Who here loves a good to do list? I love them so much I can take them oddly seriously, because I love the experience of marking things off the list. I can move mountains to get a to-do list done for the satisfaction of marking everything done. There’s a good side to that, obviously, but it can also get in the way.

For example, I have certainly taken that intense “to-do list” nature of mine and applied it to vacation, coming up with itineraries of activities or projects around the house to get done. I’d don’t do this as much as I used to (thankfully), but I still got a lot of projects done during the week I took off for vacation and not nearly the amount of couch time I would have liked. (We all have our quirks. I preach most Sundays so you get to hear a lot about mine, lucky you!)

I know I’m not the only one who does this or has done this, but it is a somewhat tragic thing to do! It seems to me the entire point of vacation (or Sabbath) is to relax and experience the gift of spaciousness of simply living, simply being one of God’s beloved creatures without requirement. Sabbath is about simplicity, spaciousness, and freedom.

Truly, that is what the Sabbath is about, freedom. It’s a day that is set aside in the Torah as one of the Ten Commandments as a day of rest in order to remember and honor God’s action in saving of the people from slavery and tyranny.

In Deuteronomy, we read, “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁴ But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. ¹⁵ Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

The point of the Sabbath is to experience freedom ourselves and to give that gift of freedom to others, even the animals.

But, we’re not always so good at doing what God wants us to do in the spirit that God would like. We find ways to twist out of God’s good plans for us. God gives us good things, like Sabbath, and our adorable little egos find a way to twist those gifts into something that undermines that very gift. For example, my first bullet point on my to-do list every day is to do a 20’ of silent centering prayer time. Now, this prayer time can be like a micro-Sabbath; just 20’ of total release of responsibility including the responsibility to even think up words to bring to prayer. For 20’, all the responsibility is given to God. This is a wonderful practice of the ancient church. AND, because I’m human and I’m me with that weird attachment to to-do lists, that prayer time can become just another task to mark off the to-do list. Why do I do the prayer? Some days it is because I am motivated to soften into that micro-Sabbath and practice the gift of freedom with God. Other days, I do the prayer primarily for the satisfaction of marking it complete. Now, showing up for prayer is always good, imho, but showing up for the sake of resting in God versus powering through to-do list have different energies about them. And it impacts that experience of freedom and rest, even if I still get the satisfaction of marking that item as complete. This is just fine, of course, but I hope you see the distinction I’m trying to make.

I think this is the tension that we are seeing in this story. The Sabbath is a day that is set aside to practice freedom and to give freedom. Remember the Deuteronomy text names slaves, immigrants, and animals. The Sabbath, the practice of freedom, includes everyone regardless of status, ethnicity, or even species. Now, without this commandment, knowing humans we would never set aside a day for rest, not for ourselves and certainly not for those who work for our benefit. This commandment is a gift.

But leave it to humans to take a gift and twist it just a bit to somehow take that grace and turn it into something else.

The woman in our gospel today was set free on the Sabbath day by Jesus. Notice the language here. It’s not like our usual healing stories. Usually, Jesus is asked to heal. Usually, Jesus says something along the lines of, “Your faith has made you well.” Usually, peoples’ healing allows them rejoin the community in some way.

In today’s lesson, the woman does not ask and Jesus tells her not that she’s been made well, but that she’s been set free. And she responds by praising God, along with all the other people.

Except for the one who wants to follow the rules, who kept saying in his worry that this shouldn’t be done on the Sabbath.

Doesn’t this sound like someone who has received the gift of Sabbath from God but has twisted it just a bit so that the actual gift of Sabbath, freedom, is undermined? In his worry, he does not sound free. And in his worry, he constricts the freedom of another.

That’s not much different than me approaching my prayer time with the intention of getting that line item checked off the list. This man is missing the point of using the gift of Sabbath to practice what freedom is and what it feels like. He resists the experience of freedom for himself and for all those around him.

Freedom is the point of Sabbath. The dictate to not work on the Sabbath is a means to help us practice freedom. But if we forget that freedom is the point, and focus on the rules of simply not working as it says in Deuteronomy, well … we’re missing out on God’s promises for us. If freedom is the point of Sabbath, then of course freeing someone from the tyranny of their affliction is in the spirit of the Sabbath.

This is not throwing out the law, but fulfilling it as Jesus tells us he is here to do. Jesus is always asking us and guiding us to go a step deeper so that we can live in the spaciousness and generosity of the law in its healing, nurturing intent.

And this personal transformation is something we all resist!

So, do you find that you also have ways that you twist the gifts of God? Here are a couple ways I see this happening in our culture:

1. God gives us the gift of abundance and sufficiency. And yet, humans tend to turn abundance into an eternal striving for more to fill the hole of greed. In that twisting, the gift of abundance turns into scarcity for the one who always craves more and for the others who are denied sufficient provision by the actions of the greedy.
2. God gives us agency, capacity, and power to do amazing things. However, humans often use these wonderful gifts to dominate and manipulate others, abuse the planet, and ultimately work against our own best interests by undermining harmony.

We are all good, in various ways, of following the surface meaning of the Ten Commandments while ardently avoiding the deeper intention of the law. We want, in one way or another, to stay in control when God simply provides. We want to earn grace instead of receiving it. We want to control the flow of grace to others instead of honoring that the gifts of God flow to all of us, even the ones we truly dislike, distrust, or even hate.

It is something to ponder for yourself – How do you twist God’s benefits in your mind or in your life so that you have the illusion of control? Do you avoid the radical freedom of Sabbath? Do you see scarcity in a world of abundance?

We are invited every day to be internally transformed and renewed into beings who live in simplicity and freedom, who are so uncluttered by our own internal twisting that God’s abundant love can flow through us for the benefit of all.

So if we check in with ourselves, see what it feels like inside our beings, do we feel God’s spaciousness and freedom? Do we feel one with Christ? Or does it feel like pockets of something twisted here and there? If you’re a human, I’m guessing there’s something that feels a little twisty in there. That’s not failure, btw. That’s not a lack of faith. You’re not irredeemably lost. You are loved and included. That feeling of twistiness may simply tell you that you have something to bring to God and ask for freedom to bloom in that knotted place in you.

We often sing, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me,” from Psalm 51. In my mind, I might quietly change that line to, “Release in me the twists in my heart, O God.” We have twists because we’re human. We are fearful creatures. And that’s OK. We don’t need to be ashamed of our fears, but neither do we have to remain twisted up in them.

The human condition seems to be one full of twists and turns. Thankfully, Jesus sees our twisting and forgives us and frees us, always inviting us to settle into a deeper grace so that we can untwist, relax, and accept the radical gifts of God for us.

AMEN