The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (September 26, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The creation poem begins with a simple but profound statement about the world’s relationship to God, namely one of complete and utter dependence. Whatever is exists purely because of God’s action. The rest of the poem details God’s dividing, forming, and filling: he separates light and darkness; he separates earth from sky; he separates water from land; he fills the land with plants, the sky with heavenly bodies, the waters with fish, and the earth with animals. The pinnacle of this creation is us, humankind made in the image and likeness of God and given an awesome responsibility to work and tend the Garden. At the end of this beautiful, symphonic sequence, we get this conclusion: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hose of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which had had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.”

Why does God take a rest? Surely the text doesn’t mean to imply that the God who created the world out of nothing, who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and impassible needs to take a break because he’s tired and needs to recuperate. The best explanation for this divine action that I’ve heard is that this is an anthropomorphism that depicts God like an artist who completes a masterpiece, steps back from his canvas, and sighs a sigh of satisfaction at his handiwork. What a beautiful world he has made. It is good.

The rhythm of the Creation poem became engrained in the cultic and social life of the people of Israel. As we heard today in the 10 Commandments: “Remember the sabbath day, to 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; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.” When Israel wandered in the wilderness, they were instructed to pick double the manna on the sixth day so they would not have to gather on the sabbath. When some of the Israelites did go out to gather up the heavenly bread, there was none for them. “Six days you shall do your work but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your ass may have rest, and the son of your bondmaid, and the alien, may be refreshed.” The purpose of the Sabbath if multifaceted: first, it afforded the people, their animals, and the land rest but it also allowed them to appreciate what they had.

There is a sense in which the Sabbath taught the people of Israel humility. I think many of us tend toward workaholism. We want to get ahead, we want to do that extra day of work so we can gain some advantage. In fact, the prophet Amos detailed the people’s excitement for the Sabbath to be over because they were more interested in commerce than true worship: “When will the new moon be over,” the people ask, “that we may sell grain? And the sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances.” I think the Israelite people speak more for the general human condition here, given our cultural insistence on doing business 24/7 instead of taking a day off. While it might sound nice in theory, the Sabbath is a hard practice for humans because it teaches us frail creatures that we are not the Creator, that everything is not in our control, and that we are not the master of our fate. Instead, it teaches us that we are reliant on God’s word, not on our own understanding, as God says in Exodus 31:13: “You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.”

It is with all this background that we arrive at our reading this morning from the Gospel according to St. Luke. Our Lord is invited to the house of one of the Pharisees for a feast. While there, the Pharisees bring to him a man who suffered with dropsy, a disease where the vital organs where an excess of fluids collect in various parts of the body. It resulted in swollen limbs. This would have ultimately led to the congestive heart failure and been fatal. Jesus uses the man to pose a question to the Pharisees: “is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?” This isn’t the only exchange on this topic Jesus has with the Pharisees. In Matthew 12, the Pharisees accused Jesus’ disciples of violating the sabbath when they plucked grain to eat. In the Markan version of the story, Jesus summarizes, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath.” The point is that the day of rest was not arbitrary, as the Pharisees so often made it out to be through their legalism. In so doing, they ended up undermining the purpose of the sabbath: this beautiful day of contemplation and rejuvenation was being turned into yet another day of work through the sheer weight of observance requirements. So in Luke, Jesus gets to turn the tables on the Pharisees by posing the question to them. If the Pharisees were to say no, it’s not lawful to heal on the sabbath, then they would have had to deny the opportunity for healing to the man in front of them. But if they said yes, it is lawful to heal on the sabbath, then they would have had to admit the divinity of Christ who is “lord even of the sabbath.” So instead of answering Jesus’ question, they remained silent. This allows Jesus to expound further: “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these things.” The same principle from Jesus’ previous discussions of the sabbath is present here: the sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the sabbath. Whatever sabbath observance looks like, it should benefit us. Piling on extra requirements are counterproductive and defeat the purpose of the day.

Like all Old Testament ritual and cultic practice, the sabbath observance in Judaism is a type and shadow for something to come. In Hebrews 4, the author uses the sabbath rest to stand for the promise of eternal life: “For we who have believed enter that rest.” Belief here means more than cognitive assent, it means being more than a hearer, but a doer: “it remains for some to enter that rest, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience.” He goes on to say “there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; for whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his.”

During the Comfortable Words of the Mass, we hear Jesus promise us this rest: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden and I will refresh you.” Our Lord is our rest, he is our promise, and our portion. And how do we attain him? By striving to conform our lives to his.

This is the second part of our reading in which Jesus tells a parable to his Pharisaical interlocutors: “When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest seat; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest place; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.” This parable really summarizes the theme of St. Luke’s Gospel which is distilled in the Magnificat, the hymn of our Lady that we pray at Evening Prayer each day: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He remembering his mercy hath open his servant Israel; as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever." The Magnificat is a hymn about reversal that anticipates how Jesus upsets our expectations. The Jews in his day were expecting a political revolutionary to be their Messiah, but Jesus didn’t meet those expectations. The rich young ruler thought himself privileged for the kingdom, yet Christ embraced the poor and outcast. The Pharisee thought he went to the Temple justified but in reality, it was the poor publican who wouldn’t even lift his eyes up to heaven. The principle of reversal is present at the end of today’s parable: For whosever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Who is a better example of this principle than our Lord? “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” We enter his rest when we become like him by humbling ourselves, considering others better than ourselves. And it’s important then that we avoid the mistakes of the Pharisees: by piling on extra requirements that miss the point of our ritual. The goal for us in this community is that our worship, both public and private (though there isn’t anything private about worship, even when we’re alone), is that we participate in the mystery at the heart of our faith: the crucifixion of our Lord. That becomes the template for everything: it’s at the heart of the Mass, it’s what makes our prayers effectual, and it should be the template for our lives. What we enact here at Mass and what we pray in our devotions should form a beautiful symphony with our lives so that all of who we are might be a sweet, sweet sound in his ears. And if we pursue this blessed life, we will find rest. “Come unto me all ye who travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.