Service for August 24 Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost

Sermon for  August 24, 2025                                     Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost

The Sabbath in Four Movements

Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-27

When I graduated college, it was with a degree in music, Bachelor of Music. I wanted to be a performer. I loved music and I loved to perform and conduct. Life takes us on journeys sometimes that we neither plan nor expect. So, I stand before you today as a pastor who loves music. I say this to explain how I have structured this message.

Though I love almost all forms of music, my favorite is the symphony. Symphonic music is the fullest and richest in sound and expression in my opinion. The Symphony is a form for full orchestra, usually in four movements, though I confess that my favorite symphony is Mahler’s Second, called the Resurrection, and is in five movements and takes nearly two hours. I can’t help by cry at the climax of the fifth movement.

I any case, each movement is different in style, orchestration, tempo, etc. But the final movement is the grand conclusion interweaving all that has come before in the first three. With this in mind, I have titled this sermon The Sabbath in four movements which will become evident as we work through the four passages. I have great regard for the use of a lectionary in the church. Through most of my career I had to choose a different text on which to preach, which was not easy. The lectionary, though, works off of the Church Calendar and selects passages that corollate with the season. Moreover, there are usually four passages chosen as lessons together: Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel. Therefore, today I present a symphony on the Sabbath.

First Movement: Isaiah 58:9b-14

If you were listening when Isaiah was read, you would have notices the number of conditional statements in this passage: If…Then… “If you remove the yoke among you, the pointing finger, the speaking evil…” this is a call to Israel to stop doing these things. “If you offer food to the hungry and satisfy the need of the afflicted…” a call to begin doing this. “Then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday…” the promise of God for fulfilling these conditions. Most notable in this passage are the last two verses: “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; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13–14, NRSV) Abuse of the Sabbath was prevalent in Isaiah’s day, and as we shall see, also in Jesus’ day.

We can all go home with this passage and judge ourselves whether we too abuse the Sabbath. However, you may notice that Israel was incapable of stopping their abuses and starting to live righteously. So too, we cannot fulfill the conditions of God no matter how hard we try.

Second Movement: Psalm 103:1-8

It is true that we are incapable of making ourselves righteous. However, the psalm answers this dilemma: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your sins (iniquity), who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the grave (Pit), who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,” (Psalm 103:2–4, NRSV). Israel cannot cleanse themselves and neither can we, but God can and does. This psalm demonstrates that God fulfills both promise and condition. Only he can transform the lives of his people.

Third Movement: Hebrews 12:18-29

The book of Hebrews is God’s gift to the church explaining the meaning of the Old Testament. We often limit our reading of the Old Testament to the familiar stories and skip over much of the instruction of the Law (that is beyond the 10 Commandments). How many of us have waded through the legal details at the end of Exodus and throughout Leviticus. The Law of God is cumbersome to most Christians today. We say, “we are not under law but under grace.” Sadly, though, the Grace of God does not negate the Law of God. Paul speaks of the Law as a tutor demonstrating our inability to live a holy and righteous life. The Law forces us to rely on the Grace of God in Jesus Christ for our righteousness.

The author of Hebrews points out that the material of the Old Testament is what was to drive Israel to the spiritual. “You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,” (Hebrews 12:18–22, NRSV).

Mount Zion is not a literal mountain as Mount Sinai was. Mount Zion is an image used for the New Jerusalem, the Eternal Kingdom of God, or even what many call Heaven. This Third Movement brings clarity to the first two. The worship Israel offered God through the Tabernacle, then the Temple, was so focused on material ritual and, getting that precisely correct, that the truth of the ritual often overlooked the spiritual truth to which these rituals pointed. This explains how Jesus Christ could be crucified on the cross for Israel never made the connection between that sacrifice and the sacrifice of bulls, goats, or birds.

Those sacraments of the Old Testament are not really different from our Sacraments of Baptism and Communion. Each of our Sacraments are holy signposts of the reality to which they point: the washing of our sins and the presence of Christ with us. These signs are important because in their physical application, the spiritual reality is impressed upon us in a tangible way.

The Fourth Movement: Luke 13:10-17

The Gospel this morning presents a story from the life of Christ Jesus that is the culmination and climax of the first three movements or lessons. Jesus was teaching in the Synagogue on a Sabbath day. A crippled woman, bent over by a spirit for eighteen years entered the synagogue where Jesus was teaching. She said nothing. She did not ask for anything. We have no reason to believe she was there for any reason other than to hear the teaching that Sabbath. “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; then you shall take delight in the LORD…” (Isaiah 58:13–14, NRSV).

If the woman did not ask for healing, then she was not looking after her own needs. Jesus did not think of himself or the supposed rules of the Sabbath, but he felt compassion for this crippled woman. It is safe to say that Jesus really shook things up when he told the woman she was healed and applied his word by laying his hands on her. What he did was probably not a problem except for the fact that the woman stood up and began praising God. Horror of horrors, Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath. “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe;” (Hebrews 12:28, NRSV).

So here come the leaders: “You can’t do that on the Sabbath. What’s wrong with you, don’t you know that no one can work on the Sabbath? Tell this crippled woman to go away and come back on one of the six days you can heal her legally!” Jesus continues his teaching more pointedly, “You hypocrites! 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? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”” (Luke 13:15–16, NRSV)

Personally, I love the way Jesus calls them out. I would love to talk that way to some people if I were not such a hypocrite myself! The point Jesus makes is simple, it was “legal” on the Sabbath to go to you oxen and goats, untie them from their stalls and take them out to get water. But it was not legal to simply speak a word of healing for a crippled woman, a daughter of Abraham at that!

At this point I must leave you all to wrestle within yourselves with God who is the composer of our Symphony. As for me, I have a lot of inward reflection to do, and a lot of confessing to do. However, I leave you with the wisdom of St. Augustine, “The whole human race, like this woman, was bent over and bowed down to the ground. Someone already understands these enemies. He cries out against them and says to God, “They have bowed my soul down.” The devil and his angels have bowed the souls of men and women down to the ground. He has bent them forward to be intent on temporary and earthly things and has stopped them from seeking the things that are above.”[1]

Remember the good news: Our backs have or can be straightened trough baptism and we remain upright in order to look above our earthly lives to heavenly things by our fellowship with Christ in the bread and wine of the Supper.

[1] Arthur A. Just, Ed., Luke, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 225–226.