24 August 2025 Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 1.4-10    Psalm 71.1-6    Hebrews 12.18-29    Luke 13.10-17

Today’s gospel has many layers.  It reveals a woman who is ‘unseen’ in her community, it reveals God’s grace to show compassion in spite of ‘rules’, it reveals that our ‘rule keeping’ needs to be tempered by our gift of compassion, it reveals that while there are good reasons for keeping ‘rules’ there are also good reasons for those rules to occasionally be sidelined.

Luke is the only gospel writer to give us this story, and this is the last time Luke will have Jesus teaching in the synagogue.  It was just an ‘ordinary Sabbath’, Jesus is teaching in the Synagogue, the men were gathered around him listening and engaging in discussion, the women were outside also worshiping, and in the middle of this Jesus ‘sees’ a woman many would not have seen.  Jesus sees a person in need, he sees this ‘unseen’ woman.  She is ‘broken’, she cannot stand upright, she is bent over and can only see the dust on people’s feet, on her own feet, but she too has come to keep the Sabbath.  She too has come to pray and worship.  And Jesus calls her forward.

Now let’s dissect what has happened.  Jesus, in the middle of his worship, in the middle of his teaching, has put it aside to speak to a woman, and he calls the woman to come into the area in the Synagogue women were not permitted to enter.  You can feel all the eyes looking, wondering what is about to happen, what is Jesus going to do and say to this woman that most of them have seen every day but yet never really seen.  She is bent over, she is disabled, and that disability shows that she is ‘a sinner’, it gives the community an excuse to sideline her, to ignore her, to marginalise her.  But she is not put off, she continues to go through her daily life as best she can, she continues to keep to the rituals and practices of a good Jewish woman.  And today, this man, this man she may not even know or know about, is talking to her and calling her to him.  And then.  He touches her.  He touches this woman he is not related to.  He touches this woman who is clearly a sinner.  And he heals her.  And she immediately stands upright.

This woman has not been able to look at the face of anyone for many years, this woman has not been able to see the sky, or trees, or anything above waist height for so long she can’t really remember.  So she celebrates, she sings with joy, she is joyful to God for her healing.  Now most of us would have probably been celebrating with her.  But not the leader of the Synagogue.  All he can do is complain about Jesus ‘breaking the Sabbath’.  And yes, Jesus did break it.  He broke the fourth commandment, but he had good reason.  And as he points out, even the Rabbi’s give permission for you to break that commandment to water your animals.  And if the rule can be ‘bent’ for lowly animals, why not for this ‘daughter of Abraham’.

This is the second time Jesus has referred to someone as a ‘child of Abraham’, he called Zacchaeus ‘son of Abraham’.  Zacchaeus was an outsider, a sinner, a tax collector, but Jesus affirmed him as ‘one of them’, a child of Abraham like the rest of them.  Today Jesus calls this woman ‘daughter of Abraham’, he has not only healed her physically, he has healed her socially, he has restored her to her community, she is once again ‘one of them’.

The thing is, the leader of the synagogue did not do anything wrong.  He was correct for calling Jesus out for ‘working’ on the Sabbath.  And while we, in modern society, feel that these restrictions are onerous and make for a very ‘boring’ day, in 1st century Israel, this day was a day of freedom, and celebration.  You were free to ‘do nothing’, you were even compelled to ‘do nothing’.  The Sabbath for them was a day of rest and renewal, and they found this very good news.

In today’s society, maybe we would be better off taking Sabbath more seriously.  Instead of it being a day when we ‘catch up’ on all the things we haven’t had time or energy to do over the past week, what if we truly saw it as a day ‘do nothing’ but celebrate God and all that God has gifted to us.  And I am aware that many in society do not have that choice, they ‘have’ to work on Sabbath because it is no longer a day ‘protected’ from employment and work.  And while many of us celebrate our ability to ‘shop’ and ‘socialise’, that ability comes because others are at work.

This is what the leader of synagogue is alluding to.  The minute you ‘bend’ or ‘break’ a rule, even when the reason is good, it is the ‘beginning of the slippery slope’, and sooner or later that ‘bending’ or ‘breaking’ become ‘routine’ and ‘accepted’.  And when we think about it, most of us would agree with the Synagogue leader, maybe not necessarily about the Sabbath, but about the keeping of the law or rules.  The law matters to us because it helps us keep our lives in order, and it keeps the peace.  It matters because it sets boundaries within which we can flourish.  It matters because it encourages us to look beyond ourselves so that we can love and care for others.  But as important as the law is, it must also bow to mercy, to life and to freedom.  Jesus does not set aside the law; he simply offers a different interpretation of it.  Law may help us to live our lives better, but grace creates life itself.  Law may help order our world, but grace is what holds the world together.  Law pushes us to care for the other, but grace restores us to each other when we have failed in the law.

Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, and while the law helps us to make sense of it, it must always bend to the grace that constitutes the abundant life that Jesus proclaims.  Over and above any and all laws ever conceived, the absolute law is love; love God and love your neighbour.  Or maybe love God by loving your neighbour.

Importantly, or interestingly, this woman does not ask anything of Jesus, nor does anyone in her community.  She is so ‘unseen’ or ‘invisible’ that even her community does not see her need for healing.  The God who sees us is the God who calls us.  This woman was outside the synagogue, and Jesus invited her in, she was on the margins and Jesus brought her into the center, she was ‘invisible’ one moment and ‘seen’ the next.  Jesus sees her, he calls her, he lays hands on her, he speaks to her, and he frees her.

This passage reminds us that when we fail to see others, Jesus will confront us.  This place, church, is a place where those who are seen and freed by God are empowered to see others with the eyes of faith.  The world needs to see us as willing to ‘heal on the Sabbath’, to call out hypocrisy where we see it, to name release for the captives even in the face of righteous indignation.  And we need to do this for the sake of those who have been left burdened by the systems that bind them, and we need to say to them ‘stand up’ for you are truly daughters and sons of Abraham.

Yes, Jesus healed on the Sabbath, yes the woman gave thanks, yes the crowd rejoiced.  Because that is what happens when grace invites us simultaneously to value the law and, occasionally, suspend it out of mercy, compassion and love.

This story announces the good news that:

·        God gave law out of love to grant us freedom from the tyranny of all types of slavery whether it be external or self-imposed

·        God forgives us when we fail in the law and invites us to try again

·        God insists that the law does not and will not have the last word, because there will always be occasions when law must bend to compassion and love.

And the story also challenges us to look at those around us as children of the same heavenly Father, to resist the urge to assume we ‘know the law better’.  To sympathise with those who are living with different realities and to wonder how Jesus is inviting us to release others from bondage and set them free, even if it means suspending or revising our sense of the law.