Call the Sabbath a delight

James Wyatt

The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

text: Luke 13:10-17

"Woman, you are set free from your ailment."

This story from today's Gospel really struck me, because it seems like most of the time when the Gospels talk about people who are possessed by demons, it sounds a lot like how we might describe a mental illness. And of course now we have a scientific understanding of the kinds of things that cause mental illness, and ways of treating mental illness that don't involve rites of exorcism.

But here, in this story, we meet "a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight."

So modern doctors would probably look at a case like hers and run various tests and study her X-rays and come up with a pretty clear understanding of what caused this dramatic curvature of her spine and how to make it better. I'm pretty sure that understanding would not involve demons.

But, you know, from that woman's perspective, I'm not sure there's a difference.

Whatever scientific diagnosis she received, whatever fancy name was attached to her condition, I suspect that it would still feel a lot like a demon riding on her back.

• • •

I have celiac disease. That means whenever I eat gluten—anything with a hint of wheat, barley, or rye—I get pretty sick. It's an autoimmune condition, so basically, gluten tricks my body into thinking that my own intestines are an infection that needs to be fought off. As autoimmune diseases go, it could be a lot worse, but it can still be pretty unpleasant, and it requires constant vigilance about what I eat.

So I have this very basic scientific understanding of what happens in my body when I slip up and eat gluten—which is a lot better than when I didn't even know that gluten was the problem. And I know that a lot of scientists are doing a lot of work to understand it even better. So I am not inclined to think that I have a spirit that has crippled my digestive system.

But you know what? Sometimes it feels a lot like a demon, like an evil force that keeps me in bondage, and prevents me from doing something as simple as eating like a normal person.

Last week at work, my whole team got together for a team-building thing—test a new game, have some fun together, and eat! Our department ordered lunch for us!

From Panera.

Panera Bread.

Or Panera Poison, as far as my body is concerned. Nothing against Panera, but their menu is not exactly celiac-friendly. "No problem," I told the person who ordered lunch, "I'll just bring my own food. It'll be fine."

Well, it was sort of fine. It actually felt pretty bad. Sitting at the table, watching everyone else open up their little personalized boxes and pull out their sandwiches and their cookies . . . Yeah, I felt left out. Not a great feeling.

• • •

You know, the thing about the poor woman bent over, unable to stand up straight—it's not just that people had a different understanding of disease back then. No, people looked at her and saw "a woman with a spirit"—not the good kind of spirit, an unclean spirit—and so they treated her as unclean, too. As if it weren't bad enough that she couldn't stand up straight, couldn't raise her head to look at the sky or see anyone face to face, she was also cut off from her community, shunned. Unclean. Unable to worship, to socialize, to eat with her neighbors. Here I am, complaining about having to bring my own lunch to a team-building exercise, while she—and so many other outcasts, then and now, the poor, the lepers, the quisling tax collectors, the people who are seen as sinners—they literally can't even sit down at the same table with the healthy, respectable people.

Here she comes, bent over, walking into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, looking to be set free.

And not only does Jesus lay his hands on her, not only does he tell her, "you are set free from your ailment," not only does he heal her, so she can stand up straight and praise God, but he also calls her a daughter of Abraham. Right to the face of the people who excluded her, he calls her part of the family of God.

And of course the leaders of the synagogue give him a hard time, because he did this work, his work of healing, on the Sabbath. But Jesus's response is perfect: This is what the Sabbath is about: it's a day of rest, of course, but that means a day when you take the yokes off your animals—it's a day of freedom, of release from bondage. It's not just about remembering and honoring the seventh day of creation, it's also about anticipating the completion, the fulfillment of creation: a day of healing and reconciliation, a day of delight, as Isaiah said. What better day to bring freedom and healing to a daughter of Abraham, to remove a demonic yoke from a child of God?

• • •

I don't hold out a lot of hope that my celiac disease is going to be cured, either by divine intervention or by a scientific advance any time soon, despite the occasional news article promising that I might some day be able to enjoy real New York pizza again. But this is the Sabbath day, the day of delight. This is the day we gather at God's table, as children of God. This is the day we feast in remembrance of Jesus Christ, and enjoy a taste of the feast to come. And in this moment, Jesus lays his hands on me and sets me free—a foretaste of the wholeness that awaits us all.

Just as Jesus welcomed the sick and the outcast to feast with him, he welcomes us all to this table, now. Whatever illnesses afflict us, whatever demons weigh us down and keep us in bondage, we are welcome here, and in this feast we are set free. Today we are God's family, part of the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and no one is excluded, no one is left out.

Amen.