this clanging of hours, I seek a silence
Where the only motion is the quiet breathing
Of dark boughs gazing on the restful ground.
Source: Poetry, (March 1931). Stanley Burnshaw (1906 –2005) was an American poet. In addition to poetry, he is known for his works on social justice. Raised by his parents who immigrated from England, Burnshaw was born and brought up in New York City. He began his secondary education at the University of Pittsburgh, transferred to Columbia University and then transferred back to the University of Pittsburgh where he earned his bachelor’s degree. After traveling throughout Europe, he returned to New York where he earned a master’s degree at New York University. Bradshaw held several positions early in his career, including assistant copywriter, advertising manager, drama critic and occasional book reviewer. He first became the editor-in-chief for the Cordon Company in New York, then president and editor-in-chief of the Dryden Press, a firm he started. Dryden merged with Holt, Rinehart and Winston in the late 1950s. Throughout his career, Burnshaw published many works of prose and poetry as well as books and editorials. He remained active in these and many other aspects of his career until his death in September 2005. You can read more about Stanley Burnshaw and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 