Luke 13:10-17 August 24, 2025 Rev. June Wilkins
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| Woman With An Infirmity of Eighteen Years James Tissot |
Jesus is in a synagogue,
it’s basically just like a church like this.
They’re having a class discussion in there,
and a woman comes in who had been
bent over in pain for the last 18 years.
She couldn’t stand up straight at all.
Uncomfortable, painful,
not able to see in front of her.
Jesus meets her, lays his hands on her
and he tells her that she is set free from her ailment.
And just like that, she’s healed, she stands upright.
And she’s off praising God.
Seems like a good day at church, right?
Now,
was the reaction from the congregation
and the church leaders wonder,
disbelief, excitement?
No. The pastor is upset because Jesus
healed the woman on the Sabbath.
He said to the parishioners, “he had six other days to
do that kind of work, why would this man break the Sabbath?”
So Jesus did an amazing thing,
but they couldn’t see past him breaking a rule.
It’s kind of ridiculous of them.
But
a good question is, “why did Jesus break this rule?”
Why did he break it and why did he break it where he did?
In front of all those leaders.
This woman had been sick for 18 years,
what would one more day have mattered?
He could have asked her to come back the next day.
Then everyone would have been happy.
Now I don’t think that Jesus was rejecting the Sabbath rule.
The Sabbath is and was a great gift especially
in Jesus time.
Back then, most people worked seven days a week.
It was very unusual that people would take any day off.
But the God ordered them to take one day a week off.
The world told people that they were only as good
as what they produced, how they fed the economy.
But God told them that they were precious even
when they weren’t producing anything.
Sabbath was great gift that God had given
to the people for their and well being
and to help their relationship with God.
It was a gift, a discipline, and reminder of God.
We should probably take our Sabbath time more seriously today.
But,
as often happens, the religious leaders took this gift
and turned it into a rigid law.
If anyone were to do any work on that day,
they were chastised and even brought up on charges.
And
the Sabbath worked easily for those who were stable.
But for those who were poor,
for those living on the edge of poverty,
for those who had to beg or collect food for a living,
it could be a hardship.
In the gospels, Jesus and the disciples were
chastised for picking ears of corn to eat on the Sabbath –
when they were just getting themselves something to eat.
This,
of course, not just true for the Jewish religion
or
religious leaders. All religions
often will take a good idea –
a gift from God and turn in it into a weapon of control.
A way to scrutinize other people. A litmus test.
They used it to catch other people “sinning”
They turned it into a way to make themselves
look better and have more power over people
and to make other people look bad.
They turned it into a method of bondage or imprisonment.
Rules
can do that. They can be good gifts to help us be faithful.
And they can become bondage.
We end up serving the rules, instead of the rules serving us.
The rules can be used to hurt people
and shame them instead of setting them free.
These people couldn’t get past the rule that was
broken to see a miracle happen before them.
When
the church focuses mostly on the rules,
then we run the danger of only seeing the world
for how people are breaking the rules.
God’s way can become a way of pain rather than joy.
How many times has the Christian Church been a place like that?
How many times have our churches placed bondage
on spirits rather than freeing them?
How many times have rules come before relationships?
How many times has dogma stood
in the way of the movement of the Spirit?
For
many people outside of it, the church has been long
identified as the place of forbidding, restriction, bean counting,
and finger wagging instead of freedom and restoration.
Worship? You needed to do that in the appointed time and the
right way or else you’re not a good Christian.
Communion? Only the right people get to eat at Jesus table.
Praying: Oh, you can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary
correctly in front of the teacher at 6 years old. (that was me.)
Well, you’re not good at prayer are you?
Sex and sexuality? Forget about it, you’re doing everything wrong.
And
even if we’re not chastising people for breaking the rules,
we’re mired in our own bureaucracy and unable to act
when the need
is there. we’re too slow, we’re far too careful, we over-think.
We’re pre-occupied by lawsuits.
Things get stuck in endless committees. Analysis paralysis.
God’s
church has a reputation for being
quick to judge and slow to act.
God’s church has the reputation of being
the place of “no” instead of “yes".
So
often Churches have the resources:
we have the people, we have the know-how,
we know high people in high places,
we even have the inspiration to do something,
But individually or as a group, we put it off,
tomorrow, later, maybe another day.
Rules before miracles.
Through the synod in Ohio,
I did some conflict work with a Lutheran congregation,
and at one point in their history, they basically opted to close
down
their food pantry because someone found out that
the food pantry was cooperating with the local Mormon church.
They had been having this cooperation for years feeding people
together and working together once a month,
And then someone in this Lutheran church,
got a bug in their brain that Lutherans
shouldn’t be working with Mormons,
and the leadership of the church pushed them out.
But they didn’t know that even though it was housed
at the Lutheran Church, the Mormons were the biggest
contributors and supplied the most volunteers.
So when they pushed them out,
the food pantry quickly ended up closing
The fact is, often, the bondage we are in is often our own bondage
our own rules, our own processes, our own fear, our own baggage.
And that brings me back to my original question.
Why would Jesus break this rule? Right in front of
of all the religious leaders. This woman waited 18 years,
she could have waited one more day.
The reason that Jesus broke that rule on that Sabbath day
was because, as well as releasing the woman from her bondage,
he was releasing those religious leaders from their bondage too.
They
surely didn’t realize they were in bondage.
They didn’t ask to be released, but
Jesus could see
that they were being held back by their
own prisons.
Jesus could see that they couldn’t see
God’s work
because they were hung up on their rules.
A
lot of times, his is the way that God’s kingdom
breaks into our world. First by breaking
a rule
then by setting people free from their
own constraints.
So,
women were finally allowed to be ordained in our
predecessor bodies: the Lutheran Church in
America and the American Lutheran Church in 1970.
But
the first woman to go to a Lutheran seminary was Ruth Harper,
She entered Pacific Lutheran Seminary in
1952.
One woman, entering a place that was made for and designed by men.
There were rules that women couldn’t be ordained
then.
But there actually weren’t any real rules about women attending seminary.
But there were unwritten rules. Customs. Tradition. Precedents. So she was allowed in.
She said most of the men didn’t
like that, she faced doubt, resistance, and even harassment.
But she also found a lot of support and
champions there too.
She said that one professor didn’t
believe that women were smart enough to be in his biblical studies class so he
wouldn’t let her take it, but the dean and other professors made sure she was
admitted into it. And she prevailed and
finished her education in 1957 becoming a deaconess and a high school teacher,
one of the only positions of leadership open to women at the time.
church bodies didn’t realize the gift of
women pastors,
20 years ago the ELCA couldn’t recognize
the gift of
gay, lesbian and transgender people as pastors
in the church.
Today
our church still struggles with appreciating the gift of
people of color in leadership, but despite
that,
we have now elected an African American
presiding bishop
and an African American secretary.
God’s
kingdom is still breaking through into our world
Jesus has not come here to reinforce rules,
or to heap on more burdens, Jesus isn’t here to uphold traditions,
or to help us hide behind our bureaucracy and systems.
Jesus has come to free us.
Jesus
has, of course, come to free us from those
outside forces, illness, pain, injustice, addictions.
But Jesus has also come to free us from our own
self-imposed bondage, our own prisons,
our own fears, our own restrictions, our own apathy,
the prisons that we put ourselves and other people into
in the spirit of “good
order” or “following the rules”
Jesus means to free all of us from all of that.
That woman probably could have waited.
She had been waiting so long,
would a little more time have mattered?
But
Jesus couldn’t wait.
Jesus couldn’t wait to set her free
and to set the rest of the people in
that church free.
Christ is here to liberate us.
And it can’t wait until tomorrow, he needs to do it today.
Jesus
gives us that healing touch to us
and Jesus has defied all the rules to do it.
So
let us rejoice in the wonderful things that God has done.
