August 24, 2025
Pentecost 11/Proper 16, Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Essex, CT
Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
I think most of you know how important it is to me to build relationships with my interfaith and ecumenical colleagues. It is one of the reasons I was excited that the first joint event planned by the churches of Essex and Ivoryton during my tenure here was last week’s liturgy across the street, and I look forward to many more occasions to gather with our neighbors from across faith traditions. It isn’t just an exercise in neighborliness; it expands our understanding and appreciation of the variety of ways God calls us into love and service.
In Hoboken, I was privileged to be invited to take part in a weekly study of Jewish texts with my friend Rabbi Rob Scheinberg and members of his congregation, United Synagogue of Hoboken. When I first started joining in, we were making our way through a text called Pirkei Avot, roughly translated as “Ethics of the Fathers,” a series of writings that are part of the larger body of rabbinic literature known as the Mishnah. These texts were compiled in the first couple of centuries of the common era as Jews navigated a world without the temple in Jerusalem and the dispersal of Jews after Rome crushed Jewish rebellions both before and after the turn of the first century.
In these weekly classes with my Jewish neighbors, my understanding of the context in which Jesus taught and the continuity between his teachings and those of his Jewish forebears expanded. I also gained a deeper appreciation that wrestling with texts and even arguing vehemently over interpretation and meaning is a feature of the rabbinic tradition.
I tell you all of this because many of our Christian scriptures, especially the Passion Narratives but many others, as well, have been read through an anti-Jewish lens, leading to antisemitic speech, behavior, and violence. And, sad to say, this is often fueled by preachers who don’t take the time to explore these issues here, from the pulpit, from where, these days, the majority of people learn about what the bible says.
No group is more vilified than the Pharisees and other religious leaders who are viewed as sticklers for the law, less concerned about people than upholding their own authority as interpreters – and enforcers – of the rules. But as Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, explains
Very often, Christian children are taught about Pharisees as this horrible group of hypocritical, money loving, elite, nasty opponents of Jesus so that they get the impression that Jesus comes to fix what the Pharisees screwed up. And because the Jewish tradition actually traces the rabbinic movement back to the Pharisees, when Christians are maligning this group, Jews are looking at this group as the ones who were able to preserve Judaism despite the disasters of this war against Rome in the middle of the first century, the destruction of the temple, and the increasing numbers of Jews taken into diaspora as slaves. The Pharisees were the ones who helped them maintain their identity apart from land and apart from temple.
And that brings us to our reading from Luke today. Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath? (The Bible for Normal People, Episode 278.)
First, let’s set the scene. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. He was not preaching a sermon. It was probably more like a bible study where different people spoke. And remember what I said about the rabbinic literature where they debated texts and often disagreed. So, Jesus is the one with the floor, and he sees this woman who was possessed. She was not just crippled – a spirit had crippled her. She did not ask to be called out; Jesus invited her to him, laid hands on her, and set her free. At this, the synagogue leader takes the floor. He isn’t complaining to Jesus, he is trying to sway the crowd. This is the way it was done. But what was his point in arguing that Jesus had done something wrong?
There are two understandings of sabbath in the Torah. The first is that God rested on the 7th day of creation. The second – and this is the guiding one for Jesus – is from Deuteronomy and refers to the Exodus. God liberated the Hebrew people from enslavement; God gave them rest. They were liberated from their labors. The sabbath is a gift, a day of rest. When Jesus heals this woman, he is liberating her from the oppression of the spirit that has plagued her for almost two decades. He calls her a daughter of Abraham, the same Abraham whose son was liberated from the sacrificial bindings.
We get a sense of how Jesus is interpreting sabbath in the manner of Isaiah who admonishes that the sabbath not be used for pursuing our own interests but calling it a delight. The portion of Isaiah 58 that we read this morning begins
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday. (Isaiah 58:9b-10)
Jesus seems to be saying that lightening the gloom that plagued this woman is pleasing to God. Liberation is the theme. This is how one repairs the breach.
Jesus is not dispensing with the law or the rules. He is simply focusing on the well-being of the person in front of him which is well within an orthodox understanding of the law.
I should also say here that when Luke was being written, these disputes were taking place as Jewish leaders were trying to salvage a Jewish identity when there was no temple in which God could dwell, and the Jewish population was being cast into a diaspora. The followers of Jesus were a threat to that, so the polemic and rhetoric can, to our ears, sound like the Jews – especially the Pharisees and other religious leaders – are wrong and unfeeling, cruel even. This was a time of intense upheaval that, unfortunately, continues to lead to hate directed against our Jewish neighbors. I can only hope that 2,000 years from now, someone reading MSNBC or Fox News reports won’t take that as guidance for how they should be dealing with each other in their own time. Instead, imagine Jesus repeating the words of the psalmist who wrote
forget not all the gifts of God.
who forgives all our sins,*and heals all our infirmities
who redeems our life from the grave* and crowns us with mercy and loving-kindness;
satisfies us with good things,*so that our youth is renewed like an eagle’s.
Jesus always led with mercy and loving-kindness. He did not just make that up. It was part of his tradition, the teachings of the law. His messianic purpose was to proclaim the reign of God, and in God’s reign, we are liberated from whatever it is that binds us. We need not turn this Good News into bad news for someone else or perpetuate ancient arguments to score points about who is wrong and who is right. Let’s follow Jesus’s example and lead with mercy and loving-kindness. God will take care of the rest.