(Luke 13: 10-17)
“You know what it says in the Bible about that don’t you?” Or: “it says in the Bible;” such and such. When I hear something along those lines being spoken, I know they are about to use something presumably biblical to support their position on some usually controversial topic and I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that it’s something out of the Old Testament, which more often than not, is being taken out of context or misinterpreted. Usually they are quoting, or misquoting as the case may be, one of the Ten Commandments which, by the way, are still valid and worthy of our compliance. But you have to realize that even though they were written in stone, they were given by God as a way to lead Israel to a life of practical holiness. Before God gave the two stone tablets to Moses the nation of Israel as it were, was in a state of disorder and was greatly in need of structure. In the commandments the people could see the nature of God and his plan for how they should live. The commandments served as guidelines intended to direct the community of God’s people to meet the needs of each individual in a loving and responsible manner. But by the time of Jesus’s ministry most people looked at the law the wrong way, not as a guide to righteous living, but as an end to itself. It wasn’t seen as a means to fulfill God’s ultimate law of love.
And that’s the exact position Jesus found himself in in our scripture reading for this morning. Jesus’ ministry was starting to gain some traction and he was attracting significant crowds wherever he went taking the opportunity to teach and preach. He had caught the attention of the religious rulers who viewed his unconventional message of love and acceptance as a threat to their status quo so both the Sadducees and the Pharisees looked for any opportunity to trip this country rabbi up and discredit him. Luke tells us that Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath and there was a woman there who had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and couldn’t stand up straight, yet she came to hear Jesus’ message of hope. When he saw her, he called out to her and said: Woman, you are set free from your sickness. He placed his hands on her and she straightened up at once and praised God. When the leader of the synagogue saw this, he became incensed that Jesus had healed this woman on the Sabbath and said: There are six days during which work may be permitted. Come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath day. True, Jesus could have just as easily told the woman to come see him the next day and he would heal her then. I mean really, after eighteen years what would one more day matter? But that wasn’t the point. In effect what the leader of the synagogue was saying was: “Don’t you know what it says in the Ten Commandments?” Jesus had publicly shown them up and he wanted to put this religious leader in his place.
The leader of the synagogue is referring to the commandment to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy where God said to Moses: Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters; your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. The Sabbath was a day set aside for rest and worship. God commanded a Sabbath because human beings need to spend unhurried time in worship and rest each week. But that wasn’t the point and Jesus knew it. He had cleverly laid a trap for them, and they walked right into it. Jesus replied: Hypocrites! Don’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from its stall and lead it out to get a drink? Without giving them time to answer he goes on stating: Then isn’t it necessary that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, bound by Satan for eighteen long years, be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day? He had them and they knew it. Luke tells us that when he said these things, all his opponents were put to shame, but all those in the crowd rejoiced at all the extraordinary things he was doing. This guy was preaching a message that resonated, that made perfect sense.
You see, that’s why I’m a New Testament kind of guy. When I read our scripture for today, I was reminded of another time when a member of the Pharisees attempted to box Jesus in by trying to get him to commit to which one of the commandments is the greatest in the Law of Moses. In the 22nd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees in their misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the Scriptures and the resurrection of the dead, so the Pharisees got together and came up with a question surely designed to test his knowledge. One of the experts in the law asked: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus spotted the trap and replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Jesus has them by quoting from Deuteronomy 6: 5 and Leviticus 9: 18. He’s telling them that by fulfilling these two commands, a person keeps all the others. They summarize the Ten Commandments and all of the other Old Testament moral laws. Jesus is saying that if we truly love God and our neighbor, we will naturally keep the commandments in a way that looks at them in a positive light and not as an impossible burden.
You’d think that after 2,000 years we would have finally figured that out and come to grips with it, but you’d be wrong. A recent poll suggests that 73% of Americans profess to be Christians. Judging by what I see on the nightly news and read in my online news feed we sure don’t act like it. And now we are starting to see the rise of the Christian Nation movement where adherents are espousing the belief that America was created to be a nation made up of Christians, governed by Christians, and run by Christians. It’s as if they’ve conveniently forgotten or are intentionally ignoring the fact that Jesus was, like it or not, Jewish the day he died. When he told his disciples that he was going away but would return, and that when he did return, he didn’t say he was going to start a new religion for Christians only. I’m sure Christ looked on in disbelief at the Charlottesville Tiki Torch parade with white males angrily chanting: “Jews will not replace us!” I guess they missed that part in Galatians 3: 26-29 where the Apostle Paul said: You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. And then there’s this meme on Facebook I saw earlier this week featuring a prominent politician with national aspirations. The creator of the meme cleverly takes a quote from Ephesians 6: 11 in which the Apostle Paul says: Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes and changes one word; he or she changes “devil” to “left”, as in: Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the left’s schemes. I seriously doubt that anyone actually believes that this is what it says in the Bible, but you get the drift of the message the poster is trying to accomplish. You can’t be a Christian if your politics are to the left of center. The fact that there are current members of Congress actively advocating this movement of Christian Nationalism should be cause for alarm as people who are interpreting the Bible for their own purposes are seriously parroting this belief in a Christian Nation. I’m patiently waiting for the opportunity to ask one of them which denomination will be the official American denomination. Will it be Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, Seventh Day Adventist, Mormon, Baptist, Quaker, or non-denominational? I’m pulling for us Methodists as we are second in size which means we try harder and have an actual Book of Discipline with Social Principles.
Jesus Christ has not officially returned but as his representatives here on earth’s portion of God’s kingdom it is incumbent upon us to be the ones to remind people of the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love our neighbors, even the ones who don’t look like us, think like us, love like us, speak like us, pray like us, or vote like us. There are no exceptions because this is what it says in the Bible.
Let us pray.
Gracious and loving Father, we pray that we are one in the Spirit, and one in you Lord. Move us to walk with one another hand in hand, and to work with each other side by side as we do your will. We pray that by our actions in service to you that the watching world will know that we are Christians by our love. All praise to you from whom all things come, and all praise to your only Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and all praise to the Spirit who makes us one. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.