Real Rest - Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost (August 24, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 58:9–14 | Psalm 103:1–8 | Hebrews 12:18–29 | ​Luke 13:10–17

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe…” (Hebrews 12:28).
 
Do you remember that old saying: “A change is as good as a rest”? Well, that might be true… but I can tell you for sure that a rest can still be pretty great! I’m very grateful for the opportunity this summer to be able to take some time to unwind: to set aside for a while the pressure to be productive… to enjoy a more relaxed rhythm of life for a few weeks… resting my body and mind before the busyness of the Fall begins again.
 
We all need times of rest. And without it, things fall apart pretty quickly. We all need chances to step away, to take a break and recover our strength. But I think the best kind of rest is not necessarily an aimless rest… a rest without any purpose or limits… the kind of boring, drawn-out absence of activity that actually ends up leaving us feeling a bit more rest-less as a result… eager for something worthwhile to do.
 
No, I think the best kind of rest is a rest in service of something else… a break that allows us to catch our breath so that we can get back to the things that matter the most. That help us to engage more deeply in the life of faith, and hope, and love we have been invited to share. 
 
And in the story of Scripture, the weekly day of rest, the Sabbath, was this kind of sacred and purposeful rest: a gracious gift to God’s people Israel, that they were also commanded to keep. Not only was this weekly day of rest a gift that helped them maintain a more balanced life… it also served to reshape the lives… the hearts and minds and actions… of this whole community… giving them a common rhythm that could help cultivate virtues like humility… (by recognizing that everyone has limits) and gratitude (encouraging thankfulness for this taste of peace and refreshment). But most importantly the practice of Sabbath was meant to keep alive the story of God in His people’s hearts… reminding them of their Lord, and their partnership with Him in the world.
 
In the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, two specific reasons are given for the commandment of Sabbath rest. One is that it reminds us that the Living God created this world, and He remains its true Lord.[1] In Genesis we’re told that God rested after His labours, and so God wanted His people Israel to regularly observe this sacred pattern, and experience a foretaste of the blessed life of God’s good Kingdom. Sabbath rest was a gift reminding them of their special relationship to the Living God… which was also a call to honour and worship the gracious Creator of all.
 
The second big reason the Torah gives for the practice of Sabbath rest relates to their own story… as a reminder that the Lord God had rescued Israel from slavery.[2] For generations, they had been bent low under heavy burdens… serving the whims of Pharoah, day in and day out.

But the Lord God heard their cries, and stepped in with a mighty arm to save and redeem His people… setting them free to share in His goodness and love, and to walk in His holy ways. The Sabbath day of rest was a gift to remind them, and future generations, of all that God had done for them… a weekly taste of that saving grace all over again… as well as a warning not to become like Pharoah themselves… forgetting God’s mercy and grace towards the victims of oppression… and His just anger towards all oppressors.
 
So then, to recap: the Sabbath rest was a good gift to help God’s people remember and stay true to their place in God’s story: helping them to honour and follow the ways of their gracious Creator and Redeemer… and setting them apart as a people to help show the rest of the world that God’s ways really do lead us to life. 
 
And yet… in our Gospel reading this morning, we find Jesus our Lord at odds with the local religious leadership over what seems like His complete disregard for the sacred practice of Sabbath rest.
 
What’s going on here? Is Jesus deliberately turning His back on God’s Law, and the sacredness of the Sabbath?
 
It certainly seems that some of his contemporaries thought so. And not without reason! Several times throughout His earthly ministry, people accused Jesus of violating the Sabbath, and in some of these encounters, it seems like Jesus is deliberately trying to stir up some controversy… saying and doing things to shake up and provoke His people into making a choice.  
 
On the one hand, Jesus was clearly doing things no one else could do: performing miraculous signs, and healing all sorts of people in unheard of and amazing ways.
 
But then, on the other hand, how could Jesus be aligned with the Living God when He’s challenging some of their most treasured, sacred, and God-given practices?
 
On the surface, their choice seemed to be between faithful obedience to God their Creator and Redeemer… or listening to this impressive but unpredictable rabbi.
 
But in fact, the choice was not between obedience to the good ways of God, or the new teachings of Jesus. It was a choice between drawing closer and deeper into God’s ways, or remaining at a distance, and resisting the blessed life God has wanted for us all along.
 
To put it more plainly, Jesus was not rejecting or dismissing the gift of the Sabbath. He was embodying and bringing to light the deeper reality that the Sabbath rest was always intended to serve: the reality of God’s sovereign goodness and compassion, and ceaseless love… and calling us to make some changes in how we understand and practice the sacred way of life that the Living God has shared with us, as He works tirelessly to bring His saving story forward to it’s fulfillment.
 
Our passage from St. Luke begins with Jesus attending a service at a local synagogue on the Sabbath, where He sees the suffering of one of His people: a woman who was afflicted by a spirit that had caused her to be bent low, and unable to stand up straight for eighteen years.  
 
Picture this woman for a moment.

She was made in the image of God her Creator, but some other force was oppressing her and literally weighing her down. Being bent low evokes the image of someone forced to carry a heavy burden… just like the Israelites who spent their whole lives toiling for Pharoah as slaves in Egypt… before the Living God, their Redeemer, graciously stepped in to end their suffering.
 
And even though she had been enduring this oppression for eighteen long years, she still came to worship the Lord, her Creator and Redeemer. She was still shaped by the gift of the Sabbath, and held onto the hope of God’s story.  
 
And this is where Jesus sees her, and calls her to come to Him. Notice that she didn’t approach Him for healing. Jesus saw her need first, and He invited her to come to Him.
 
Now I’m not saying that we can’t or shouldn’t try to come closer to Jesus. Far from it! Many of us here today have come bearing our own burdens and concerns to bring before the Lord, as He Himself calls us to do.
 
The point I’m making is that Jesus isn’t just passively sitting back waiting for the woman, or for you and I to make the first move. His compassion and care are always at work, eagerly seeking to save us, and to draw us to Himself. And so, Jesus calls this woman to draw near to Him, just as He calls each of us to do the same… so that we all might find God’s New Life at work in Him.
 
And this is exactly what the she finds! She answers His call, and He and says to her: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” (Luke 13:12). Jesus lays His hands on her, and she is immediately set loose from her heavy burden.
 
Picture her now! She is suddenly able to experience the story of God’s salvation in a whole new way! Set free to share in the sacred rest and peace of her Creator, whose faithful love has lifted her up. She is able to share in God’s liberation from bondage… experiencing her own Exodus from her painful past. In a moment of compassion and grace, Jesus brought the reality of the gift of God’s Sabbath rest into her life in a way that she had never before imagined.
 
But for that Sabbath reality to come to light and life in that beautiful moment… it meant shaking the familiar framework and rhythms of her whole community. It meant pushing up against their understanding of the Sabbath… and challenging the rules they all faithfully followed to help preserve God’s gift of rest… all so that the reality of God’s saving rest could break through in this woman’s life, and reveal God’s saving love at work in His Son Jesus to all those present.
 
And as a result, those in charge of the synagogue were shocked and scandalized by Jesus… and they were eager to shut down what they saw as a blatant disregard for God’s holy ways.
 
Luke 13:14, “But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’”

Notice that they weren’t saying “Don’t come to Jesus for healing.” They seemed to be perfectly fine with that. Healings were all well and good. Just don’t mess with the Sabbath!

If the choice was between this miracle of New Life setting this suffering woman free, and their sacred practices, then their choice was clear: the healing must wait for another day. What mattered most was refraining from all work, and carefully preserving their Sabbath rest.
 
In response, Jesus points out that they would not think twice about caring for their livestock on the Sabbath… and yet, they would deny their own fellow Israelite the blessed rest of God’s healing and freedom. It wasn’t Christ who was ignoring or disregarding the deep reality and meaning of the Sabbath… He was at work enacting God’s saving rest, by graciously setting her free! 
 
Of course, it can be easy for us to criticize those leaders, and find fault with them… but we too can easily slip into the very same sort of trap.
 
What are you and I unwilling to have shaken? What kinds of challenges and changes would we find it very hard to get behind, or to allow without a fight?
 
Every Church has our own cherished practices and ways of doing things, whether we think about them or not. And these practices might seem to be perfectly reasonable, and important, and good. But even so, they may sometimes need to be shaken… or even shattered… if they begin to stand in the way of God’s saving love and New Life taking root and growing among us.
 
Take a moment to think of some of the really cherished ways we do things here at St. Luke’s. This list will probably be different for every one of us, but take a moment to think about what you would find hard to let go of in our parish life.
 
What if we had to change the time we met on Sundays, so that others could encounter God’s grace and saving love more easily?
 
What if the style of music changed? What if the flow of the service became less familiar?
 
What if we could not gather in this specific building, but had to worship the Lord elsewhere?

All of these would be big changes for us to face here at St. Luke’s. None of these compare at all to the big changes that Jesus seemed to be introducing to that synagogue community. What right do we have to assume that our Lord can unsettle them, but that He won’t challenge us too? And this brings up an important question for us:

Are we more devoted to receiving and sharing the New Life of Jesus Christ our Saviour King… or to preserving our own preferred experience of worship?
 
Now I’m not secretly planning to suddenly shake things up here at St. Luke’s… scrapping the ways that we do things, or jumping on some new bandwagon. But I am inviting us to remember the deep reality that lays behind and underneath all that we do here, Sunday after Sunday.
 
We come together to worship the Triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit… to lift up our hearts, and minds, and voices to our Lord in praise and prayer, and also in sorrow and pain. We come together to draw near to our great Creator and Redeemer… with deep humility, gratefulness, and love… open to receiving from His hands the healing and hope and help that we need.
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We come to say yes to the greatest gift of God’s saving love… Jesus Christ, who died once and for all at the cross, and was raised again to New Life to set us all free… free to share in God’s own blessed and unending life, and free to share His love with one another.
 
We come to be reminded of our place in the story of the Gospel: the Good News that Jesus has come to re-create and redeem our broken world, and that He’s sent us the Holy Spirit to empower us to live God’s way together… not just on Sundays, but seven days a week! Not only here at St. Luke’s, but out there in the world. So that all those around us can come to know and say yes to the saving love of God in Jesus Christ.
 
And if that’s what Church is all about… helping us to experience the New Life of God together as a community… and to share it with our world… then we will all probably need to hold onto everything else a bit more lightly. We may even need to let some things go. But the Good News is, Jesus our Lord is offering us so much more than He ever asks us to give up!
 
So, when we feel deeply uncomfortable… or challenged… or frightened… or shaken by changes that life may bring our way, instead of instantly saying no… let’s try to slow down and consider what God might be up to in our midst. How He might be drawing us deeper into His story. How He might actually be trying to set us free from something… or working through us to bring His salvation and freedom to those weighed down with heavy burdens all around us.
 
After all, a change may be as good as a rest… but best of all is the gift of God’s New Life in Jesus Christ! The gift that changes us all for the better, and leads us forward to share in God’s blessed rest forever. Amen.


[1] “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8-11).
 

[2] “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 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. 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.” (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)