I woke to the sound of Dad calling my name, telling me to get up. I was completely disoriented: Wasn't this Sunday? Then my head cleared and I knew it was Sunday—very early on Sunday. Even as a teen, Sundays were mine. My "day of rest." My day to worship, attend Sunday School, and do youth group before evening worship.
Nobody messed with my Sundays.
But that Sunday, the cows did.
Dad worked with a family friend to run a small dairy operation just outside of town. Every other month, for the duration of that month, Dad drove out to the farm twice a day to milk the cows. My participation was rare—a few early school day mornings.
I pulled on my jeans and a shirt and griped all the way down the stairs—and all the way out to the farm. I whined about losing "Sunday time" to the cows. I was emphatic that we had to finish in time for me to get to church. I was oh-so-righteously ticked off at Dad for making me do this "on a Sunday!" Silent himself, Dad let me rant all the way to the farm. But once we arrived and were walking toward the dairy barn, he turned and stopped me with a palm to the chest.
"Do you hear that?" he asked.
Of course, I hadn't heard anything besides the sound of my own voice for several minutes. But as I paused to listen, I did hear something.
"Yeah," I said, "The cows are bawling."
Then he asked a question that really shut my mouth: "Do you know why they're bawling?"
Up to that point, I had never once stopped to wonder, well, any thing about the cows. I had no idea why they were bawling.
"They're bawling," explained Dad, "because they're in pain. And they will stay in pain until somebody milks them."
There’s a term for what I had been doing that morning: aesthetic outrage. It describes a person having an angry reaction to events that, in reality, have had no actual impact on them. I was like those folks in this week's Luke passage. I couldn't see past my own well-ordered worldview to actual living beings who were in need. In Luke, Jesus messed with somebody’s church time. He healed a woman while at church! To us, that may seem absolutely the right place and time. But the leader of the synagogue didn’t see it that way. He was offended. How dare Jesus—or anyone—say or do anything to breach the decorum of the Sabbath?! In his view, all that healing should take place on one of the other six days. But Jesus responded with inescapable logic: None of them would leave their farm animals bound on a Sabbath, unable to have access to water. How does that compare to providing much needed relief to a human?
Some people prefer the traditional pieces of worship to the actual work of worship. Nothing Jesus said that day was new, and it wasn’t news, either. For centuries, the Prophets had been telling God’s people that the work of worship—attending to the needs of the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the imprisoned and the ill—was more important to God than the sacrifices and festivals. Even though God had instituted those, as well. The acts of worship have meaning and purpose. They are not, however, satisfactory on their own. Like Jesus, we must become attuned to the needs of those near us—our neighbors, if you will—and act on that knowledge in a timely manner. Do the actual work of worship.
Once I could see those dairy cows as real beings with real needs, it completely changed my attitude toward them.
Can we do any less for people?
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A brief 2009 article about a family running a micro dairy (Brown Family Dairy). It will give you an idea of our dairy operation:
https://www.grit.com/animals/small-dairy/
2022 followup on the Brown Family Dairy:
https://thedmonline.com/brown-family-dairy-to-continue-providing-oxfords-favorite-milk/
PHOTO: From the Brown Family Dairy Facebook page.
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I look forward to seeing you Friday morning at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. Join us at 8:00 on Zoom** or at Our Breakfast Place. We enjoy some great food and have a great time discussing the scriptures.
No one will be pasteurized or homogenized at this meeting.
Blessings,
Steve
**Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=p&d=70
Print them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Cx_Proper16.pdf
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17
Proper 16 (21) (August 24, 2025)
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