This week's sermon

 

THE 4^TH COMMANDMENT

          “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” is the 4^th of the 10 commandments Moses brought down from the mountain to give God’s rules to the Hebrew people.

          Listen to it in its full form from Exodus: “Remember the sabbath day and 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, you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien residents in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day, therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and consecrated it.”

          That’s a mouthful!

          Orthodox Jews take the commandment very seriously. Some hire gentiles on the sabbath to fix their food, put out the trash, wash the dishes and turn lights off and on.

          Turning on a light is thought of as ‘work’.

          My twin grandchildren were born in a Jewish hospital in Brooklyn. The hospital had regular elevators, but one was set aside as ‘the Sabbath Elevator.’ It was programmed to stop at every floor and open the door so the orthodox Jews wouldn’t even have to push a button for their floor!

          Pushing an elevator button is ‘work’ for the orthodox Jews.

          In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus ‘shatters’ the sabbath by healing a woman who had a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years.

          The synagogue leaders were outraged. “There are six days,” they exclaimed, “to come and get healed. But not on the sabbath.

          Jesus calls them out: ‘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?’

          Jesus is telling you and me that there are rules that should be obeyed, but if a rule harms another human being it should be broken.

          The Episcopal Church has lots of rules and rubrics. But as my theology professor and chief author of our current Book of Common Prayer, Charlie Price, used to tell me, “never unknowingly break a rubric.”

          Don’t break rules out of ignorance, but if you ‘know’ the rule and it doesn’t fit your way of life, go ahead and break it.

          Laws that discriminate and hurt people should be broken.

          We should make a bumper sticker that says, “Breaking rules for Jesus!”

    Let's have a time of silence to ponder the rules we must break for Jesus.

Amen.