Readings – Jeremiah 1:4–10; Luke 13: 10–17
“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not the sabbath day.”
Let me begin with a story from my mother country, about a young Presbyterian minister newly arrived in his first congregation, out in the rural parts of County Antrim where a strict observance of the Lord’s Day is considered essential, at least among Presbyterians. Having spent part of his training in Africa and another part in a deprived housing estate closer to home, the young minister was full of fire for God’s Kingdom to come on Earth as it is in heaven, and he tried to ensure his sermons inspired his congregation to work for social justice. Sometimes they may have even been a bit… whisper it… political.
Not all of his congregation were impressed by these sermons, and one old spinster in particular would enjoin him Sunday by Sunday to return to more traditional themes. As the weeks turned into months she did so in increasingly shrill tones. Wasn’t it terrible Reverend Campbell, she said, that the supermarkets were open on a Sunday these days and, worse still, that some of members of this very congregation went straight from church to do their shopping, and wouldn’t he like to preach against that? Even worse, she later revealed, some villagers went to the pub for their Sunday lunch, and beyond even that, some of them went to pubs run by Roman Catholics. Now, surely that was something he needed to take a stand against instead of blethering on about the cassava harvest in Nigeria.
Eventually, the young minister had his fill of it, and found he had to say something, even to a lady who put a generously stuffed envelope on the plate every Sunday.
“Miss McDonald”, he said, “surely even our Lord healed people on the Sabbath.”
“Aye”, she replied, “And I didn’t think any better of Him for that either.”
I’m sure I’m not the only one here to have been at the wrong end of some obnoxious and aggressive Bible-thumpers in my time. It’s therefore always reassuring to rediscover, as we do in this morning’s Gospel, that Jesus, God made human, was the target for Bible-thumpers Himself. We’ve all known people about whom one might reasonably joke that “He would tell God he was wrong about the Bible.” Today’s Gospel reminds us that this quite literally did happen. We have the Bible itself reminding us that there are spiritual dangers in using it as a quarry to have a go at other people.
