August 24, 2025
/My father-in-law, Mike, was a fascinating guy. Born into a logging family on the western edge of the Mississippi River alluvial plain, which is the fancy word for the soil-rich delta region around the river, he never had a chance to pursue an education after high school, but he was a voracious reader with a sharp and thoughtful intellect. He had little patience for foolishness, nor an increasing idiocy that he saw in the world around him. He had a favorite $10 word to encapsulate this, asinine. I think by the time he passed away in March, pretty much everything in his eyes had become asinine at some level or another.
And this prompted me to go down a rabbit hole on the etymology of the word. Originally appearing in English in the 1620s, it was at first a slight adjectival corruption of the Latin word for donkey, and it literally indicated donkey-like qualities. Something was asinine if it was brutish or stubborn, for example. In the modern era, it's taken on an additional range of meanings, indicating everything from pointlessness and senselessness to idiocy and extreme stupidity. And honestly, if anything accurately names the present moment we are encountering in our world and in the chaos of everything going on today, extreme stupidity might be a fitting descriptor.
Now, you may be wondering where I'm going with this. But a couple of weeks ago, when I first sat down with this reading from our gospel, the immediate thought I had upon encountering this leader of the synagogue was, what an asinine response. And in truth, that immediate thought was more accurate than I realized. Because not only is the leader of the synagogue being asinine in the sense of foolish or pointless, but he is also being asinine in that original sense of stubborn and brutish.
But then again, I also don't want to write this fellow off entirely. This obstinance about the Sabbath is coming from a place of good intention. All the way back in Genesis chapter 2, we are told that after the six days of creation, God rested on the seventh day. And through the centuries of law giving and religious formation, this became the observance of the Sabbath day in Jewish ritual practice.
Over the course of time, and especially after the Babylonian exile, this became codified in a tradition of identifying the so-called melakot, which simply means works, but specifically, in this instance, means 39 activities that are prohibited on the Sabbath. Again, this comes from a place of good intention. Throughout the Torah or Old Testament, there are numerous places in which the observance of the Sabbath is discussed and explicated in great detail. But as I've noted before, over time such action began to be more a hindrance to faithfulness than a help. And this is one major point that Jesus is making in today's interaction.
So, where does Jesus' admonition come from? Well, he does not directly quote Scripture here, like he does in some of his other teachings. I think the compilers of our lectionary today make the right decision in drawing our attention to this passage from Isaiah. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom be like the noonday. This we hear in verses 9 and 10.
But then, more importantly, and more to the point of what Jesus is talking about today, in verses 13 and 14 we hear, if you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it not giving your own ways, or going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs, then you shall take the light in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.
What is true observance of the Sabbath? Or more to the point of what we hear today, maybe what is not true observance of the Sabbath? Well, it is not self-serving. It is not self-interested. It is taking delight in the Lord and exemplifying that light and delight to a world that desperately needs to hear good news.
You see, this stubbornness, this stupidity, it's not just asinine. It's also a place and a point at which sometimes people get hurt. People suffer and people die because we are not truly observing the Sabbath. We are pursuing our own self-interests. We are framing and boxing ourselves into the strictures of even with good intentions what we think we are being called to do. When in fact, over and over and over again, all of his teaching ministry, Jesus emphasizes the role of compassion, of love, of care for those in need.
That a true observance of the Sabbath, a true getting away from our own self-interests, is this ability to offer our food to the hungry, to satisfy the needs of the afflicted, and to let the light of those works shine forth in a darkness consumed by self-righteousness and indulgence. And that calls all of us to account.
A recent, and I say recent, within the last couple of years, podcast that will go unnamed, had a fellow on it talking about how we have created in the West an environment of toxic empathy. And I dare say I don't know that there's much further from the gospel truth than the idea of toxic empathy. Because if we are true to our gospel mission, if we are true to what Christ is laying on our hearts, the bedrock of our faithfulness is empathy, is understanding, is openness and compassion in places even that make us uncomfortable.
And there's a glaring example in front of us in our immediate context today. Just a few days ago, the Anglican Episcopal Magazine, the Living Church, published an article about the Diocese of Washington, contrasting two separate congregations in the diocese in light of the recent developments with the National Guard deployment and federal troops in Washington.
One congregation with members who have been directly impacted by what's going on chose to cancel their services, to not gather in public for fear of what might happen to their parishioners. And then another congregation just on the other side of town affirmed that a number of its parishioners felt relief at the presence of these federal agents.
Seeing in this current deployment a reduction in crime that had plagued their direct community, people that had been right outside the doors of the church who had made some of the parishioners concerned, and unsafe. And the truth that I think we must confront is that both of those positions, both of those perspectives, are shared by our brothers and sisters in this very diocese.
We are not of one mind. We are not of one place, one position. We have people who are hurting and suffering on all sides of these issues. And that's not to minimize or to in any way distort the real and present challenges we have towards developing a place, a ministry, a witness of compassion and love. a ministry of deep and heart-centered work to a world that is desperate for good news.
But that's also to say that who our suffering neighbor is, who that challenging person that we must reach is, is not a uniform ideological position. It often catches us off guard. It often disorients us. It often throws us off balance when we are called to be that presence to the people that we are being sent to. And it's so very easy. It's so very easy in this time of great division to be in our ideological camps, to get isolated in our echo chambers.
But today, on this Sabbath, when we are called to a true observance of a Sabbath, may we hear the voices of those in need. May we hear the call to empathy, to love, to greater concern for the people that we are being sent to. And in this time of great stupidity, in this time of great uncertainty, might we ever more hear the call to be a people of work and action?
Not sitting back on our laurels, but also not limiting ourselves to works that we define as good, but being ever more a people called into faithfulness and in that faithfulness called to action in a world desperately needing good works and good love. And good transformation.
Over these last several weeks, we have had this development of our reading. In our epistle from Saint Paul. The beautiful language in chapters 11 and 12. Where we have been given the exemplars of faith through our ancestors in faith. And over and over and over again.
What we hear is not a shying away from work, not an isolating, a barricading ourselves off from a world around us, but an intimate and deep engagement in that world as sojourners. A deep and intimate engagement in this world as people in a transient place, as people who belong to a kingdom that is not of here.
And again, that doesn't obfuscate our responsibility towards compassion, care, and charity. But it appropriately frames it. Getting us outside of the strictures of ideological purity. Getting us outside of the barriers and boundaries that we create in our own human fickleness. And instead calls us to that deep work of transforming compassionate love and care.
And may we, as we hear these words today, as we embrace this Sabbath day, see before us the works that we are called to do, the transforming work that Christ is doing through us, the healing ministries that we may be called to pursue.
And in that, may we ever more fully embrace our observance. Our observance of Christ's precepts to us. And the call to be a people of light in a time of darkness. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.