Above: The Pool, by Palma Giovane
Image in the Public Domain
The Sabbath and Compassion
MAY 31, 2024
JUNE 1, 2024
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The Collect:
Almighty and ever-living God,
throughout time you free the oppressed,
heal the sick,
and make whole all that you have made.
Look with compassion on the world wounded by sin,
and by your power restore us to wholeness of life,
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 38
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The Assigned Readings:
Leviticus 23:1-8 (Friday)
Leviticus 24:5-9 (Saturday)
Psalm 81:1-10 (Both Days)
Romans 8:31-39 (Friday)
John 7:19-24 (Saturday)
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For this is a statute of Israel,
a law of the God of Jacob,
The charge he laid on the people of Joseph,
when they came out of the land of Egypt.
–Psalm 81:4-5, Common Worship (2000)
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The Sabbath theme continues in the pericopes from Leviticus and John. The reading from Romans fits well with that from Johannine Gospel. I adore a well-constructed lectionary!
The lessons from Leviticus speak of sacred time, rituals, and items. As much as I, as a Christian, disagree with the pervasive sense of the holy as other and God as distant which one finds in the Law of Moses, I respect the efforts expended out of reverence. God did become incarnate as Jesus (however the Trinitarian theology of that works), walk among people, and eat in homes, but excessive casualness regarding matters of ritual and spirituality is no virtue. That understanding feeds my ritualism.
On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, a sacred occasion. You shall do no work; it shall be a sabbath of the LORD in all your settlements.
–Leviticus 23:3, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures (1985)
Yet Leviticus 12:3 commands male circumcision on the eighth day–even when that day falls on the Sabbath. Did Jesus, therefore, sin when he healed on the Sabbath? And was the desire of hostile of people to kill him for healing on the Sabbath sinful? If one assumes that they understood his Sabbath day healings as constituting profaning the Sabbath, one must then, to be fair, cite Exodus 31:14-15, which calls for the death penalty. Nevertheless, the religious laws of our Lord and Savior’s day permitted work (other than circumcision) on the Sabbath. For example, saving a live was permissible.
Jesus proclaimed by words and deeds that every day is an appropriate time to act with maximum compassion and that no day is a good time to become bogged down in heartless and defensive legalism. His love for those who needed his help and know it is the love to which St. Paul the Apostle refers in Romans 8. Nothing can separate us from that love. Dare we scorn it?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
MARCH 13, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINTS PLATO OF SYMBOLEON AND THEODORE STUDITES, EASTERN ORTHODOX ABBOTS; AND SAINT NICEPHORUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, PATRIARCH
THE FEAST OF SAINT HELDRAD, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT
THE FEAST OF SAINTS RODERIC OF CABRA AND SOLOMON OF CORDOBA, ROMAN CATHOLIC MARTYRS
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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-sabbath-and-compassion/
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ORDINARY TIME DEVOTIONS 
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