Hope for the Drowning (Ps 119:24-25; Luke 14: 1-6)

One of the striking features of the Old Testament is the rarity with which phrases like “I love the Lord” occur. Whether we’re working through the narrative sections or the prophets or poetry or wisdom, that’s a phrase we just don’t hear. We do hear about God’s love—his covenant faithfulness toward—for his people. We hear that all the time. But almost nothing is written about a reciprocated love. In fact, Psalm 116:1 stands out as being the ONLY Psalm in the Psalter in which we are invited to say or sing with the Psalmist, “I love the Lord.” (Ps. 116:1).  

Far more often we find these phrases: “your law do I love,” “my delight shall be ever in your statutes” (statutes meaning rule or law), “I love your testimonies,” and “I love your commandments more than gold.” All of these, of course, come from our Psalm this morning. But they can be found throughout the Psalter, and the whole Old Testament. Psalm 119 is especially important in this regard. It is the longest Psalm in the Bible; it is an acrostic Psalm, each section beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet; and each section highlighting a way in which God’s law is a gift to be treasured, a gift that leads to life, to abundance, to fullness of joy. To “salvation” even in the largest meaning of the word which is, wholeness or completeness. One of the earliest bible verses I memorized as a child gets to the core quite nicely: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against Thee.” (119:11) 

That may strike some of us as odd. The language of love of God, for example, comes easy to us. It fills our singing.  “I love you Lord and I lift my voice to worship you! O my soul rejoice.” “Oh how I love Jesus!” “It’s at moments like these, I sing out a song, sing out a love song to Jesus!” I’m sure we could go on. But that’s enough to provoke the question with which I want to begin this morning. Why are our hymns and mindset so different from the mindset of the psalm writers and hymns of the early Church (which were the Psalms)? 

I wonder if a way in to an answer can be found in verses 124-125 of the Psalm for today. Here they are again: “124 O deal with your servant according to your faithful love and teach me your statutes. I am your servant; O grant me understanding, that I may know your testimonies.” For the Psalmist, God shows his faithful love, that is, his covenant love, his love that binds him to Israel in a promise so intimate and solemn that the only human analogue is the marriage vow, by giving Israel the law, by teaching him, that is the Psalmist, the law. The love of God is found in the gift of the law, the study of which leads not simply to understanding, but life itself. In our Psalm today, those who reject the law embrace the way of death; those embrace it embrace life, life in the full, life with God. And if the law is for the Psalmist the fullest expression of God’s generosity, God’s willingness to give life to creatures, how can it not be received with anything less than love? Than delight? God has given this gift to me that I might live! God loves me. I will embrace this gift and delight in it and love it. For by loving God’s gift which I can see and understand, here’s the point, I come to love the God whom I cannot see and cannot understand, but who has first loved me. “My delight shall ever be in your statutes!” 

So, for the Psalmist the law is God’s love tangibly expressed. And he loves it, and through it, loves God.  

Now we come to the Gospel for this morning and we see what looks at first like a very different dynamic at work. The great defenders of the Law, the Pharisees, have set a trap for Jesus. They have invited him to a party to mark the end of the Sabbath day and the beginning of a new week. There is tension in the air. You might think of a Cold War cocktail party at the Russian embassy in Ottawa where everyone knows that the CIA and the KGB and CSIS are scattered throughout the room doing their spying jobs all the while pretending to enjoy themselves. But Jesus’s enemies only feign to enjoy themselves. They are, Luke tells us, watching Jesus closely. 

Why? Because a man with dropsy was there. This man is not a guest, however, but a pawn. Here is Jesus, before the Sabbath ends, before the party can start, presented with a sick man. And Jesus’s enemies are watching him closely. Will Jesus heal on the Sabbath or not? They  regard Jesus’s Sabbath miracles as breaking the Sabbath law. And if he is breaking the Sabbath, then he is not a prophet. He is not the Messiah. He is a false teacher who will lead the people to ruin. And they set this trap to expose him. And Jesus heals the man. Then comes the rebuke: “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?”  

How do we read this rhetorical question? I wonder. Jesus’s enemies saw in the miracle the action of a sabbath-breaker and they condemned him. We read this question and, ironically enough, end up agreeing with Jesus’s enemies. We think that in this question, Jesus is pointing out exceptions to the Sabbath rule, and using those if not to justify breaking the Sabbath law, then at least to create another exception. Where Jesus enemies condemned the sabbath-breaker, we commend the sabbath breaker and then we go and do likewise. We treat the law of God as simply as our accuser which points up our sinfulness (which it does) and stop there. We celebrate our deliverance from the curse of the law (which is what St. Paul calls it). And we live just like everybody else. And if any Christian dare suggest that there might be “lifestyle issues,” where we ought to live differently than everyone else, we call such a one a pharisee, a legalist,  hypocrite. 

Do you do that? I’ve done that. But what if Jesus is not a sabbath breaker? What if, in asking the question about the drowning child or the drowning ox, Jesus is doing something different? Remember the prayer of the Psalmist: “Show my your love by teaching me your law; give me understanding in the knowledge of your words.” What if, instead of looking for exceptions to the rule and then making one of his own, Jesus is revealing the Sabbath law’s deep meaning? 

Jesus and his enemies together know that the Sabbath commandment is about two things: it is about living life according to God’s own rhythm (that’s the Exodus commandment) and it’s about economic justice—about setting people free from slavery (that’s the Deuteronomy commandment). In both ways, Sabbath is about entering into the life of God. To rest is to trust God to care for life, is to entrust our lives to his care, to embrace his Life. To rest is to live in such a way that 1 day in seven, others can do the same. Sabbath is where love of God and love of neighbor come together. To rest is to love God by imitation; to rest is to love neighbor by setting them free from work. To rest is to receive the gift of life from God and to share the gift of God’s life with others. That’s what Sabbath is. And that is why Jesus’s enemies were so zealous to keep it and also why Jesus’s rebuke is so harsh.  

You ought to know that Sabbath is about life! You know that Sabbath is about enjoying life. Giving life. Preserving life. And so, of course you care for your children and animals on the Sabbath. Now the Lord of the Sabbath is here! How can I not give life? How can I not preserve life? How can I not save a life? You would save a child or animal that is drowning on the Sabbath. Here is a man who is literally drowning on the Sabbath as fluid fills his lungs. What do you expect me to do? In your zeal to keep the sabbath you have taken what I gave you as a gift of life and turned it into an instrument of death. I can imagine Jesus sounding a lot like Bones McCoy, from Star Trek, when he says, in exasperation, “Jim, I’m a Doctor!” 

In healing and rebuking as he has done, Jesus is not looking for an exception to the rule. He’s not looking to justify breaking the sabbath. In healing the man with edema, Jesus is doing what the Psalmist wants God to do for him. Listen. In healing the man with edema on the Sabbath, God the Son incarnate is showing his covenant people—both his friends and his enemies alike—his steadfast love by teaching them his statutes, his laws, and showing why they are a delight to be received and relished. He is leading them into understanding by living the God’s good and life giving law right in front of them. 

But the law is our accuser and our curse! Yes it is. But when St. Paul uses that kind of language we need to be very clear about what he does and does not mean. When the law accuses us, points up our sin, shows us our inability to stop sinning, God is using the law like a diagnostic tool. He’s using the law to tell us the truth about ourselves. That we are sinners. In that sense, the law is like a biopsy. I biopsy will tell us the truth about ourselves: “you have a diseased kidney.” But a biopsy will not cure us. And when the law does that in our lives—as it does all-too-often if we are serious disciples—it accuses. It diagnoses. It tells the truth. But—crucially—it does not heal. It does not save.  

To know that we need to be saved, to know that we need to be healed, to know that we need to be made whole, we need the law. To know that we would otherwise run from God’s life-giving rhythm of work and rest otherwise enslave ourselves and others to our restless passions, we need the Sabbath commandment. But to be saved, healed, made whole, we need a healer, the healer. The One who wrote his law on the fabric of his universe, and then on tablets of stone, and promises to write it on our hearts.  

For friends, in this story, we are the man with edema. We know that we ought to enter into God’s life, but we’re slowly suffocating in our sin and we cannot, by sheer act of will, move from that conviction into God’s life. We need to be rescued. We need to be made whole. We need to come to delight, with the Psalmist, in God’s law. The great sabbath healer is with us today, and so I extend an invitation to you: Today is the day to enter into his rest, his life, to begin the journey to understanding the journey into loving God’s law.