Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

 Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16C

August 21, 2022

        Many of you know that when I go visit our family farm, I often am given or take on a project.  One of my projects for my visit this past summer was the clipping up of tomato plants.  I wasn’t sure what I agreed to until I headed to the field, and I discovered rows upon rows of tomato plants whose vines and fruit were so heavy that they not only lay on the ground but they had started to grow entangled together.  My task was to separate the plants and to clip up the vines to thin ropes hanging down from above.  It was hard work; the vines were heavy and laden with flowers and fruit that I had to be so very careful not to damage.  The tomato plants made my skin itch when I came into contact with them.  And we won’t even talk about the weeds!

        As I worked, I thought about the passages in scripture where God promises to make the crooked paths straight, and I thought about how Jesus heals a bent over, crooked woman, who had borne the weight of her infirmity for 18 years.

        I thought about how we, like the tomato plants, like the woman, and like the leader of the synagogue that confronts Jesus, are impeded  in our growth and in our ability to bear fruit, how we get all tangled up together, how we don’t know where we end and others begin until Jesus comes along and heals us and helps us untangle, until God makes our crooked, heavy vines straight. 

        Both Isaiah and the gospel reading today speak about the importance of Sabbath.  In the gospel reading, sabbath and the law become the stick that the synagogue leader uses to fight Jesus with when he heals the crooked woman on the sabbath.  Jesus argues back that sabbath is a time to create space for compassion for all, a time to be free from what binds us.  Isaiah talks about how it is important to use God’s sabbath for the way God has intended it, as a space to create and hold compassion for ourselves and for others, about how that practice of drawing close to God and each other through sabbath rest will shower blessings down upon the whole land of Israel.

        But there’s always a temptation—that is referenced in the Isaiah reading today (and we see it at play in the gospel as well)—that is to make Sabbath about ourselves.  But God speaks through Isaiah saying that when we keep the sabbath, opening our hearts and creating space for God to work in us, Sabbath will heal us. 

        Jesus shows that true sabbath is always rooted in compassion—compassion for ourselves and our over-filled lives, compassion for others, compassion for our planet that we use and use and use with little thought.

        Sabbath is the invitation to pay attention to our inner life, to delve deeper into our own souls, beyond the boundaries of our personalities into the heart of the deep darkness within us where God dwells.

        When we worship God, when we embrace the rest and compassion offered in Sabbath, we open space for Jesus to do healing work in us, too, for God to help us yield the abundant fruit that is grown out of compassion for ourselves, for others, and for the world around us. 

        How are you being called to keep Sabbath differently, to create a space for Jesus to heal you and give you what you need?  What parts of you are crooked that need straightening?  What parts of you are too bound up with others, in ways that damage the fruit that you have to offer?  What parts of you are wounded, bent, or sick that need to be healed, straightened, made whole?  Where are you being called to look through Sabbath-seasoned eyes, with compassion—on yourself, on someone else, on the world around you?