"Set Free" (Luke 13:10-17)

"Set Free" (Luke 13:10-17)

Preached by Sam Locke on 8/25/19 at First Presbyterian Church (Connersville, Indiana)

Audio File

Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And 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. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But 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.” 15 But 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? 16 And 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?” 17 When 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.

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I can’t wait!

How many times have you said that? The parents here this morning surely hear it from their kids … I can’t wait for Christmas, I can’t wait for school to be out, I can’t wait to go on the vacation. I just can’t wait.

We say it a lot as adults too … I can’t wait for Friday to be here! I can’t wait to get my bonus check! I can’t wait to meet the love of my life on Tindr! I just can’t wait.

We use this phrase a lot, and I’m not here this morning to suggest that doing so is a bad thing … quite the opposite. I want you to pause for a moment and think about how you feel when you are anticipating something … what emotions do you have as you say “I can’t wait for …fill in the blank.”

I suspect you generally sense this anticipation as something pretty positive. We say it right before we do something big, achieve a goal we’ve been looking forward to or, perhaps like the woman in our scripture this morning, when we are on the edge of being relieved from something that has bothered us for a long time.

What’s the opposite of this feeling look like?

I dare say none of you come home from a day at work and say “I can’t wait to wash the dishes,” “I can’t wait to clean the house.” I can’t wait to do these things I’d rather not do … they can wait until tomorrow. And we make up lots of good reasons why, don’t we? 

I could go visit my friend at the hospital this evening but, ya know, I’m going to be in that part of town in a few days, so maybe I’ll just go then if they are still there.

I could mow the lawn, but it’s supposed to rain later, which will just make it grow more. No sense it mowing it twice.

I use a justification like this to not make my bed in the morning … I’m just going to unmake it later tonight, why even bother?

Why even bother? This invokes a very different set of emotions. Emotions of settling … well, this is good enough. Emotions of despair … what is the point?

Why even bother? This is what Jesus addresses in our gospel passage this morning.

At first glance, this seems like another healing story … the heading of the section even reads, “Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman,” but there is much more richness to discover.

Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, not unlike many ministers are doing around the world yesterday and today. The Sabbath is meant for church and rest, afterall. I’m old enough to remember a time when there weren’t very many things open on Sunday and can remember my Dad getting grumpy when there was something to do or ….heaven forbid … a salesman called us on a Sunday. “Can you believe they are calling us on a Sunday!” We’ve been told we aren’t supposed to do much but church and family on Sundays. Not the worst advice in the world, but not quite what God had in mind when we were told to observe the Sabbath. 

But I digress, Jesus is in the synagogue preaching and he observes a woman crippled by an evil spirit. We are told she has been living with this ailment for eighteen years. Jesus sees her, calls her over, lays his hand on her and, what do you know, she is healed.

This is the literal definition of a miracle, a truly awe-striking moment but then we discover the leaders of the synagogue … the religious people … the ones who claim to be devout not celebrating such an achievement, but criticizing it. They are indignant because Jesus made this miracle come to be on the Sabbath … how dare he violate such a basic rule of the faith. Such a basic tradition.

This angers Jesus, who calls out the leaders for their hypocrisy … of course they did work on the sabbath too. Jesus can’t believe that these so-called religious leaders would make this crippled woman wait even one more day to have her pain relieved. She deserved to be healed today.

The passage concludes with a foreshadowing of the end of Christ’s life … with the power brokers of the time feeling ashamed and threatened and a crowd of sinners and castaways rejoicing in the implications such a miraculous moment might have on their own lives.

Jesus knew something about these powerful church leaders angry at him for healing on the Sabbath … he knew this wasn’t about the Sabbath at all. No, this was about preserving privileged power structures that kept the comfortable comfortable and kept the uncomfortable at arms length, relying on hope alone when both hope and action were possible. The Sabbath was the excuse, but it wasn’t the reason. The Sabbath was used as the excuse by these religious leaders the same way we make excuses for not mowing the lawn, visiting our friend in the hospital or making the bed.

We don’t skip mowing the lawn because it is going to rain tomorrow, we skip mowing because we’d rather watch the game and drink a beer.

We don’t pass over making the bed because it is redundant, we do it so we have time to press the snooze button once more before girding ourselves for another day at the office.

We don’t skip visiting our friend because we’ll be in the area later, we do it because we don’t want to confront the lingering issues we have with them or face the fact that life is all too fragile.

We make good excuses, but they aren’t the real reasons we skip doing the things we don’t want to do.

The most astounding part of this passage is easily overlooked. I didn’t catch it until the third or fourth time I read it. This woman didn’t ask to be healed. She had no expectation of being healed by Jesus that particular Sabbath. Unlike some of the other healing stories we have read, she isn’t healed because of a confession of faith and it certainly wasn’t her reward for works or for being born again. Jesus healed her because he saw a human being in need, knew he could do something, didn’t give in to all of the expectations of the people surrounding him and didn't make an excuse to put it off to another day … he just did it. He healed her. 

With this act, the woman is set free from the spirit that was crippling her, but way more happened than that.

The crowd was set free from the expectation that you had to rate for the power of the church to be accessible to you. They were set free from the ideology that God’s love is dependent on you marching to the same drummer as the power structures in place in that moment. The Church was set free from serving itself rather than humanity. Jesus reminds us through this passage that we have been set free from the oppressive rules that once dictated our lives … we’ve been set free to love one another … everyone. Even when they don’t ask for it, even when they don’t expect it.

We like to think about freedom today as being free from being told what to do, being free to think that the individual reigns supreme. But that’s not freedom at all. Freedom is recognizing we are bound to the way things have always been. We are free to make God’s kindom here on earth accessible to everyone … if we are courageous enough, like Jesus was, to simply do what is right.

What does this look like for you? Hopefully something more impactful than mowing the lawn or making your bed. 

Perhaps we forgive someone we’ve been holding a grudge against. Not because we have to, but because we can. We’ve been set free to.

Perhaps we support a public policy that will never ever help us as individuals, but that might help someone like the crippled woman in our story this morning. We’ve been set free to make the just choice.

Perhaps we give a helping hand to someone who doesn’t even ask for it, maybe, in our minds, they don’t even deserve it, for the same reason Jesus did … simply because he could.

We’ve been set free … not to bask in our privilege but to leverage it for the good of everyone. Everywhere.

No, it’s not about the Sabbath. Society isn’t falling apart because Wal-Mart is open today. Christmas will still be Christmas even if the Starbucks cup doesn’t tell us it is. Jesus is asking us … he is challenging us to not let the meaning of the Sabbath get lost in the moment.

I dare say that not many of you woke up today saying, “I can’t wait to get to church!” But you didn’t say “why bother” either. We are here, together, discerning together what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ in a world that seems more and more broken every day. But we are up to the challenge, just like Jesus was, if we just keep from getting in the way of ourselves. Amen.