Resting In God

 So, instead of an intro meant to grab your attention, I’m going to trust you’re already attentive and get right to the text. There are 3 points and an application I’d like to share with you.

My first point: the key to Jesus’s ministry of healing is his ministry of attentiveness and presence. 

Our healing story from Luke 13 is one of a number of healing stories where Jesus first notices someone struggling, suffering, at wit’s end, and either calls them over as we see in Luke 13 or goes over himself to give that person his undivided attention. 

Often, we’ll see the refrain moved by compassion in these kinds of stories. Christ’s ministry of presence precedes his ministry of healing. They go together.

So, Jesus sees the crippled woman, and while it doesn’t state this, compassion must have welled up in him. He calls her over and they interact. 

Yes, there’s power in intention. If our intention is deep enough, it has effects on our actions. But we shouldn’t forget about the power of attention. Jesus gives the crippled woman the gift of his full attention, of his full presence. In that moment, there’s just Christ, the divine one ready to heal, and her. 

There’s a term popular in healthcare, especially hospice. “Healing presence.” Jesus was all about healing presence. His mere presence, his full attention, moved healing and wholeness in people.  

What’s more, the power of Jesus’ full attention comes first. Without seeing the woman and giving her his full attention, the healing doesn’t happen. 

We often forget that Jesus couldn’t heal everyone. He could only attend to one person at a time. Outside the feeding of the 5,000, its own kind of healing, Jesus’ miracles are one on one events. Attention, presence, stillness, touch, talk, these are all in Jesus, the Great Physician’s, medicine bag.

Point number 2: Jesus wants Sabbath to be about love for God and love for others. 

The underlying purpose of the Sabbath was a day for rest, to cease from life's busy routine and work, and rest in God. 

And so, the primary commandment to keep the Sabbath was to not perform any labor or engage in business. This meant prohibiting carrying goods or burdens and stopping all commerce. 

Religious leaders like the Pharisees had created many additional rules to define what constituted "work". For instance, they had laws against moving furniture or big items, such as a ladder, or even wearing jewelry, as these could be considered carrying burdens. 

Examples of forbidden activities included boiling an egg or lighting or extinguishing a fire if it wasn’t dangerous to people. 

Another example is, as we see in our story, healing people. That was forbidden according to the religious leaders.

These examples tell us how important Sabbath was.

For Jesus, however, the Sabbath rules all hang upon the law of love. Sabbath is for the purpose of love.

Remember the last time you flew on a commercial airplane? As your plane is about to take off, the flight attendants go over the rules. One of the rules involves the emergency situation of needing oxygen masks. One of the most interesting rules in human life goes something like this: put your own mask on first before helping others with their masks. 

Why? Because if you become incapacitated by oxygen loss, you will thereafter be useless to those you’re caring for.

Well, Sabbath amounts to putting your oxygen mask on first. It is a matter of self-care, the self-care of resting in God, so we’re better able to care for others. Keeping Sabbath, pausing from the busyness and labor of life to rest in God, builds the stamina we need to love others best.

So Jesus basically says to the Pharisees, if we ignore love amid the focus on following the rules, we miss the point. The point of Sabbath is to love better.

Third point: Rules and traditions are for the good of human beings, not human beings for the good of rules and traditions.

The Sabbath is a good thing. Jesus never called for the eradication of the Sabbath. Humans need to stop and rest. Always being on the go, working all the time, constantly being busy is not good for the spirit. Pausing and honoring a day of rest is a wonderful practice for our well-being.

But even good things can be taken too far. We humans seem to have a built-in propensity to take something good, become fixed on it, and then take it to an extreme level. That’s what’s happened with the Pharisees. The religious leaders took something good – the need for Sabbath – and became so fixed on the letter of the law, that they’ve forgotten the spirit of the law, the spirit of love. And they’ve taken the Sabbath, a good thing, to an extreme level. 

Jesus puts it clearly in Mark 2, verse 27. Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath. If it doesn’t help humans, if it doesn’t support their well-being, then it can be let go of.

As with the Sabbath laws, rules in general are meant to help people. Rules for rules’ sake, that is something we must guard against. 

These rules don’t have to be written down, either. How many unspoken rules are there here and in other churches? 

The stereotypical unspoken rule is where folks sit on Sunday mornings, right? We don’t have assigned seating, but if someone comes to visit and they’re sitting in your seat, who doesn’t have that thought, I better get here earlier next week! 

Another word for unspoken rule is tradition. Not all rules or traditions are helpful. Some hinder growth, individual and collective growth, though they may seem good or have been helpful originally. 

Lastly, the application piece: Resting in God helps us discern the way to go.

How do we guard against the human propensity to hold onto rules and traditions simply for rules’ and tradition’s sake, even when they’re a hindrance not a help?

Rest in God. The meaning of Sabbath.

Resting in God enables us to perceive which human-made rules and traditions are helpful and which ones are unhelpful and a hindrance, enabling us to avoid holding onto those rules and traditions just because. Resting in God helps us separate the wheat from the chafe.

Resting in God also enables us to, like Jesus, be attentive and present to people who are hurting so we can rest in God together. 

Resting in God enables us to be open to the Holy Spirit’s moving, the Spirit moving us to do the right thing .  

Lastly, resting in God enables us to live out Christ’s greatest commandments to love God and love one another, including our enemy.

Resting in God means a life of love.

Amen.