August 24, 2025 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Isaiah 58:9b-14; Luke 13:10-17
Sabbath isn't only rest, Rev. Derek van Gulden says: it's delight, and a different kind of work, the liberating work Jesus did when he healed a woman bent over for eighteen years. A song a granddaughter played on repeat leads to a memory of a club in Burlington where people could finally be themselves, and to the simple ways we can set each other free.
Transcript
People of God, would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and holy God, this morning I ask you to move the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts by your love, and help each of us this day not to be the instrument of our own or anyone else's oppression, but to find ways to be an instrument of peace in every breath and every step, in every moment of every day. Amen.
Friends, today we are talking about Sabbath. For most of us, I don't believe we celebrate the Sabbath. It does not have to be on a Sunday. For me, Monday is my Sabbath. And I know in the past I remember early on in my pastorate here, I preached about Sabbath and encouraged people to even for a half a day, turn off all their stuff. Don't go on your computer, cruise the internet, put your phone on whatever it is to keep it quiet and just be in the presence of God. I was told I hadn't been here long enough to tell people to do that by many people, and I know it's a challenge in this day and age where everything we do, we are connected through so many different things.
But my sermon title today is Sabbath Joy and delight. And you might be wondering, what does joy and delight have to do with rest? Sabbath Doesn't mean we don't work. It means we work differently.
You heard from Isaiah, all those things that Isaiah calls you out to do, to care for people in your community in so many different ways. This is Sabbath work. To make sure people don't go hungry. To make sure people are housed. To visit those who live alone and are lonely. To go and visit people you haven't seen and don't have a lot of family. To get involved and work some way. And there's so many ways these days to help out those who are being oppressed in our society, which the list just grows and grows and grows and grows. And just because it's Sunday, or if you're Sabbath is another day, it doesn't mean you can't do that work. Because when we help people. We liberate them, hopefully. And once they're liberated, they are back in the community or society as we believe.
The woman in the Luke Passage, eighteen years she had suffered from this ailment. Eighteen years. She was bent over. She couldn't look up and see people. She only had to look from her side to side. Eighteen years and on the Sabbath she comes to hear Jesus, and Jesus heals her. And immediately she stands up straight and thanks God. What Jesus did in that moment was to liberate her, liberate her from the disease, liberate her from whatever had been holding her down. She couldn't be a member of society because she wasn't whole. But Jesus liberated her. And then she could celebrate the Sabbath with great joy and delight, as with what she did immediately.
Now, of course, there were the leaders of the Jewish temples, synagogues there who challenges Jesus. And Jesus uses a simple analogy, saying, yeah, but on Sundays you want to hook your ox, you want to hook your donkeys, you want to hook whoever, and you bring them to water to drink. How is not that different? Releasing this woman and liberating her so that she can go and drink of life. And enjoy doing the work God has called us to do in the Sabbath.
Now, if you look up the word Sabbath or Shabbat, it means to rest. It means joy. But it also can be translated delight.
As we go through this week, this day, tomorrow. I encourage you to think of ways that you can celebrate your Sabbath, delighting in God and doing work a little differently. There's lots of places that could use it. Right now, that could be standing up for somebody who has lost any number of privileges that they had until, well, very recently. It can be being with somebody who is suffering from a disease that has limited what they can do, and finding ways to help them be liberated in whatever that means for them. It's interesting that you have to keep up with me on this one.
So the last three days of my vacation are grandchildren. Nora and Sylvan came to spend time with us, and we had left the little cabin we were in, and we were in an Airbnb, and it had a huge yard and they just wanted to be outside. We played lots of wiffle ball. We played badminton in the rain, and I find out that I can't do what I used to be able to do when I was thirty, but it slowly comes back to you. But they also played music. We were driving somewhere. I forgot where we were going, just the three of us. And Norah said, well, can I can you hook my phone up to your Bluetooth so I can play my summer list of music? And I said, sure. And for a while, all of a sudden I'm hearing, wait a minute, this would be the same summer list I had in the seventies and 80s. Well, more the seventies.
And then all of a sudden there comes a song on. I hadn't heard it before, but over the next three days I heard it a lot because the radio station that my car is tuned into is the River out of Boston, which is the same call number as one of the top forties out of Montreal, which we're fairly close to. So the song is Pink Pony Club. Has anybody heard it? Actually. It's amazing. I mean, it's a good song. It's very lively. It's fun. And it's catchy and it sticks in your head. And I kept saying, I can't take that song out of my head. And I said, well, grandpa, there must be a reason. And I was about to say, because I have poor taste in music. And she. But she said, listen to it.
Listen to this song where this woman, the writer of the song, had found a club in West LA where she could go and be who she was. And all the boys and girls can all be queens. Now I was able to find an original, I mean, a very early Thing of Chapel Rome, is that right? Chapel, Rome. And she didn't have all the wild stuff on. She was just heard an electric piano. Talking about why she made this and talking about going from Tennessee to West LA. And then the next version of it is her on stage at the Grammys with a bunch of people dressed like queens being liberated.
I'm always reminded of a time when. I was personally going through some challenges, we'll say in my life, and had no idea, no understanding of what had happened. I could not comprehend it literally. I was trying to. But. And the people that were helping me Couldn't either. So they said, well, let's pretend that that didn't happen. But this is what's going on. And a friend of mine, one of the nurses I worked with, took me to Burlington, Vermont, because Burlington's the big city and probably has the only discotheque or did at the time. And we didn't go there. She said, I want to take you to a club that my husband discovered when he was going through his coming out. And we went in and it was a club in Burlington. I can't remember the name of it, but it was really geared to the LGBTQ plus community. And lo and behold, there was my wife, happy for the first time in ages.
And the nurse that I was with went over and introduced me to her brother and he was. She said he is happy here. They were liberated by other music, but I keep hearing Pink Pony Club and I think of how many my friends, how many relatives of mine are liberated by music like that, where they said, there are people out, there's places out there you can go. And it's not just for that community. There are also places other people can go. There's actually polka clubs where you can go and polka. I know because my parents used to go to them and had fun. It brought them back to their youth and a lot of things.
My point is, on the Sabbath we are called not to work, not to work like we usually do, but to work differently, to find ways to liberate, as Jesus did, the people around us, the people in our community. It can be something as simple as a song. It can be something as simple as I'd like to come over and visit you. And would you mind if I brought a book and read to you? That is great.
Right now we have somebody in this congregation who. Is limited to bed. They can't get out of bed. They can't do much for themselves. But when people visit her and read to her, or read poems to her, or read scripture to her. She is liberated in a way that it's hard to explain. Her whole face softens and just. She smiles. And when I visit her, she'll tell me so and so. Came and read this or that. Sometimes she says, someone read to me today you don't need to.
But in anyone's life, even people we deal with every day that we think, wow, they've got it all going. Probably not. Maybe need to be liberated from the extensive work they do every day.
So Sabbath, it's a joy and delight. A joy to have a day to celebrate and thank God. And a joy and delight in helping liberate people. Amen.