Easter 6: Sabbath Healing

Scripture can be found here and here

Some time in the fifth century a Byzantine Church was built in Jerusalem, in what is now known as the Muslim Quarter. It had various names, including “The Church of the Pool of the Sheep,” or “The Church of the Lame Man.” It was partially destroyed by the Persians in the year 614 CE, but was restored and expanded in the era of the Crusades, and called the Church of Saint Anne. In the nineteenth century archaeologists excavated the site behind the expanded structure, and discovered beneath it a tank about 100 feet deep, surrounded by five covered colonnades or porticoes. They had found Beth-Zatha, the Bethesda Pool.

 

We have two passages before us this week, and both of them have significant things that occur on the Sabbath. In our passage from the gospel of John, Jesus is in Jerusalem for a religious festival. And while he is there he walks by Beth-Zatha, the healing pool—its name means, House of Mercy. It’s not far from the Temple, and when Jesus is in Jerusalem, he tends to gravitate towards the Temple. At Beth-Zatha Jesus sees people on the porticoes surrounding the pool—scores of them—all people who are debilitated, and disabled, people who are sitting and waiting for their chance to get to the water. There’s a sentence that is included in some translations of the story, and I’m going to read it now: It comes after verse three, so the whole passage would read: “In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting for the stirring of the water, for an angel of the Lord went down from time to time into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.

 

So, getting to the water is a kind of competition—a terrible, competition, really, that pits people who are so physically compromised against one another. Jesus zeroes in on one man, a man who has bene there a long time—he has been waiting for 38 years for healing, but he’s never been able to be the first one in the pool. It almost sounds absurd. Who would wait so long? And yet, that is his story: a man, one of many, waiting a long, long time, in a situation that sounds so incredibly unfair; waiting for healing.

 

Jesus intervenes, and, in the end, the man doesn’t even need the pool, because Jesus heals him with a word, not with the holy water. Jesus says, “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.” And he does!

 

And the last sentence of our passage is, “Now, that day was the sabbath.” Jesus has healed someone on the Sabbath.

 

In our other reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, we meet with Paul and Timothy. They are listening to the guidance of the Spirit to know where to go next in their travels. They are led to the city of Philippi, in the region of Macedonia. Philippi is a Gentile community. But there, by a river, they find a group of Gentile women whom they describe as God-worshipers… these are non-Jews who nevertheless worship the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Jesus. Our God. It is the Sabbath. By the end of the Sabbath, Lydia, a leading businesswoman of the city, has not only opened her heart to the Good News about Jesus; she and her entire household have been baptized. This takes place on the Sabbath.

 

Today I want to talk about the Sabbath. I follow a lot of rabbis and observant Jews on Twitter. It is always delightful on Friday afternoon, as the Sabbath draws near, to read the greetings that go out in that community. “Shabbat Shalom!” they greet one another: Peaceful Sabbath to you! Sometimes they share thoughts on Sabbath, such as this woman’s memory:

 

I remember the feeling of Shabbat at my grandparent's house, and my grandmother lighting Shabbat candles. Wishing you and your family a wonderful Shabbat Shalom.

 

Or this one…

 

Shabbat is coming and oh wow am I thankful. Here's to rest, and restoration, and renewing our hearts and souls. There will be work aplenty to do on this broken world in the new week, but for now... rest.

 

And this week, one Jewish organization posted the following:

 

As we head into Shabbat, we are sending love to the Black Buffalo community and to the families of the victims. May their memories be a blessing…

 

This was followed by a list of places taking offerings for Buffalo, so shattered by last week’s deadly mass shooting.

 

Then, the vast majority of those who post these Sabbath greetings will leave Twitter for 24-36 hours, as they observe what they believe to be the most beautiful, sacred day of the week.

 

There’s a great website called Judaism 101, and I love their description of the Sabbath:

 

People who do not observe Shabbat think of it as a day filled with stifling restrictions, or as a day of prayer like the Christian Sabbath. But to those who observe Shabbat, it is a precious gift from G-d, a day of great joy eagerly awaited throughout the week, a time when we can set aside all of our weekday concerns and devote ourselves to higher pursuits. In Jewish literature, poetry and music, Shabbat is described as a bride or queen, as in the popular Shabbat hymn [Lecha Dodi Likrat Kallah], “Come, my beloved, to meet the [Sabbath] bride.” It is said "more than Israel has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept Israel."

 

… In modern America, we take the five-day work-week so much for granted that we forget what a radical concept a day of rest was in ancient times. The weekly day of rest has no parallel in any other ancient civilization. In ancient times, leisure was for the wealthy and the ruling classes only, never for the serving or laboring classes. In addition, the very idea of rest each week was unimaginable. The Greeks thought Jews were lazy because we insisted on having a "holiday" every seventh day.[i]

 

As Christians, we do think of the Sabbath as a day filled with restrictions. In fact, the gospels add to that impression, with the Sabbath mentioned largely when religious leaders get upset with Jesus when, for example, he heals someone. But Sabbath was and is a day of great joy, a day of gathering together with the people you love without the pressure of the regular workweek interfering. And any Sabbath restriction can be abandoned to save a life. That’s in the law, too. In fact, it seems to me that the Sabbath itself is intended as a time of healing… not necessarily in the medical sense; more in the sense that the breakneck pace of modern life can beat us up a little bit, make us feel fragmented. Time committed to Sabbath rest can make us feel whole again.

 

Our Sabbath is not the same as the Sabbath observed by Jesus or by modern-day Jewish communities. For one thing, we observe it on the first day of the week, not the seventh; we do that because we worship on Sunday, the day of resurrection. But it is no less important for us to find a way, to find a day, to allow space for the healing slowing down can bring. And if Sunday’s too busy, it can be another day. I know for a lot of us, this feels impossible. But people have done it. My friend and colleague MaryAnn McKibben-Dana wrote a book some years ago that I still recommend. It’s called “Sabbath in the Suburbs.”  Describing her family life with three young kids, she wrote, “Life felt like a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle with 600 pieces.” But she and her family embarked upon a bold, impossible-seeming experiment anyway: They committed to observing the Sabbath together for one year.

 

“For a whole day each week, they set aside their doing in order to simply be. Work took a backseat to games, walks, Legos, naps, homebrewing, and leisurely contentment. The practice never got easier—the house was a mess, the kids still fought—but Sabbath became the one essential ‘to-do’ each week.”

 

What would happen, and hear me out on this, if we tried to do that? It would not be easy. We might have to make our sabbath a different day each week. We might need to start small—a few consecutive sabbath hours, if we can’t manage an entire day. We might have to give up some things we are currently doing to make space for it. What if we invited that angel to stir the waters of our hearts to help us to find our way to healing time and space?

 

The Sabbath is God’s gift to us—a day of rest. But it is also God’s commandment, because our Maker knows how we are made, and knows what we need, and our Maker always, always wants our healing. What if, in the end, Sabbath became the thing that saved us?

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.


[i] “Shabbat,” Judaism 101, https://www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm.