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14th Sunday after Pentecost, 08/25/2013
Sermon on Luke 13:10-17, by Brad Everett
You're walking a familiar route, a path you have covered so many times that you could probably do it safely with your eyes closed. It's an ordinary day-nothing particularly notable or noteworthy about it-one that will soon blur into the hundreds that have preceded it. Aware of what's going on around you, but just barely as your mind is pre-occupied with a myriad of mundane details.
But then something happens. Nothing too startling but enough to catch your attention: a gust of wind rustles the branches of the trees, a car horn honks, a dog barks, or a child playing nearby shouts. And in that moment, gently shaken from your self-imposed daze, you see your once familiar surroundings with new eyes.
The veil of "ordinary" is lifted and the wonder of it all washes over you. What seconds before was non-descript, is aglow with the glory of God. Suspended in the grace of the moment you glimpse, if ever so briefly, the depth and breadth what the Almighty meant when He said at creation "It is good."
These times and other instances of grace can't be manufactured. The best we can do is try and be open to receiving them from the hand of our Lord.
It's with this openness that we need to approach today's gospel text. While certain accounts of Jesus' miracles can be found in several, if not all of the gospels, this one is unique to Luke.
Situated between a call to repentance and a parable concerning the kingdom of God, this story of healing can easily be skipped over-filed away as just another of Jesus' healings. In some sense it does seem ordinary-or as ordinary as miracles can be. Very few of the usual specifics we look for are provided. We don't know where the synagogue was; what season it was or which festival was close; who the crippled woman was; or even what parties were represented among those referred to as Jesus' opponents.
The what, where and when are vague. It reads and feels so familiar we could miss the wonder of it all-that here's a foreshadowing of humanity's redemption, as clear and unmistakable a display of God's gracious love in Jesus as almost anywhere in Scripture.
This emphasis on the Divine initiative is evident in from the first verse. It's the Sabbath (the Lord's day), and Jesus (the Lord), is teaching (the word of the Lord) in a synagogue (the house of the Lord).
The object of Jesus' grace has nothing to commend her by the standards of her culture and age. A woman, so she was considered a marginal member of society. Crippled, bent over and unable to straighten up, she would be seriously limited in what she could do or contribute by way of work. Her affliction isn't simply physical but spiritual, as the cause of her infirmity is a spirit of Satan rather than disease or an accident. That it has lasted 18 years shows that any and all of the remedies tried have failed to bring release.
Unlike many other healing stories, where the sick and suffering seek out Jesus, here the initiative is the Lord's. Jesus spots her and calls her forward-from the fringes of the gathering to centre stage. In a combination of word and deed, he proclaims her freedom, then laying his hands on her she immediately straightens up. Deliverance from her bondage is at once instant and complete.
Her praise of God leaves no doubt as to the source of her salvation. The same God who Genesis records creating humanity in His image has re-created and restored this woman to wholeness. What she experienced, those gathered in the synagogue witnessed and later generations including us have heard and read is the grace of God.
Such an event should be cause for unqualified joy. But not surprisingly in this fallen world, sin rears up to oppose God's grace. In a display at once full of cowardice and pride, the synagogue ruler avoids challenging Jesus directly and instead, dictates to the gathered crowd how they are to ‘properly' receive the Lord's gracious healing.
Our Lord forcefully responds to this feeble attempt to diminish the woman's healing, and obstruct others from God's grace.
The extent of his authority is evident in the fact he doesn't defend his actions, so much as he unequivocally states the value of this woman in the eyes of God. If livestock is valued enough to be cared for on the Lord's Day, then how much more is this child of the Lord, this daughter of Abraham, worthy of receiving healing from Him whose day this is? How dare the synagogue ruler or any in the crowd (or those reading and hearing the story later) question her worth to her heavenly Father.
Jesus' truly gospel proclamation shames his opponents, but more importantly this demonstration and experience of God's love leaves the crowd delighted and full of wonder.
And should those of us gathered around this text today have any less of a sense of wonder and delight at the grace of God toward us? Each of us in our own way is that crippled woman. We've come to the house of the Lord on this day of His resurrection, spiritually, emotionally and physically crippled by sin and its effects-bent and bowed, unable to straighten out our lives. We have as little or maybe even less to commend ourselves to Christ than the woman-save for the one essential fact that like her we are beloved children of God, whom Jesus will not only rescue from the bonds of sin and defend against the lies of the enemy, but die and rise again that we can have life eternal.
God's grace isn't just a historical event recorded on the pages of Holy Scripture, but is revealed anew for each of us to experience as our risen Lord comes to us in his Word. So that re-created and renewed by His grace we too would stand in wonder and delight to praise God for His great gift of grace.