(Since the middle of June, I've been recording video sermons to be used by Shared Lutheran Ministries of Fayette County, TX)
You couldn’t possibly know this about me, but - I’m someone that deals with back issues.
For much of 2018 and 2019 I dealt with back problems that gave me such pain in my left leg that I could barely walk or stand or ride in a car.
I tried every remedy I could. Chiropractor. Acupuncture. Cupping. Physical therapy.
Eventually, after many months, I slowly got my mobility back.
But do you know the worst thing about having back problems like that?
ALL THE ADVICE.
Good Lord, everybody’s an expert and everybody knows exactly what you ought to do, and who you ought to go see.
I bet this woman had gotten a lot of advice over 18 years.
I bet she had been instructed to take every home remedy imaginable for pain, or inflammation, or ill-humors.
I bet she had been pointed to countless so-called “doctors”.
I bet she had even been told to repent and pray that God would have mercy on her, forgive her, and heal her.
Remember in John Chapter 9, there’s a man who was blind from birth?
The disciples try to show off for Jesus and they say -
“Lord, who sinned - this man or his parents - that he was born blind?”
This woman probably got the same treatment.
People just assumed that she had sinned somehow and that’s why she was afflicted with this crippling illness.
But if repentance and prayer could cure back problems, a lot more of us would be playing basketball into our 40’s.
We don’t know if this was an elderly woman who was dealing with 18 years of osteoporosis or arthritis…
Or a very young woman who was dealing with scoliosis from childhood.
Or something in between.
(props to Wil Gafney for this)
It’s a detail that gets left out of this story.
Another detail that gets left out is the woman’s name.
Just like the man in John Chapter 9, nobody bothered to record it.
As far as we know - nobody even bothered to ask it.
Come to think of it - nobody even asked this woman if she wanted to be healed.
Jesus just decided to heal her-
A stranger, putting his hands on a vulnerable woman he’d never met without asking, or giving any kind of indication what he was about to do.
I’m not attempting to be politically correct here -
Ask the women in your life how they would feel about that.
It is true that Luke as a gospel writer really emphasizes the ways Jesus worked to elevate women -but so much of this story still continues the marginalizing of women because essentially, the woman at the center of this story is just a MacGuffin.
(Shout out to Rev. Chris Thacker for this idea with regard to the man born blind in John 9)
You know what a MacGuffin is?
A MacGuffin is the term for an object used in storytelling, particularly in film, to serve as a trigger for the plot. The story isn’t necessarily about that thing – but that thing serves to move the story along.(Think: The Maltese Falcon. The One Ring. Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Just about any of the items in the title of an Indiana Jones film.)
In today’s gospel, the crippled woman becomes a McGuffin. An object lesson.
Even though I bet she’s the image that appears on your bulletin cover today - she’s not what the story is really about.
So what is it about?
We could say it’s about Jesus elevating the status of outsiders - like the women, or the sick - in a patriarchal society. That’s certainly a theme of Luke’s gospel.
We could talk about how illness and brokenness won’t be part of God’s kingdom, and Jesus came to illustrate that by showing his power over them.
We could talk about the Great Reversal that is also a theme of Luke, wherein the lowly are raised up and the rich and powerful are brought down and sent away. That’s definitely a part of this.
And ALL of those are good news.
But in the end - for today, at least - I think this is a story about the ways the gospel of Jesus is different from any religion.
The most informative part of this story is the interplay between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue.
Jesus says the woman is bound by Satan, and uses her healing as a teaching moment to shame the synagogue leaders, and reveal their hypocrisy.
Now, let’s be clear - the synagogue leader and those in his camp were faithful Jews.
They weren’t attempting to oppress or persecute anybody.
In fact, they were probably great folks, just trying to faithfully live out Torah as best as they understood.
Sabbath observance and the laws surrounding it were thousands of years old at this point.
As far as they were concerned - their interpretation of those laws was the same as orthodox, faithful Judaism.
Funny enough - this is once again the same thing that happened with the disciples in John Chapter 9.
Their theology - “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.” - was actually really good Jewish theology.
Deuteronomy 28 explicitly states that those who obey God and observe his commands will be blessed... and it explicitly states that those who fail to obey the Lord by observing all his commands will be cursed.
So – while their theology was pretty bad, it was certainly what we would call “biblical”.
I think we could say the same thing about the leader of the synagogue in Luke 13.
The rabbis identified 39 categories of work that could not be done on the Sabbath.
And yes, I’m about to list all of them. See if you can see yourself in any of these today:
Carrying, Burning, Extinguishing, Finishing, Writing, Erasing, Cooking, Washing, Sewing, Tearing, Knotting, Untying, Shaping, Plowing, Planting, Reaping, Harvesting, Threshing, Winnowing, Selecting, Sifting, Grinding, Kneading, Combing, Spinning, Dyeing, Chain-stitching, Warping, Weaving, Unraveling, Building, Demolishing, Trapping, Shearing, Slaughtering, Skinning, Tanning, Smoothing, and Marking. (This list is from the Orthodox Union)
Pretty exhaustive, isn’t it?
Except wait - what DOESN’T appear on that list?
HEALING.
The synagogue leader is either ignorant of this fact, or he’s ignoring it.
You know what is on that list?
UNTYING.
And guess what - Jesus knows it, and is not ignoring it.
“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?”
A lot of commentaries accuse these people of treating their animals better than their fellow daughters and sons of Abraham. Honestly - I don’t think it’s quite as stark as that, and I’m not certain Jesus is going there. But what I do think Jesus is pointing out here is that:
There are inconsistencies in your own set of beliefs that you have failed to examine and reckon with.
Local Torah teachers did not teach their own interpretation of scripture.
They adopted the yoke, or the school, of more authoritative Rabbis and taught what they taught.
Jesus says, in essence - your faith comes from someone else. And you don’t even know the faith you claim well enough to see the inconsistencies in it, and work them out for yourselves.
Meanwhile - the result of you living out those inconsistencies is ACTUALLY doing harm to real people.
See, a hypocrite isn’t always someone who is being willfully deceptive.
Sometimes, a hypocrite is someone who simply hasn’t done the work.
Sometimes, it’s someone who is holding themselves AND OTHER PEOPLE to a standard that they mistakenly think their religion demands.
And if we learn one thing from scripture - and especially these sabbath healings - about Jesus…
It’s that he will NEVER EVER sacrifice people for the sake of principle.
Jesus chooses people over religion EVERY SINGLE TIME.
In case it isn’t obvious yet, let me explicitly say…
That there are some of us who are holding onto religious beliefs and practices that our parents and grandparents and great grandparents may have held. Or that some preacher passed down to us. Beliefs that may have been in place for thousands of years.
Things that are certainly “biblical”
But we have not bothered to examine them in light of the person and work of Jesus.
Yet we will not only insist that those beliefs are binding for ourselves, but that they must be imposed on others.
And some of those beliefs are doing ACTIVE HARM to the bodies and souls of real people.
When we draw those kinds of lines…
Jesus always stands on the other side, with the people we are keeping out.
A question I like to ask myself and other people is this:
“When was the last time you changed your mind about something that matters?”
I fear it’s not often enough.
I had a professor in my conservative evangelical Southern Baptist University that said,
“We should be ready to die today for that which we know to be true, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”
It’s the difficult task of working out our salvation with fear and trembling.
And it can be so hard - so painful at times.
So terrifying to leave a place of comfort-but-ignorance for a place of faith we’ve never been before.
But Jesus calls us there.
Can you imagine the way that woman’s body must have adjusted to being bent over for 18 years?
The way her muscles had contorted to compensate.
The way her bones had calcified in a different shape.
They way her circulation had rerouted itself.
The way her center of gravity had shifted.
The way her field of vision had become so limited.
When Jesus healed her - I wonder if she found it painful at first to stand up straight?
I wonder if she resisted?
When illness or ignorance have forced you into an unnatural position for so long - even returning to something more healthy can be painful.
Because of this, we must have grace and compassion for both the woman who was healed, and for those who were shamed by her healing. and we must consider all the ways we have had our ideas and notions about God bent out of shape.
And even though that change can be painful and scary and costly - we must trust Christ alone to set us right.
AMEN.
You couldn’t possibly know this about me, but - I’m someone that deals with back issues.
For much of 2018 and 2019 I dealt with back problems that gave me such pain in my left leg that I could barely walk or stand or ride in a car.
I tried every remedy I could. Chiropractor. Acupuncture. Cupping. Physical therapy.
Eventually, after many months, I slowly got my mobility back.
But do you know the worst thing about having back problems like that?
ALL THE ADVICE.
Good Lord, everybody’s an expert and everybody knows exactly what you ought to do, and who you ought to go see.
I bet this woman had gotten a lot of advice over 18 years.
I bet she had been instructed to take every home remedy imaginable for pain, or inflammation, or ill-humors.
I bet she had been pointed to countless so-called “doctors”.
I bet she had even been told to repent and pray that God would have mercy on her, forgive her, and heal her.
Remember in John Chapter 9, there’s a man who was blind from birth?
The disciples try to show off for Jesus and they say -
“Lord, who sinned - this man or his parents - that he was born blind?”
This woman probably got the same treatment.
People just assumed that she had sinned somehow and that’s why she was afflicted with this crippling illness.
But if repentance and prayer could cure back problems, a lot more of us would be playing basketball into our 40’s.
We don’t know if this was an elderly woman who was dealing with 18 years of osteoporosis or arthritis…
Or a very young woman who was dealing with scoliosis from childhood.
Or something in between.
(props to Wil Gafney for this)
It’s a detail that gets left out of this story.
Another detail that gets left out is the woman’s name.
Just like the man in John Chapter 9, nobody bothered to record it.
As far as we know - nobody even bothered to ask it.
Come to think of it - nobody even asked this woman if she wanted to be healed.
Jesus just decided to heal her-
A stranger, putting his hands on a vulnerable woman he’d never met without asking, or giving any kind of indication what he was about to do.
I’m not attempting to be politically correct here -
Ask the women in your life how they would feel about that.
It is true that Luke as a gospel writer really emphasizes the ways Jesus worked to elevate women -but so much of this story still continues the marginalizing of women because essentially, the woman at the center of this story is just a MacGuffin.
(Shout out to Rev. Chris Thacker for this idea with regard to the man born blind in John 9)
You know what a MacGuffin is?
A MacGuffin is the term for an object used in storytelling, particularly in film, to serve as a trigger for the plot. The story isn’t necessarily about that thing – but that thing serves to move the story along.(Think: The Maltese Falcon. The One Ring. Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Just about any of the items in the title of an Indiana Jones film.)
In today’s gospel, the crippled woman becomes a McGuffin. An object lesson.
Even though I bet she’s the image that appears on your bulletin cover today - she’s not what the story is really about.
So what is it about?
We could say it’s about Jesus elevating the status of outsiders - like the women, or the sick - in a patriarchal society. That’s certainly a theme of Luke’s gospel.
We could talk about how illness and brokenness won’t be part of God’s kingdom, and Jesus came to illustrate that by showing his power over them.
We could talk about the Great Reversal that is also a theme of Luke, wherein the lowly are raised up and the rich and powerful are brought down and sent away. That’s definitely a part of this.
And ALL of those are good news.
But in the end - for today, at least - I think this is a story about the ways the gospel of Jesus is different from any religion.
The most informative part of this story is the interplay between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue.
Jesus says the woman is bound by Satan, and uses her healing as a teaching moment to shame the synagogue leaders, and reveal their hypocrisy.
Now, let’s be clear - the synagogue leader and those in his camp were faithful Jews.
They weren’t attempting to oppress or persecute anybody.
In fact, they were probably great folks, just trying to faithfully live out Torah as best as they understood.
Sabbath observance and the laws surrounding it were thousands of years old at this point.
As far as they were concerned - their interpretation of those laws was the same as orthodox, faithful Judaism.
Funny enough - this is once again the same thing that happened with the disciples in John Chapter 9.
Their theology - “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.” - was actually really good Jewish theology.
Deuteronomy 28 explicitly states that those who obey God and observe his commands will be blessed... and it explicitly states that those who fail to obey the Lord by observing all his commands will be cursed.
So – while their theology was pretty bad, it was certainly what we would call “biblical”.
I think we could say the same thing about the leader of the synagogue in Luke 13.
The rabbis identified 39 categories of work that could not be done on the Sabbath.
And yes, I’m about to list all of them. See if you can see yourself in any of these today:
Carrying, Burning, Extinguishing, Finishing, Writing, Erasing, Cooking, Washing, Sewing, Tearing, Knotting, Untying, Shaping, Plowing, Planting, Reaping, Harvesting, Threshing, Winnowing, Selecting, Sifting, Grinding, Kneading, Combing, Spinning, Dyeing, Chain-stitching, Warping, Weaving, Unraveling, Building, Demolishing, Trapping, Shearing, Slaughtering, Skinning, Tanning, Smoothing, and Marking. (This list is from the Orthodox Union)
Pretty exhaustive, isn’t it?
Except wait - what DOESN’T appear on that list?
HEALING.
The synagogue leader is either ignorant of this fact, or he’s ignoring it.
You know what is on that list?
UNTYING.
And guess what - Jesus knows it, and is not ignoring it.
“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?”
A lot of commentaries accuse these people of treating their animals better than their fellow daughters and sons of Abraham. Honestly - I don’t think it’s quite as stark as that, and I’m not certain Jesus is going there. But what I do think Jesus is pointing out here is that:
There are inconsistencies in your own set of beliefs that you have failed to examine and reckon with.
Local Torah teachers did not teach their own interpretation of scripture.
They adopted the yoke, or the school, of more authoritative Rabbis and taught what they taught.
Jesus says, in essence - your faith comes from someone else. And you don’t even know the faith you claim well enough to see the inconsistencies in it, and work them out for yourselves.
Meanwhile - the result of you living out those inconsistencies is ACTUALLY doing harm to real people.
See, a hypocrite isn’t always someone who is being willfully deceptive.
Sometimes, a hypocrite is someone who simply hasn’t done the work.
Sometimes, it’s someone who is holding themselves AND OTHER PEOPLE to a standard that they mistakenly think their religion demands.
And if we learn one thing from scripture - and especially these sabbath healings - about Jesus…
It’s that he will NEVER EVER sacrifice people for the sake of principle.
Jesus chooses people over religion EVERY SINGLE TIME.
In case it isn’t obvious yet, let me explicitly say…
That there are some of us who are holding onto religious beliefs and practices that our parents and grandparents and great grandparents may have held. Or that some preacher passed down to us. Beliefs that may have been in place for thousands of years.
Things that are certainly “biblical”
But we have not bothered to examine them in light of the person and work of Jesus.
Yet we will not only insist that those beliefs are binding for ourselves, but that they must be imposed on others.
And some of those beliefs are doing ACTIVE HARM to the bodies and souls of real people.
When we draw those kinds of lines…
Jesus always stands on the other side, with the people we are keeping out.
A question I like to ask myself and other people is this:
“When was the last time you changed your mind about something that matters?”
I fear it’s not often enough.
I had a professor in my conservative evangelical Southern Baptist University that said,
“We should be ready to die today for that which we know to be true, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”
It’s the difficult task of working out our salvation with fear and trembling.
And it can be so hard - so painful at times.
So terrifying to leave a place of comfort-but-ignorance for a place of faith we’ve never been before.
But Jesus calls us there.
Can you imagine the way that woman’s body must have adjusted to being bent over for 18 years?
The way her muscles had contorted to compensate.
The way her bones had calcified in a different shape.
They way her circulation had rerouted itself.
The way her center of gravity had shifted.
The way her field of vision had become so limited.
When Jesus healed her - I wonder if she found it painful at first to stand up straight?
I wonder if she resisted?
When illness or ignorance have forced you into an unnatural position for so long - even returning to something more healthy can be painful.
Because of this, we must have grace and compassion for both the woman who was healed, and for those who were shamed by her healing. and we must consider all the ways we have had our ideas and notions about God bent out of shape.
And even though that change can be painful and scary and costly - we must trust Christ alone to set us right.
AMEN.