Called to Oblation on the Sabbath

 11 Pentecost, C p 16,  August 24, 2025

Jer. 1:4-10   Psalm 71:1-6

Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29  Luke 13:10-17

Lectionary Link

 

In our quest for increasing our adequacy for wise living through adding continuous best practices to all phases of our lives, we might ask ourselves about the adequacy of the biblical texts which we read in our faith tradition. What is the use of reading old writings from many years ago?

For operating our cars? Building a website? Medical health? Political organization and labor practices? We certainly find many of the cultural practices of the ancient cultures where biblical texts were generated to be "out of date," and not to be followed for most of the specific tasks of our modern scientific dominated lives, so what can we gain from the Bible and from the appointed reading for our liturgy today?

One ancient posture which is also a modern human posture is that no matter how far we have progressed in our knowledge of the world and how things work and our increasing understanding of causal relationship, we can never escape the poetic posture. There has been, is, and will always be Plenitude beyond our grasp, enough to evoke awe and humble us even in the pride of the knowledge that we think we have obtained.

The biblical readings remind us to honor our poetic calling in attending to the potential of the experience of the sublime.

One such experience of the sublime was written about by the prophet Jeremiah. He had the experience of being called, being known by the towering Plenitude whom he deign to call his Personal God. It is quite natural to resist one's personal significance in the face of Plentitude. Why am I made to feel that the Great Plentitude of the universe is mindful of me? I am but a boy, a child, without adult resume to feel like I have a purposeful vocation except to practice normal self-maintenance within my society. Why is it that I am now feeling impelled to go beyond what I thought my intended purpose of life was?

Jeremiah had the poetic experience of a calling? He probably was surprised that his natural and regularly exercised gifts were being challenged for a specific societal purpose. Jeremiah, like many, had the gift of discernment and insights which gave him the gift of assessing the character of the people around him, and the character of the political and religious leadership of his time. Whether he liked it or not, Jeremiah's character brought him to be a critic of people in his setting. And not everyone likes a critic, especially those in power.

Jeremiah is an example to us of the sublime experience of knowing a purpose, a calling within the Plenitude of Everything. May each us find our purposeful connection in our time and place with people because the experience of having the creative gifts of one's life find outlets is a vital human experience of the sublime.

The Psalmist also expressed the sense of finding a refuge within the great Plenitude. Gratitude is the experience that we can know when we feel as though we are "kept and watched" by the Great Being, even while "being kept and watched" does not mean that we have been exempted from significant events of pain, suffering, trial and the ordeals of living within the many changing in times with natural disasters and community conflicts. As human beings, we can know the experience of finding refuge during crucial times, and such experiences make us like the thankful Psalmist.

The writer of Hebrew refers to the event of the revealing of the holy name of God, as the event of fear, not of some mere phobia, but the fear known as deep reverence. From knowing this awesome reverence, biblical writers wrote visions of possible good outcomes; they wrote about a Plentitude which included having a better future, even one which could integrate the meaning of one's lived life, for the greater picture of fitting into the life of God, the Great Plentitude after our lived lives.

For the Gospel writers, Jesus was the one who best funneled the meaning of the Plentitude of God into human experience. In our Gospel, Jesus as the healer and wisdom teacher challenged the very narrow understanding of how one could honor the meaning of the meaning of the Sabbath. For the legalists, restful prayer on the Sabbath meant the avoidance of work, but Jesus, the wisdom teacher showed the legalists how inconsistent they were in their use of the law as they endeavored to find fault with him.

For the legalist to heal someone on the Sabbath was a violation of the Sabbath work taboo. But he reminded the legalists that they rescued and fed their farm animals on the Sabbath because it would be unkind not to do so. If one could tend to farm animals on the Sabbath, how much more should not sick people be attended to, not just on the Sabbath, but on any day.

Healing the sick does not violate the Sabbath intention. First responders and health care people work on every day because sickness does not obey Sabbath law schedules.

Perhaps the greater lesson which Jesus taught was the validity of the prayer of oblation, not just on the Sabbath but on every day. Oblation is the body language prayer of kindness that we are to offer at all times, and certainly we offer the oblations of kind and careful healing acts on the Sabbath.

Offering kindness toward the health of anyone is the meaning of the Gospel. And when someone experiences a restoration of health, they understand with gratitude a sense of finding a refuge in life and in reverential awe they can replicate in personal ways the words of poetic praise for the sublime sense of being recognized within the Plentitude of everything. Amen.