What an amazing miracle – a lady crippled for 18 years healed by Jesus – imagine living with a condition that controls every aspect of your life, being bent double so all you see is the pavement, back pain, neck pain and most importantly of all, an outcast.
But thankfully, after 18 long years living like this, as you arrive at the synagogue on the sabbath for a time of worship, Jesus is there and performs a miracle that changes your life.
However, the woman, and all the others at the Synagogue, then get told off as the leader interprets the law and becomes indignant that Jesus has broken it, despite the fact he has changed the life of a woman for ever – does any of this sound reasonable?
The Pharisees and their Sabbath traditions were an issue that most frequently provoked controversy in Jesus’ ministry; traditions that placed a higher value on animals than on people in distress. Their ideas corrupted the whole purpose of the Sabbath; when we care more for keeping the rules than we do for the welfare of people made in God’s image, we miss the whole point of our existence.
When Jesus asked if it was lawful for the woman to be healed on the Sabbath, He wanted the people to think about what they are doing in life, He knew that the larger purpose of the Sabbath was to free people from whatever holds them in bondage, including work.
However, Jesus frequently showed radical care for the less fortunate, and as people of faith, we are called on to do the same and put the needs of fellow Christians and those on the margins of society ahead of social and religious norms and that may include on our sabbath, however this is living out our faith rather than getting bogged down in work.
Let us think for a moment about what sabbath means to us. Many years ago, when most people worked a six-day week, and a long weekend, flexi working and working from home hadn’t ever been heard of, the majority of the population had the seventh day of the week off – and this was generally a Sunday.
People lived out the tradition of going to church, then on to the pub or home with the family – it was a day that was very different in its rhythm to the rest of the week, a day where you had to pause and follow a different pattern, it was an enforced sabbath.
However, we now work in a 24/7 world, where you really can go out and buy burgers to eat at 5am, do your weekly shop at midnight, watch a film into the early hours or go shopping on a Sunday. If the world revolves like this, how do we find time to take a ‘sabbath’?
If we look back at the original commandment in Exodus it asks us to keep the sabbath as a day dedicated to God, who set it apart as Holy, and in our Isaiah reading we heard that we must call the sabbath a delight – it says it was a day for not going our own way and serving our own interests, but a day to delight in the Lord – a day to ride upon the heights of the earth!
The message version says: ‘if you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, if you honour it by refusing ‘business as usual,’ making money, running here and there—Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!’
Free to enjoy God? How glorious, don’t we all want this? I believe we certainly all need it!
So where do we start? Can we identify one day out of each 7, just one 24 hour period, where we can pause, change our rhythm, plan to spend time with family and friends, worship with others and discover that peace that only God can offer? A space where we can find wholeness for ourselves, space for God and time for others?
It might be that we already have this time, but do we recognise it as a sabbath? Or do we tend to ‘get busy’, aiming to replicate the pattern of our other six days? After all, as human beings we often thrive on routine.
It might be good to plan something – if I do that, I generally stick to it – especially if it involves meeting up with others. God wants us to flourish – it might help to do something each week at the start of your 24 hours, to mark it out as different. What might that be? A time of prayer; a special breakfast; a swim?
Isaiah said, in our reading, that on the Sabbath we mustn’t go our own way, serve our own interests, pursue our own affairs – and if we look back to those Pharisees, arguing against Jesus, do they remind us of anyone? Are we sometimes guilty of making up rules to try and keep control of something that we don’t feel is quite right or is going in a different direction to how we think it should go?
These rules aren’t always for others, sometimes they’re for ourselves – and they become a burden, pulling us away from Jesus and that grace and freedom that we need to flourish. Sometimes they stop others flourishing.
Of course, Jesus did know that rules are important, but he knew that the needs of people are more important.
And that is a really good lesson to us. If we see someone in need, the most important thing is to help them, no matter when or where it may be.
The right thing to do is the most loving thing to do. Jesus wants us to care for one another, even on the Sabbath.
When someone’s suffering, we show the meaning of the Sabbath when we offer healing and support. The Sabbath is made for rest, but it’s also made for showing God’s love through acts of care and hospitality.
True faith is not strict adherence to the rules, it’s recognising who we are, and we are all children of God, living out our faith as children of God.
God loves us and will set us free, and he will give us what is needed to live our faith out. But we need to find that time to pause for 24 hours every week and come before God in a day of rest – and the ‘good news’ is, Jesus doesn’t just offer us 24 hours in a week, He is there continuously, to lean on, to speak to, to guide us every single day of our lives and for eternity.
Amen.
Service: Revd Rebecca Yates 24th August 2025. (St John the Baptist Church Peterborough UK)
Readings: Isaiah 58:9 – end / Luke 13:10-17