11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16C

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16C August 25, 2019 I read an obituary this week that was unlike any obituary I’ve ever read. Here’s how it begins. “Gary Bean. Knoxville - To the owner of the big skinny dog that disappeared from your North Knoxville front yard where you had chained her to a picnic table: Gary Bean stole her. He was working in your neighborhood and would slow down and look every time he'd drive past your house. He considered talking to you about it, but you were never around, and it didn't take him long to decide that anybody mean enough to treat a dog like that wasn't worth talking to anyway, so he applied bolt cutter to chain, loaded her into his truck and went on the lam. She had a home and a new name by the weekend. Her new people called her Maggie and loved her for the rest of her life, which was doubtless way longer than it would have been if she'd stayed chained to your picnic table. That was many years ago, and the dog stealing statute has long since run, so there's nothing you can do about it now, if you're still around. And even if you are, Gary's out of your reach. He died last Thursday without ever once regretting setting Maggie free. Truth to tell, you probably weren't his only victim. Gary never met a critter he didn't love and wasn't about to let technicalities stop him from acting on his convictions.”i The obituary then goes on in the usual manner. Part of me really admires Gary Bean and his dog-stealing obituary confession and all its bravado. We Americans all have at least a little amount of rebellion in our DNA, so we can appreciate someone who “was not about to let technicalities stop him from acting on his convictions.” But then there’s the other part; the oldest child part of me. There was an image going around a while ago that talks about birth order in families and the ways that siblings deal with or adhere to “the rules.” The image has a picture of three siblings with a caption by each that reads: “I’m the oldest-I make the rules.” “I’m the middle –I’m the reason we had rules.” And “I’m the youngest-the rules don’t apply to me.” The part of me that is still the oldest child reads Gary Beans obituary and is slightly horrified because not only did he break the law and steal someone’s dog, he defiantly confessed it in his obituary! (An oldest child would never, ever brag about breaking the rules in such a public fashion!) So there’s a good part of me that really sympathizes with the leader of the synagogue in today’s gospel reading. (He was most likely an oldest child like me. You can tell this by his emphasis on the rules.) Because, y’all, there is a reason that we have rules or laws. In fact, this particular law that the leader of the synagogue is so upset about—the law about not doing work on the Sabbath—was given to the Israelites after God has freed them from slavery in Egypt. Think about it. Slaves don’t get a day off. God is telling them, “You are no longer slaves, and as a part of that, I am giving you a day of rest so that you may remember the goodness of your creation and that I am God and you are not.” The Sabbath is a gift from God- a day of rest and renewal, and the laws were created to make sure that every person had equal access to the Sabbath and the rest and renewal that is offered through it. God gave the people the law about the Sabbath to give people freedom and to encourage wellness. And while it’s easy for us to judge Jews for the ways they keep Sabbath which may seem overly extravagant to us, we only have to look at the shift in Sabbath keeping culture among Christians over the last generation, to see that we, too, need laws and practices to protect us from ourselves! This is what we oldest children have been saying all along: once you start bending the rules for one person, then it just becomes a willy-nilly free-for-all and society breaks down into a kind of lawlessness where people steal other peoples’ dogs and brag about it in their obituaries. If we are really honest, each of us has a little bit of the oldest sibling, the synagogue leader in us. Each of us has laws that we think are sacrosanct, that can never and should never be broken. And we are prepared to rain down fire on those who would break those laws. But then, in comes Jesus, who doesn’t necessarily break the law but revisions it. He offers grace and mercy to this woman whom he refers to as a daughter of Abraham, and he asks why should she live even one more day bent over and unable to stand up straight after having lived this way for 18 long years. Another preacher has said of this passage: “The law matters because it helps us order our lives and keep the peace. The law matters because it sets needed boundaries that create room in which we can flourish. The law matters because it encourages us -- sometimes even goads us -- to look beyond ourselves so that we might love and care for our neighbor. But as important as law is -- and notice that Jesus doesn’t set aside the law but rather offers a different interpretation of it -- it must always bow to mercy, to life, to freedom. Law helps us live our lives better, but grace creates life itself. Law helps order our world, but grace is what holds the world together. Law pushes us to care for each other, but grace restores us to each other when we’ve failed in the law.” He concludes, “Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, and while the law helps us make sense of and get more out of life in the kingdom of the world, it must always bend to the grace that constitutes the abundant life Jesus proclaims. For above and beyond all the laws ever received or conceived, the absolute law is love: love God and love your neighbor. Or, perhaps, love God by loving your neighbor.”ii Your invitation this week is to think about laws that you hold to be most sacred. Or think about laws that have been much in our common discourse lately. And then in and through prayer, be in God’s presence with that law and invite God to help you see the grace beyond the law, the ways that law invites or even goads you beyond yourself and your own justification to see how God is calling you to better love and care for your neighbor. i. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/knoxnews/obituary.aspx?n=gary-bean&pid=193629892& ii. David Lose. “The Law of Love.” Sunday, August 18, 2013. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2699