one body broken

Saturday August 28th, Luke 13: 15-16 But Jesus shot back, "You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water, and thinks nothing of it. So why isn't it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?" Rules are often about what others are doing wrong according to our standards. Sometimes they are also kept in place to maintain the status quo of power. This woman was crippled for life and lived in a diminished status as a woman with a condition attributed to a “spirit of weakness.” Jesus healing shocks the religious system which had become complacent to the needs of the least, lost and lonely by healing her on the Sabbath, thereby restoring not only her dignity, but the dignity of the Sabbath. It is also a call to remember that all worship should be about freeing ourselves and others from the burdens of life. It starts by remembering that our burdens are not the same as those of others. More times than I can count I have given what I considered to be a sermon that totally missed the mark, only to have someone tell me how it spoke right to what they were dealing with. I may wonder what I said or what they heard, but it matters little. God works in many ways to untie us from the burdens of life and to free us for a life of worship. When we celebrate communion we begin with the words, “on the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, this is my body given for you”. The bread that was broken was the bread from the Passover meal, it is the bread symbolizing liberation. When we gather around the body and blood of Jesus, we gather to celebrate the liberation we all experience in our walk with God. As we do so we are called to celebrate in words and deeds the liberation Christ brings to others. If the liberation is only for us then what we celebrate is a vending machine god who only does our bidding. If we celebrate and work for the liberation of all people, then we truly become the body of Christ broken for others.