11th Sunday after Pentecost, 08/25/2019

Sermon on Luke 13:10-17, by Paul Bieber

Luke 13:10-17 Revised Standard Version

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. 12 And when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” 13 And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God. 14 But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it?16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?”17 As he said this, all his adversaries were put to shame; and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.

Also

Isaiah 58:9b-14

Psalm 103:1-8

Hebrews 12:18-29

The Bent-over Woman Freed

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

In today’s first reading, we hear the LORD say, through Isaiah:

If you refrain from trampling on 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;

then 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. (Isaiah 58:13–14)

So the synagogue leader is not completely wrong: observing the sabbath is important. Honoring the sabbath day is, after all, the third of the Ten Commandments, the law given on Mount Sinai with fire, darkness, gloom, tempest, and fearful sounds—on the mountain so holy that it was not to be touched by even an animal when the law was given. And the whole reading from Isaiah has the pattern of the law: If you do thus and so, then the LORD will bless you. The law of God is the will of God for us.

So is the promise of God. But the promise is structured differently: there is no “if . . . then” relationship. A bent-over woman enters the synagogue where Jesus is teaching on the sabbath. Augustine says that the bent-over woman is all of us: “the whole human race is like this woman, bent over and bowed to the ground.” (Sermon 162). She has done nothing to merit the healing of her trouble. She does not ask for healing and no one asks on her behalf. Without conditions, Jesus sees her, calls her, announces that she is freed, and lays his hands on her. At his word and touch she straightens up and begins to praise God.

This is Jesus’ ministry of loosing, freeing, releasing, forgiving—the ministry he has been about since his Nazareth sermon back in chapter 4 of Luke’s story. His word of release—even though here it is apolelysai, from apoluō, to loose, it’s a synonym of apheimi, aphesis, release, forgive, let it be—and his healing touch brings a fulfillment of the promise to Abraham to this daughter of Abraham. If Augustine is right that all of us share the bent-over woman’s trouble, we rejoice that Jesus turned his attention to her and not to the synagogue leader’s indignation. We encountered hypocrites in last Sunday’s gospel: those who willfully ignore of the fiery consequences of the cross and resurrection for their own lives. Today Jesus speaks again of hypocrites, those who would loose an animal to give it water but willfully ignore a sufferer in their midst.

It is a misconception of the law to try to use it against the promise. Our Advent pleading for Emmanuel to come recognizes that God with us is the same Lord of might, Adonai, who gave the law on Sinai’s height in cloud and majesty and awe. God is the judge of all, a fire that consumes, the fire cast on earth by Jesus’ passion and death. That is the sacrifice that fulfills the law, and so Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant in his blood, the blood that speaks a freeing word of forgiveness. Jesus’ sabbath healings are a prelude to the greatest sabbath miracle of all, the culmination of Jesus’ sabbath rest in the tomb, laying in death’s strong bands: the resurrection. Jesus has fulfilled the “if” of the law and offers us the “then” of the promise.

Of course, Christians do recognize the sabbath command, although we keep it differently. We do not worship on Saturday, except in anticipation of Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of resurrection, the eighth and the first day of the week. Luther’s explanation of the Third Commandments reminds us not to neglect hearing the Word: that’s our Sunday observance, not the sabbath, the seventh day of the week. The idea of restoring some wholeness to fractured modern lives though a keeping of sabbath rest is making a bit of a comeback, but most of us aren’t very good at it. If the modern invention of the weekend weren’t so full of our errands and commitments, or interests and affairs, this embrace of the seventh and the eighth/first day of the week would be ideal for rest and thankful remembrance of what God has done in Christ to forgive and free us, with worship at the center of it.

When the bent-over woman was loosed, when she was no longer compelled to look only down at the ground, immediately she worshiped. As John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, reminds us in his song, the Benedictus, the promise to Abraham is to set us free to worship without fear. With her change in perspective, it was as though this daughter of Abraham had come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. In the Liturgy, we, too, undergo this change in perspective. No longer living bent-over lives, able to see only the ground, we are “with the Church on earth and the hosts of heaven,” innumerable angels in festal gathering, the spirits of the righteous made perfect. We offer our worship with reverence and awe; we touch holy things; we reinterpret our experience in light of this new perspective of release and forgiveness, the will of God’s promise in Christ for us.

Yet we do not discard the law. The law is finally the portrait of what God has promised to make us and will yet make of us. The sabbath rest is intended to be freeing. Healed and restored to our intended upright posture, we are open to the fullness of God’s will for us, expressed in law and promise:

Your light shall rise in the darkness.

You shall be like a watered garden.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt.

You will be called a repairer, a restorer of streets to live in. (Isaiah 58: 10, 11, 12)

How wonderful that will be. And it begins to take shape in our lives even now as Jesus forgives and frees and heals us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber
San Diego, California, USA
E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net

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