There was a time, back in the day, when living in Florida came with one very special advantage. At any theme park in the state, from Disney World to Adventure Island, you could get deeply discounted annual passes. When I was a pre-teen, my parents invested in four of these passes, getting unlimited entry for the whole family, to Busch Gardens in Tampa.
One Saturday morning, at the break of day, I woke up to my mom by my bedside, practically bursting at the seams with excitement. She and my dad had decided to surprise my sister and me, by planning a fun day at Busch Gardens.
I’m sure she expected me to cheer: to jump out of bed, give her a hug, and hurry off to get ready. But, as soon as the good news came out of her mouth, I was angry. “Absolutely not!” I responded. I simply couldn’t do it. I had already planned my day. I had written things down in a neat row in my planner. I had thought through my leisure activities: when I would read, scrapbook, and play with my cat. Guidelines for the day had been set, and now they had to be accomplished.
In the words of comedian Amy Poehler: “Rules are what make things fun.” And I lived by that statement.
I regret to tell you that we didn’t go to Busch Gardens that day. In fact, my parents never tried to surprise me again. On that Saturday 25 years ago, meeting expectations was more important to me than a happy surprise. Even good news was bad news, if it meant I had to think outside the box.
On a different Saturday, 2,000 years ago, we encounter another occurrence of expectations conflicting with a happy surprise: A woman is healed. And as soon as it happens, someone is angry about it. Of course, the events of today’s Gospel reading are far more serious than a day at the theme park. But what exactly is happening here? And what does it tell us about human nature, and about Jesus?
First, let’s talk about the setting of the story… Luke tells us: “Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.”
Sabbath is the Jewish day of rest. It starts at sundown on Friday evening and ends at sundown on Saturday. The word sabbath comes from the Hebrew word, shabbat, which literally means “rest” or “ceasing.” Sabbath is mandated in the Ten Commandments. And, according to the Bible, has been a central part of Jewish life, since the beginning of the world.
Work is not done on shabbat, especially work associated with using your hands. Things like shopping, cooking, cleaning, mending, and plowing are forbidden. And attention is turned to God: in a shared meal, worship, study, and thanksgiving.
Sabbath finds its earliest example in the rest of God after the creation of the world. And it is reemphasized in the context of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt. In Deuteronomy 5, God says: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”
So, sabbath is a day for Jewish people to become free from their hectic lives, and from the obligations that distract them, So that they may be brought nearer to the God who created them and freed them from slavery.
The “sabbath” talked about in the Bible is shabbat – it is not the same thing as Sunday worship in a Christian context. Since the first generation of Christians were converts from Judaism, they participated in both Saturday and Sunday religious gatherings, Sabbath on Saturday and “The Lord’s Day” on Sunday. The Lord’s Day was a complement to sabbath study, specifically centered on the resurrection of Jesus. Over time, as more people from other religions converted to Christianity, the Lord’s Day became an official day of rest for Christians, and gradually Christians stopped observing the Jewish sabbath.
But, in our Gospel story today, the important thing to know is that sabbath was a religiously and legally required practice for Jews; It was mandated by God himself. And, mostly, it was a blessing to the community that there were rules and regulations for the sabbath, because it ensured that people could justify walking away from their tasks and focus their attention on God, finding restoration along the way. This is the context in which Jesus gathers with the community and begins to teach.
Luke tells us that, right as Jesus begins speaking, he notices a woman who is suffering from a serious physical condition. Moved with an innate sense of compassion, he immediately shouts to her: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Then he touches her, and she stands upright and begins praising God. This miracle, like all of Jesus’ miracles, is astounding. It defies medical expectation and crosses social barriers. Like so many of his healing miracles, it shocks the crowd. And the healed woman immediately recognizes that she is in the presence of God.
But the center of this story is not about a miracle…
We are not encouraged to linger on this happy surprise of hope and healing. Instead, a religious leader immediately interjects, and proclaims that Jesus has made so grave an error that it is an affront to God. The man suggests that when Jesus raised his hands to touch the woman, he was using those hands for labor. Jesus’ action, miracle or not, was just the kind of work that was forbidden on the sabbath day. Jesus has broken the rules. He has rejected the guidelines. He has acted against expectation!
But Jesus reminds the gathered crowd that sabbath finds its meaning, not in meeting expectations, but in the freedom of God. And no one can doubt that this woman is free, for the first time in 18 years. Jesus declares that his action wasn’t work – it was worship. He didn’t just follow the rules, he followed them perfectly, by fulfilling the ideal of sabbath. Jesus acted against expectation, and the result was more than a happy surprise: it was a miracle.
As Christians living in the twenty-first century, there are parts of today’s Gospel reading that we can’t fully inhabit. Our tradition doesn’t practice shabbat in the Jewish sense. And I’d bet many of us are not taking a sabbath day of any kind.
But, we can still understand how this story mattered for the first Christians. It revealed, not that “rules are meant to be broken,” but that rules aren’t ends in themselves: they are always intended to help us live up to our ideals.
And we can still see how that matters to us. Jesus shows us that worship is intended to re-form the gathered community around a vision of wholeness, freedom, and rest. He shows us that his mission, and thus the church’s mission, is about using our liturgies, creeds, and traditions for the sake of a wider and fuller embrace, not for policing one another’s holiness.
To follow Jesus is to get comfortable with the fact that he loves to defy expectations. He will wake us up and proclaim good news, even if it’s not the good news we wanted. And, at times, this will make things messy, disruptive, and challenging. Our choice is to embrace it as a happy surprise, or refuse it. We can always refuse it. We can always choose the comfort of narrowly defined rules and expectations over the freedom of the ideals they lead us to. But would that really be worth it, in the end?
If I could visit my preteen self, I would tell her this: Don’t let your expectations get in the way of rejoicing when there’s something to rejoice about. Lord knows life is hard enough – embrace the miracles in your midst. Amen.
Leah Wise 