Be Set Free

Sermons for the Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost, Year C

The Church of the Epiphany | Washington, DC

Luke 13:10-17

Luke’s Gospel recounts a miraculous healing. A woman is set free. Some respond with joy-filled praise, and some overflow instead with indignation. 

This event, because it occurs on the sabbath day, is controversial. Now, from our own position, maybe it is difficult to imagine just why—but perhaps we in fact know a thing or two about all that is unfolding here... Nevertheless, at the heart of this story, there is a tension between law and liberation. 

It’s not necessarily new or novel, though; just as we find this recurring theme throughout all of human history, this creative interplay of law and liberation is also interwoven throughout scripture. 

...What does freedom look like? …And how are we to live as free people?

These are the very same questions the Hebrew people are confronted with when they break free of their enslavement in Egypt. Up to that point, the many practicalities of living in freedom were simply not accessible, though longing for it was no doubt ever present. As Nina Simone sings, “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free / I wish I could break all the chains holding me / I wish I could give all I’m longing to give / I wish I could live like I’m longing to live…”  

It is difficult to imagine the specifics of how one might live once free and how community life might be governed, to say the least, when freedom is a luxury contained and controlled by outside forces.

God’s people, for hundreds of years, lived under authoritarianism. The movements of their days were tracked and controlled, along with their speech and any ability to create or imagine on their own terms. And then, finally, once they are no longer enslaved, wandering in the desert, they must begin learning how to live as people who are indeed free…

For just a moment, imagine you are driving a car. And when you approach a busy intersection — let’s say 13th and G St, at rush hour — the traffic lights are out. In the absence of green and, more importantly, red lights, what do you do? Do you continue at full speed, simply driving through the intersection without regard for others? Do you slow down, do you stop? 

(This, by the way, is the correct answer: come to a complete stop, proceed with caution, only once it is safe to do so) Now, to go a step further, imagine our Mayor on a whim abolishes all traffic rules and any enforcement. Every driver for themselves. Navigating this city would be utterly chaotic. For as “free” as each driver might be to make their own decisions, our public safety would certainly not look like what we expect for a thriving city.

So, back in the desert, Moses goes up on a mountaintop and comes back down with the Law. 

By these God-given commandments the people’s lives will be able to flourish, together. And the third one is especially important: “Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day.”

Because for people who have been treated as subhuman and accustomed to harsh labor, refraining from work is of critical importance. It is essential to protect rest because we are far more than any measure of merit or productivity or capital gains. Sabbath affirms dignity and the fullness of our humanity. This is the purpose of Law.

So, in the words of the very first Psalm, “Happy are those who…delight in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.” In order to impart this love, Rabbis would place honey on their students' tongues when reading from the Torah. Like a sweetness that delights and satisfies, law is good. Law is even necessary for liberation.

But if renewal is the entire point of sabbath law, if bodies and souls are not being healed, can it even be called sabbath anymore? 

There is a long tradition, as we surely know, of enforcing a “rule of law” without regard for liberation. And I don’t know about each of you but in the tradition I grew up in, I heard Romans 13:1 quoted more times than I could possibly remember: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities…” All-too-often, these words function to dismiss the inconveniences of social unrest and public protest against unjust rulers who show no concern for the vulnerable: those closest to the heart of God.

Now, I have only been arrested once before. I was engaged in an illegal activity. And I knew it was illegal to read the Bible aloud on the floor of the Hart Senate Building, and I did it anyway. So, alongside a group of other faithful persons, I was detained. Because for as much as there is that tradition of my roots, there is also a long, faithful history of refusing to abide by unjust laws out of fidelity to the God who sets free.

Whenever authorities neglect the needs of the people, they have lost their way. And law will inevitably become distorted. No longer is leadership at that point about healing and liberty, freedom and flourishing, but instead about control and obedience, profit and power.

Anyone who would seek to elevate themselves by subjugating those they are called to lead understandably gets uncomfortable with any talk of freedom. It’s really rather inconvenient. As the great theologian James Cone puts it,

“The Gospel of liberation is bad news to oppressors because they have defined their ‘freedom’ in terms of slavery of others.” 

Freedom, like the Gospel of Christ, freedom is dangerous. It imagines new possibilities that stretch beyond the status quo; possibilities that might even allow for real mutual wellbeing. As it has been said, the power of the people is always greater than the people in power. 

Jesus makes clear where he stands in all of this. “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”

But in his Sermon on the Mount, just after the lengthy list of Beatitudes, he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” It’s common for some to argue between law and grace in the Bible, and to even use these words to enforce a kind of rigid religiosity and obedience without regard for real people and their needs. Grace and empathy and mercy are treated with outright indignation, as though somehow being merely soft abstractions of what “true religion” really looks like.  

Whenever there seems to be conflict between enforcing legalistic observance and grace, Jesus sees the person caught in the middle. And not only does he refuse to criminalize them, he takes his place amongst those deemed unclean and dismissed — those criminalized by anxious authorities. 

It’s worth noting this woman in the synagogue does not ask to be healed. She knows how things work. She understands the terms and the forces under which she lives. And it would seem she has even accepted her place in the order of things; so she does not call out, hoping to be set free, as we hear so many others do whenever Jesus draws close to them. 

This woman is stuck between a rock and a hard place. But for whatever we might say about her situation and the state of her spirit — whether it is hopeful or burdened by the weight of despair — when Jesus calls, she answers. A gift is presented before her and she is willing to receive and participate in it without concern for decorum.

“Be set free,” Jesus says. And so healing flows out like a stream of sweet honey from the rock. 

She does not beg or ask for healing — and yet healing comes anyway.

Right there. In the very midst of the Pharisees and powers who have convinced themselves they are in control. Despite the delusion that their terms are the final word for what legislates others' lives, healing happens anyway. 

Because this is the way the God Who Liberates works. And freedom will not be determined by others.

So, dear friends, in the words of Saint Paul, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

Amen