Readings (Track 2)

As our first reading reminds us, it’s hard to overestimate the importance of the Sabbath in Jewish faith and practice: “If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, / from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; / if you call the sabbath a delight / and the holy day of the Lord honorable; / if you honor it, not going your own ways, /serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs…”

In the Ten Commandments: “you shall not do any work.” But what counts as work? That question generates considerable interpretive attention. Judging by the rabbinic writings, when it comes to healing, the general principle is “saving life overrules the Sabbath” (b. Yoma 85b), so, for any particular case, is it a question of life or death?[1]

So the synagogue leader’s response is understandable. Were anyone but Jesus involved we might be inclined to agree.

There are a couple ways we might understand Jesus’ response. Jesus asks: “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?” This sounds like Jesus’ response when challenged about another healing on the Sabbath: “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” (Lk. 6:9) Jesus thinks the meaning, the intention, of the Law is very much worth discussing, and in that discussion the prophet Hosea’s “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matt. 9:13; cf. Hos 6:6) plays a big role. “Very much worth discussing”—which perhaps makes Jesus’ warning that we heard last Sunday a bit more understandable: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Or there’s Jesus’ appropriation of Isaiah at the beginning of his public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19). If that’s Jesus’ commission, that does shift the interpretation of the Sabbath law. Something new is happening; someone new is onstage.

Whether Jesus’ response is based on giving more weight to texts like Hosea’s or reflective of his now being onstage—or both—in his eyes setting that woman free was profoundly honoring to the Sabbath.

In this morning’s collect we prayed “Grant… that your Church… may show forth your power.” And today’s Gospel gives us multiple ways of thinking about how our merciful God might respond. There is, first and foremost, the healing itself. “Release to the captives.” This daughter of Abraham matters. And her healing: a foretaste of the healings for which we all hope.

Another way our merciful God might respond: Jesus coming among us to ask what our traditions are about. The Sabbath stories were passed down also because the Church faced similar interpretive problems. How should the Gentile believers be received? Which laws apply and how? Jesus’ appeal to Hosea (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) remained—remains!—relevant. God’s power: shown forth in our continuing to listen to Jesus’ questions (“I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?”) What questions is Jesus asking us?

Another way our merciful God might respond to the petition in the Collect: the choices that woman continued to make over eighteen long years. Why keep attending synagogue for eighteen years when nothing is happening? But she’s a true daughter of Abraham. If Abraham could continue believing despite being childless for decades she could keep showing up. And then that Sabbath Jesus is there, and her presence allows that Sabbath to be properly celebrated! The faithfulness of so many in our parishes despite chronic infirmity: a precious witness to God’s power.

Then there’s the leader of the synagogue. We heard his response to the healing. He could have played it differently: “Let’s pray together the Hallelujah psalms at the end of the Psalter!” Or: “Jesus, Jacob over there lost an eye a few years back. Can you do something for him?” But how we play it depends on who we are, and—as is not often enough observed—“We see things not as they are but as we are.”[2] The synagogue leader’s responses are limited by who he is at that moment. All he can see is Jesus trampling on the Sabbath.

And this is perhaps where today’s text connects thematically to its immediate surroundings in Luke’s Gospel. The previous verses—like most of last week’s reading—urged repentance. Repentance: not just for them, but an ongoing project for every Christian. Recall our brother Martin Luther and the first of his 95 Theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” ‘Repentance,’ or, in common speech, that toxic word ‘change’ (“How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?” “Change?”). Our brother John Henry Newman nailed it: To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.[3]

“Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples.” This is where the Holy Spirit needs to roll up the sleeves: what conversations are we capable of having with Jesus? Jesus says or does something unexpected: are we right there with the synagogue ruler? (“Change? Not on my watch!”) That depends on who we are, who we’re becoming. And so we keep coming to the Table asking that the Holy Spirit will continue to do both the work we know needs doing and the necessary work about which we’re clueless: “Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.”

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[1] See Marcus Mark 1-8, p.248.

[2] Anaïs Nin (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9268209-we-see-things-not-as-they-are-but-as-we, accessed 8/18/2025).

[3] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_henry_newman_159078, accessed 8/18/2025.