Luke 13 One of my earliest summer holiday memories happened at my aunts croft in Lairg, Sutherland.

It was a warm Sunday morning and I was playing in the yard that backed on to a country lane. Suddenly, as if through a heat haze, I saw these sinister figures dressed in black walking down the road - all in a line. A bit like the Earp brothers on the way to the shootout at the OK Corral. Without a word of explanation, my mother bundled me indoors. It turned out that the strange characters passing by were on the way to the local tin tabernacle of the free Presbyterian Church. These congregations were known, by the way, colloquially as the seceders. And the reason for my hurried departure from view was that they believed the Sabbath was to be observed with an ultra strict holiness. Wholly for God of course. But also, possibly, a day that had become a weekly penance without any mote enjoyment or pleasure within its 24 hours. However, it has to be said my own relatives being of Free Church of Scotland kept Sundays strictly as well. Yet as crofters - subsistence farmers in other words - an enforced rest for one day a week was probably no bad thing. Since it meant, in centuries past, pure survival in a life that could easily nothing but toil. It was then for them a day of release. And this idea of the Sabbath not of duteous and laborious inactivity but of joyous release was exactly what Jesus expressed in our text for today. Not for him the long faces of chained up play park swings. No instead for him the Sabbath was the day of genuine recreation. It was a blessed opportunity for true release of all that necessarily binds us on the other 6 days. Indeed, in releasing that infirmed woman, he was giving flesh to what we today could call a mini-Easter day. By that I mean, a wondrous day when in giving time for the higher and better things we turn mere existence into fullness of life. An uplifting day when we transform bending burdens into freed up exuberance. In fact, an inspiring day when we discover heaven mingled within our mundanity . Yet, if we look outside St Lukes doors at this very hour, we are hard pushed to observe any great difference in Sabbath activities from the rest of the week. The cash registers ring, mini footballers football and family happenings literally reign supreme. Indeed, our own church-

going must, by some, be looked at askance. Yet the joke may somewhat be on them. Since, for them Monday will dawn soon enough with no moment of release. Release to find meaning in the never ending whirlwind of work, travel and the telly. Release to feel that in the company of a greater power we each do have a future of higher achievement than mere sport, hobby or career. Moreover, release to experience genuine joy - minute by minute - of living as Christians even amongst whose inwardly dying under grey days. Yet the giving some quality time to God under the tutelage of Jesus, does release us to something else as well. For John Jewel tells this story. I was waiting my turn to see the accident and emergency doctor when a young mother came through the doors with her child, maybe three or four years old. The little girl was crying and the woman who, I took to be the child's mother, was holding a bloody handkerchief over the little girl's mouth. She looked around frantically for someone to help and rushed to the desk and said, "My daughter's been hurt and I need to see..." She was cut off in mid-sentence, "You need to take a seat and wait for one of the desk staff to sign you in." "But my little girl was hit in the mouth by a..." She was interrupted again. "Please take a seat, someone will be with you shortly." Just then, an A & E doctor walked by and said to the woman at the desk, "Shame on you... this little girl needs help right now!" He motioned to the woman and the little girl and led them to an treatment room. Jewel then concludes -- if I live to be a hundred years old, I wonder if I will ever see another time when a person's pain was so clearly displayed. "Shame on you!" I love it! The clerkess was looking at the hospital's procedure. But the physician was looking at a child's distress. Observing the Sabbath in the spirit of Jesus then frees us to see

something else. And that is to perceive the world with what Marcel Proust called new eyes. In other words, we are released to see everything afresh fresh with hope fresh with excitement fresh with opportunity. And so we do now see others genuine burdens and pains and needs. Then in that moment of the unbending of our own wills, we do not need to hear anymore shame on you! Instead we can rush to help our neighbours to have their own restful & joyous Sabbath. We can be willing introducers to Christ who confers all meaning, significance and joy in each and everyday. We can indeed be first-responders to ensure their release from all that ails them physically and spiritually. Since then alone, we do we together have the opportunity to rise above our own commonplace week day to a more sparkling magnificence Son-Day. Amen Offering HYMN