Isaiah 58:9-14
9Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; 14then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Luke 13:10-17
10Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ 15But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’ 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
This is the Word of the Lord
5:00 AM: alarm goes off. Quickly and quietly get into the shower, so as to not wake up Leah, or, God forbid, William.
5:30 AM: having showered, shaved, and suited up, I start the coffee maker. Remember the old wisdom: “Making coffee isn’t difficult, you just have to do it before you’ve had any coffee.”
6:00 AM: sit down at the keyboard with a post-breakfast second-cup of coffee. Revise sermon. If the Holy Spirit wills it, completely rewrite the sermon.
7:30 AM: feed William breakfast while Leah takes a shower and gets ready.
8:30 AM: arrive at the church, turn down air conditioner to be ready for the congregation. Pray. Revise sermon again. If the Holy Spirit wills it, completely rewrite the sermon.
9:30 AM: writers block. Pace around the church to try and get things moving again.
In all the religious art I’ve seen displayed in churches and museums, I’ve not once seen a painting of Jesus getting ready in the morning. I’ve never seen him depicted brushing his teeth, or fixing a cup of coffee, or stubbornly hitting the snooze button on his alarm time after time. But along with being fully God, he is also fully human. I’m sure he woke up with morning breath, or a little sore from sleeping wrong. He went through a morning routine similar to what each of us did today. Every seventh day, wherever he was, his morning routine shifted slightly. Rather than preparing for his work of preaching, teaching, and healing, he went to the local synagogue: that’s what a Rabbi does on the Sabbath.
I don’t think Jesus went into the synagogue saying “I’m going to shake things up around here.” I don’t think Jesus woke up that Sabbath morning and thought “I’m going to change the way people think about the law today.” I think Jesus went through that Sabbath morning routine in much the same way he always did. When he got to the synagogue, he began to teach.
Then he saw a woman who was there.
This woman had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. During that time, everything about her life was colored by her disability. People looked at her differently, people treated her differently, the synagogue leader changed his behavior around her. She had to alter herself as well, as once simple tasks became increasingly impossible. Her morning routine now was less about preparing for her day and more about coping with the obstacles her disability brought to her. Though every action is difficult and painful work, she is still able to attend her synagogue on the sabbath. After eighteen years, I cannot imagine she went each week expecting that she would be healed. After almost a thousand sabbaths, she went because that’s just what you do.
Then an unfamiliar Rabbi named Jesus called her over.
Scripture makes no mention of a cane, a crutch, or a walker. It doesn’t indicate if she’s elderly, or if she has any family to help her. Scripture says she was bent over, and quite unable to stand up straight. When he saw her, Jesus called her over.
Jesus doesn’t walk over to her and lift her up, as he does with so many paralytics. Neither does he just heal her from a distance, as he does with the Centurion’s servant and the Syrophonecian woman’s daughter. He sees her, and calls her forward. I wonder how far back in the congregation this woman who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years sat. I wonder how long it took her bent body to get up. I wonder how many steps it took her to come from her seat in the congregation to where Jesus was teaching. I wonder how much anxious shuffling, and uncomfortable coughing tried to mask the awkward silence as Jesus waited for this woman who had been crippled to come to him. I wonder if the woman felt afraid that this strange Rabbi would call her a sinner, and say that she deserved her disability, that is was a punishment for some hidden wrong.
The tension in the room builds with each painful step, until Jesus says “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he put his hands on her, immediately she stood straight up and began praising God.
10:20 AM: look at the clock, panic because the sermon isn’t finished. Put on a robe and microphone anyway, because it’s time.
10:25 AM: Pray with the other worship leaders.
10:30 AM: Worship begins.
The leader of the synagogue, attending to the behind-the-scenes details of worship leadership, probably didn’t notice what was happening at first. His morning routine had already been disrupted by this traveling holy man who was teaching in his synagogue. After all, when this Jesus character taught in the synagogue in Nazareth, they ran him out of town. The leader of the synagogue may have only known him by his reputation as one who regularly upended the social order. I wonder if he was lost in his own thoughts and worries about how to make the worship service go as smoothly as possible in the presence of this unknown variable of a Rabbi.
10:31 AM: Prelude ends, chiming of the hour, and time for greeting and announcements.
10:40 AM: Silent prayer of confession
10:41 AM: Amen. Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us…
Nothing will get people’s attention as quickly as a sudden silence. Lost in his own thoughts, the leader of the synagogue is caught off guard by the long dramatic pause in the middle of the service, and looks up just in time to see Jesus touch a woman, and she straightened up at once and praised God.
Where the gospel writer saw a miracle, this well-meaning community leader saw the potential for swarms of sick and suffering people to clog the synagogue asking for healing. Rabbi Jesus, a guest teacher, was only passing through. The leader of the synagogue would be left with needs that were beyond his power to meet, and the synagogue would end up so full that nobody in the community could come and worship the God of their ancestors, who released them from bondage in Egypt.
I wonder if his statement is meant to prevent that situation, to keep the sabbath holy, and not to be a stage for people to call attention to themselves. Either sick people who just want a quick-fix rather than real healing, or people who claim to have special healing powers can quickly take the focus of a worship service off of God and onto themselves. He makes an announcement to try and protect worship, promising to attend to the needs of the sick as best he can during the week, “There are six days on which work is permitted. Come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath day.”
Jesus, on the other hand, will not stand for it. Where the synagogue leader saw a legal snare, or a worship disruption, where the gospel writer sees a miracle, Jesus sees a woman. After eighteen years, the woman Jesus sees is finally set free from her ailment. So he directs the focus of the moment away from the law, and back to her. “Don’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from its stall and lead it out to get a drink? Then isn’t it necessary that this woman, a daughter of Abraham...be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day?” This is not about legal loopholes or keeping your worship time in pristine order, this is about a woman, a daughter of Abraham, who has now been set free.
Brilliant scholars and biblical thinkers, when writing about this passage, tend to focus on either Sabbath law or on the culture of the synagogue. In Lunch Bunch, too, we discussed the meaning of the Sabbath and its role in Jewish law and life. Jesus, on the other hand, seems to pay very little attention to the nuance of the law, and even less to the maintenance of dignified worship. Jesus pays attention to the woman. Christ refuses to look away from this beloved daughter of Abraham, he restores the image of God in her. What’s more, he shows her humanity to the community of faith. “Look!” He says, “This is what humanity looks like, full of praise for God in whose image we are all created! This is what God intends, not bent suffering, but glorifying God and enjoying him forever!”
Jesus is the true expression of God, and also the true expression of humanity. It’s easy to look straight to the cross, to see the substitution made on our behalf, or to look straight to the resurrection, and see sin and death defeated for all time. But limiting worship only to those can make an idol of the cross or the empty tomb. Jesus also came to reestablish what it means to be human. A human is someone who is cherished by God. That is the root of our identity, not our successes or failures, but the truth that God loves us.
Everything that Christ does in this story calls attention to a woman who is first in bondage, then set free. Jesus restores humanity to people, taking them from their sins and brokenness and completing them, that they may be called Children of the Living God.
This is one of many stories where Jesus points to God by directing focus to the people he meets, and refusing to let them be overlooked any longer. After eighteen years with her disability, I’m sure this daughter of Abraham felt invisible to the faith community. Sure, they may support her financially, but they treat her as a burden, not as a person.
A professor of a seminary was at the grocery store, and having a rough day. By the time he got to the check out counter, he was already running late to a faculty meeting. He was behind a woman whose payment card had been declined, and who was trying to decide which of her necessary items she would do without this week. He impatiently growled “I’ll pay for it.” And handed the cash to the clerk. As he began patting himself on the back for helping a needy person, he heard the woman say to the clerk with a hollow sound in her voice, “He didn’t even look at me.”
He treated her as a problem to be solved, rather than as a person to be loved. I wonder if that professor felt the same shame as Jesus’s opponents.
The leader of the synagogue and the professor of the seminary both focused on the problems with which they were presented. But in so doing, they missed out on the people God had placed in their lives. They stumbled over the obstacles in their morning routine, rather than loving the person they had stumbled across.
10:50 AM: Pray before beginning to preach, reminding myself that the unfinished sermon is not a problem that needs solving, but an imperfect offering to my loving God.
10:51 AM: If the Holy Spirit wills it, the Word of God will be proclaimed irrespective of my efforts.
Jesus restores humanity to its noble image-of-God origins, rather than the sin-tainted state it had become. For the woman in the synagogue, that meant release from the bonds of her eighteen-year ailment. For all of us, that means release from the bonds of sin and death. For each of us, it means that Jesus loves us no matter what.
This story is extraordinary for the woman who was healed of her ailment. It was certainly memorable for Jesus’s opponents who were put to shame. This portion of the gospel is cause for the entire crowd to rejoice at all the wonderful things Jesus was doing.
But for Jesus, loving a daughter of Abraham was just who he was. Healing an ailment may have been noteworthy, and bending the sabbath rules may have been a little different. But loving a child of God? That’s all part of Jesus’s morning routine.
11:16 AM: Amen.
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