Proper 16 -- Isaiah 58: 9b-14 /Psalm 103: 1–8 / Hebrews 12: 18–29 / Luke 13:
10–17
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, August 25, 2019.
“IDOLATRY: A MATTER OF RELATIONSHIP”
(Homily texts: Isaiah 58: 9b–14 & Luke 13: 10-17)
At
first glance, our appointed Old Testament reading, taken from Isaiah, chapter
fifty-eight, and our Gospel text, from Luke, chapter thirteen, don’t have much
in common with one another, other than the fact that both texts have to do with
keeping the Sabbath.
Isaiah
complains that God’s people aren’t keeping the Sabbath. Apparently, they aren’t
keeping it at all. Instead, they are going about their worldly and secular
pursuits instead of honoring God.
However,
Luke relates to us an incident in which Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath,
drawing the ire of the leader of the local synagogue. (The leader of the
synagogue quotes a portion of the commandment about keeping the Sabbath….see
below.)
At
issue in both cases is the relationship that God’s people have to the Sabbath,
and – by inference – to God.
At
this point, we need to back up a little. Let’s return to the Ten Commandments,
and refresh our memory about the commandment which has to do with the Sabbath.
In Exodus 20: 8 – 10, we read, “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 – you, your son or your daughter,
your male or female slaves, your livestock, or the alien resident in your
towns.”
The
proscriptions against doing any work on the Sabbath, and the comprehensive
scope of those proscriptions (preventing, for example, one of God’s people from
getting work done on the Sabbath by having a slave do the work instead of doing
it themselves) are meant to allow time and occasion for honoring God. That’s
the purpose of the Sabbath. In a sense, we could say that the Sabbath is “God’s
day”.
Now,
however, two extremes which have to do with keeping the Sabbath are set before
us this morning: In the situation which Isaiah addresses, apparently the
observance of the Sabbath had either gotten lax, or it wasn’t happening at all.
In the situation in which our Lord found Himself, however, it is the strict
observance of the Sabbath which is at issue.
How
to keep the Sabbath was the subject of much intense debate among the rabbis in
the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry. In the Gospels, we read in more than
one place the phrase, “a Sabbath day’s journey”, leading us to see that the
leaders of God’s people had debated the matter, and had set a limit on how far
one could walk on the Sabbath day. The decision is, essentially, a practical
one: Realizing that people may have to walk on the Sabbath day, then just how
far could they be allowed to walk and still keep the Sabbath?
Jesus
appeals to this very practical side of keeping the Sabbath in His response to
the leader of the synagogue. He says, “Does not each of you on the Sabbath
untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to give it water?”
In
our Lord’s response, we see the practical side of keeping the Sabbath. In
essence, what is permitted is some limited level of work, work which is
necessary to maintaining essential tasks, work (or effort) which cannot be
allowed to lapse for an entire day.
It’s
worth noting, at this point in our consideration of our Lord’s response, that
He is using a rhetorical device known as Lesser-to-Greater. He uses the
illustration of caring for an ox or a donkey to point to the truth that doing
something good and helpful for an animal leads directly to the business of
doing something good or useful for a human being is a right, good and proper thing
to be doing. We can state the Lord’s intention this way: If one can be doing
this lesser thing for an animal, then one can certainly be doing a greater
thing for a human being.
We
said at the beginning of this homily that the connecting thread of both our
Isaiah and Luke texts is that they both have to do with the Sabbath, and – more
specifically – with the relationship that God’s people have with the Sabbath,
and, by extension, with God.
Relationship.
How
people relate to the Sabbath leads us into a discussion about the matter of
idolatry.
An
idol, in its most basic definition, is something that takes God’s rightful
place in a person’s life.
So,
for example, Isaiah’s complaint is that people are making an idol out of their
worldly pursuits. To these ancient peoples, doing what they want to do on the
Sabbath is a whole lot more important than honoring God. At least that’s the
impression that leaps off the pages of Isaiah’s complaint.
In
the case of the healing of the woman on the Sabbath, we get the impression that
the Sabbath, and the keeping of it, has become an idol. No longer is the focus
on God. Now, it’s on keeping the Sabbath, rigorously and in a most legal and
exacting fashion, that has become the goal. Undergirding the zeal to keep the Sabbath
is the matter of maintaining the identity of God’s people in the face of Roman
occupation. It’s as if God’s people are saying, “We are children of Abraham,
and one way you can tell that we are is by the rigorous way we keep the
Sabbath.”
In
other words, by the definition of an idol given above, the Sabbath itself (and
not God) has become the object of worship.
How
we relate to the various things we own, and the things we have to get done, is
a matter of relationship. These things can be a matter of idolatry if the
“things” in our lives and our responsibilities take God’s rightful place in our
lives. It isn’t the “stuff” of life that is an idol, in and of itself, it’s how
we relate to that “stuff”, and – in particular – how those things figure into our
relationship with God.
There
is a wonderful Collect in our Prayer Book which might assist us to remember
God’s rightful place in our lives. It can be found on page 57 of The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, and it is entitled “A Collect for
Guidance”. It is part of the Daily Office, Morning Prayer:
“O heavenly Father, in whom we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray thee so to guide and govern us by thy Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget thee, but may remember that we are ever walking in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
AMEN.
