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“God’s
Holy Day”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Luke 13:10-17
“And
ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham...be
set free from bondage on the Sabbath day?”
MY DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS today is God’s holy day. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God.” “In
the beginning…”
Today is the Sunday in the Presbyterian Church (USA), where we
acknowledge and praise God for “Youth in the Church and World.”
“In the beginning…” What
is the first question that every young person asks when they hear about
God creating our world? What
is the first question that you and I, and each and every one of us
asked, when we first heard about God in the beginning?
Who created God?
I remember when I was a little boy, I heard someone say that there are
no impossibilities in this world. And
I started thinking to myself, “I know something that is absolutely
impossible; a child can never be older than his mother.”
Then when I learned about Jesus, I discovered that it is not
impossible; because, the Son of God is older than his mother, Mary.
(smile)
Before our beginning, God was already doing what God loves to do on his
Holy Day—our Sabbath. God
was using God’s focus, God’s attention, God’s passion, God’s
strength, God’s wisdom, God’s knowledge, God’s life to give love
within God. God the Father
was speaking, listening, sharing, reaching out and loving His Son in
every source of their Holy Spirit.
God the Son was hearing the Father in His heart, talking back,
sharing His love and hugging His Father with every bit of life that He
is in the Holy Spirit. God
was active in the passion of his love before he ever used his abilities
to work out creation.
In the passage we just read from Luke, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue
on the Sabbath. The Jews
knew the third commandment “Remember
the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God—you shall
not do any work…” Jesus
saw this lady who was being attacked by a spirit that had crippled her
for about 18 years. Jesus asked her to come over to him. She could not even stand up straight. So he bent down; he might even have gotten down on his knees,
he looked her in the eyes, laid his hands on her, told her, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”
She was then able to stand up straight, and started praising God
for all that had been done for her.
She probably didn’t know it, but she was being blessed with the
love that Christ had known in God from all eternity.
We saw that it upset the authoritative religious Pharisees because they
interpreted this as braking the rule of the Sabbath.
And Jesus pointed out to them that even they use their lives to
take care of what they serve, on the Sabbath.
This shows us more about God. What
we call Sunday is our Sabbath. It
is the day of the week when we come here to worship.
We are not all tied up to keeping the commandments so strictly as
the Pharisees were in their time. (One
of my favorite little comments about pastors is that the commandment
they break more that any other is the Sabbath—keeping commandment.)
But, we do come here for worship.
What this tells us more of about God, is that God works all week in our
lives to bring us here, where we may even experience and know God’s
deepest passions in a way that sets us apart from a lot of difficulties
that may be going on in our lives.
There is a group of Roman Catholic monks, called the Carthusians who
live their lives in silence. They
stay silent all their lives, except for about 15 minutes each day, about
3pm, where they get together and share with each other what they are
hearing from God in their silence.
Then for the rest of the evening, all night, and all the next
day, they are silent. They
are into great silence.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
There are so many styles of worship.
And we churches can all learn some beautiful things from each
other. There are churches
that have contemporary worship services on Saturday evening or at
another time on Sunday—where they have modern style music and singing
and even party style talking. I
had a friend when I was in seminary in Austin, who pastured a church in
San Antonio, which met each Sunday morning at a movie theater.
And when they had the Lord’s Supper, they did not have the kind
of bread and juice that we do. They
had pop-corn and coke. (smile)
There is also a liturgical revival going on in a lot of churches, where
congregations read and speak all the prayers and liturgies together,
standing, sitting, and praying on their knees together.
And God is present, involved and blessing his loved ones in all
these situations.
For Jesus, this woman with the 18 year ailment was more important than
the institution. To God, a
person is more important than a systematic organization.
In this society we certainly know what it is to be treated as a
number, as a piece of data, as a robot that simply has its place in the
structure. We know what it
is not to be cared about, but that we just have to be manipulated by the
rules, as does everyone.
What God loves most about you is that you are a human. God is not ashamed of your humanity. God became human in Jesus Christ. God loves being human. One
of the most wonderful things that we could learn in the church is what
it is to be real and human. God
is not embarrassed about our humanity.
We do not need to leave our humanity outside the sanctuary and
then walk in and behave like we think some kind of sanctified angel
would act.
One of my friends, who is a pastor, was doing a children’s sermon one
Sunday. And his own little
boy was among the kids. He
was giving an illustration of when Jesus cleansed the Temple of all the
people who were selling objects and making money.
My friend had his robe on. And
he ran in from the back of the church and acted passionately the way
Jesus would have been when he actually turned over their tables and
seats, through his human passion for God’s house.
My friend’s little boy bowed his head, put his hands over it and
wouldn’t look up the whole time his dad was showing what Jesus was
like during this event.
After church, when they went home, the dad asked his son, “Why
would you not look at me?” And
the little boy said, “Dad, we were in church and you were acting like
a man.”
What you and I may believe is that God works all week, every week, to be
the Lord over our lives and in our lives.
And He puts forth his deepest passion on Sunday.
He runs to us, un buckles us, embraces us, and takes us to where
we need to be in order to be still and know that He is our God.
Every one of you adults, knows what it is to get up early in the
morning, have a million things on your mind, have to work all day, do
housework and yard work in the evening, go to a meeting within some
organization, and then have to wakeup in the middle of the night and
take care of your sick loved one. Also,
you know that you put more of your energy, more of your strength, more
of your mind, and your best decisions to take care of your loved one.
That is Christ living out his life in you.
To every person in here; to the young ones, to us who may not be too
young, this is our Holy Day because it is the day God works for all
week, so he can lead us to hear, feel, and experience his truth in our
lives. This is God’s Holy Day of more than work.
Let us pray…
Amen
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