"Your Tripod" reflects the personal Fourth Day journeys of its authors and editors. We are happy to have companions like you share in this project. Our prayer is that these reflections will invite and inspire your Fourth Day journey of Piety, Study and Action as much as writing or editing them inspires our journey and brings us all close moments with Jesus and our neighbors.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!"The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.Romans 8:15-17
But the leader of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath, said to the crowd in reply, "There are six days when work should be done. Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day." The Lord said to him in reply, "Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering?This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?" Luke 13: 14-16
Piety
God will arise for battle; the enemy will be scattered; those who hate God will flee. The wind will disperse them like smoke; as wax is melted by fire, so the wicked will perish before God.Then the just will be glad; they will rejoice before God; they will celebrate with great joy.Sing to God, praise the divine name; exalt the rider of the clouds. Rejoice before this God whose name is the LORD.Father of the fatherless, defender of widows-- this is the God whose abode is holy, Who gives a home to the forsaken, who leads prisoners out to prosperity, while rebels live in the desert.(Psalm 68:2-6)
Study
Jesus got himself into a tough spot when he cured the crippled woman on the sabbath.However, he turned the tables of justice and righteousness on the temple officials who condemned him for such actions.As the notes in the New American Bible point out, “If the law as interpreted by Jewish tradition allowed for the untying of bound animals on the sabbath, how much more should this woman who has been bound by Satan's power be freed on the sabbath from her affliction.”
This external conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is juxtaposed with Paul’s letter to the Romans which plays out the internal struggles that we have between our human desires and our mission from the Lord.Paul explains that we are torn between our human desires and a God who wants to have a close relationship with us…a God who wants us to be so close that we would call him our “Abba,” our “Daddy.”Yet, we are still tempted to be “debtors to the flesh.”Paul warns, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
Both battles are full-time jobs.Jesus can not take the sabbath “off” any more than our hunger and thirst and other physical desires can be ignored one day of the week.
We are tied up by these human desires.Jesus is here to make our burdens light.He wants to set us free just as he set free the crippled woman in the synagogue (Luke 13) or the man with dropsy (Luke 14).He is here to help us conquer what lulls us to sleep and rise us up from our death (Luke 7 and Luke 8).Jesus wants to heal us and exert control over us in order for us to break the hold that sin has in our lives and remove the obstacles to God’s friendship that we erect when we sin.
As we recall the Nazareth Manifesto, Jesus has promised from the very outset of his public ministry to set free those of us who are held captive.Now, he is going about fulfilling those promises not just in our hearing, but in our witness to his actions.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." Luke 4:18-21
Jesus lived a life marked by the complete obedient surrender of his human will to the divine will of the Father.In his living example we find the truth that will set us free from our slavery to sin and turn us instead into heir of God.Paul encourages us to follow on the path toward intimacy with the Abba that Jesus showed us.
Action
What has us all tied up like the example of the oxen in Luke’s Gospel?How can we be set free?What is Jesus saying to us today about confronting these desires in order to conquer them just as Jesus confronts Satan in order to bring healing to those who are in need?
We can not go into these battles alone.As the Psalmist points out, God will march in side by side to fight with us for justice.
