Sermon for August 24, 2025

Readings:

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

Jesus was in the synagogue on the sabbath day, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Jesus was an observant Jew who took God’s laws very seriously. Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish God’s laws, he came to fulfill them. God’s commandments matter to Jesus. And in the fourth commandment we are told “remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.” The Book of Exodus goes on to say: “six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.”

The Book of Deuteronomy adds an extra little verse to this and says: “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out hence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”

The sabbath day is a day of rest. The sabbath day is a day of freedom. The sabbath day is a commandment. Resting is a commandment of God. It is one of the top ten. When people talk about sin, they like to talk about the exciting things: adultery, murder, stealing, bearing false witness, but listed among those commandments is the commandment to keep the sabbath day holy and to rest. And freedom is a gift from God. God does not want us to be slaves to the powers of this world. God does not want us to be slaves to productivity. God does not want us to be slaves to the almighty dollar, or to the office, or to email, or to drudgery. God wants us to rest and God wants us to remember his promises of freedom. God wants us to remember the grace that we have been shown. So, work is prohibited on the sabbath, but worship is not; the study of his word is not. And Jesus is in the synagogue worshipping God, and reading and reflecting on his word. Jesus is obeying the commandment. 

And as Jesus is talking, he looks out on the congregation and notices a woman there. It’s amazing that Jesus saw her at all because we are told that she was bent over double. She couldn’t stand up straight. And what is more we are told that this woman has been afflicted this way for eighteen years. I want to focus on this unnamed woman for a minute this morning, because I think it is too easy to focus on the conflict between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue and not notice the incredible faith that she was demonstrating. This woman has been bent over for eighteen years. We can assume that she was probably an older woman if she has been sick that long. Now those of you out there that suffer from back pain, mobility issues, or know what it feels like to sit behind the wheel of a car for too long, or have been hunched over as desk for too long, those of you who know the pain that can come from bad posture…I think I have probably covered most of y’all at this point. Think about being doubled over in pain for eighteen years. Now let’s go back to a time before Ibuprofen, or hot baths, before there was air conditioning or sliced bread or any modern convenience that makes life easier, because that is the time that this woman is living in. Think about the pain and discomfort that she must have been in.

And she showed up in church that day anyways. She showed up to worship God. This woman had every reason to stay home in bed and nobody would have faulted her for it. She was sick. If I had been her pastor I probably would have told her to stay home; it’s fine. But she showed up. Somehow, she made it to the synagogue, got inside, managed to deal with people bumping into her because they couldn’t see her hunched over. And of course, you know most people in synagogue in those days didn’t get a seat. Those pews may be hard, but at least your sitting down. If she wanted to sit, she would have had to sit on the floor. She probably just had to stand though. But she showed up. Why? There are other stories in the gospel where people seek out Jesus for healing, but that’s not the case with this story. She doesn’t call out to him or ask him for anything. As far as we know, she doesn’t know who Jesus is and didn’t know he would be there. She asks for nothing. But her presence there on that sabbath day says something more than her words ever could. 

This is a woman of faith and she is not going to let anything keep her from worshipping her God and honoring and keeping holy the sabbath day. She is sick and in pain, but she showed up, not because she thought that she would be healed, but because she loved God and respected his commandments and intended to keep them as best she could. She didn’t come to get something; she came to give something. Jesus sees her. He sees her faith and without being asked, he sets her free from her affliction. 

And the leader of the synagogue…who would have had a nice comfy place to sit by the way…became indignant because Jesus supposedly did work by curing her on the sabbath. And Jesus calls him out and says “you wouldn’t treat your donkey that way!”

Jesus takes God’s commandment’s seriously. He isn’t dispensing with God’s laws; he is interpreting them in the light of God’s love. Our gospel today begins with Jesus worshipping God in the synagogue on the sabbath day as we would expect. He encounters many people there obeying the fourth commandment, but two stand out in this story: one is a woman who has suffered incredible pain and inconvenience to be there that morning and the only thing on her lips is praise for God; the other person is a man, an important man, the leader of the synagogue, a person with honor and position (and a chair), and all he can do is criticize an act of mercy. Which one of those two do you think did a better job of keeping the sabbath day holy?