Sermon for August 24, 2025: "Bounds" based upon Luke 13:1-17

Scripture: Luke 13:10-17 New International Version

Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman on the Sabbath

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” 

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” 
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When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. 

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     A lot of us with computer jobs can end up a little bent over. It can happen with sewing jobs and sorting jobs, too, any job, really, where you are spending your time bent over, looking down, while you tend to the clothes, tools, or spreadsheets you are mending, working, or sorting. It doesn’t take much to make for the bent over position to start causing pain and tightness that moves across your body. Down your arms, up into your neck, across your shoulders and back, muscles pull and misalign. Body parts far away from the initial constriction feel the consequences of the repeated turning inwards and down. Being bent over can be painful. And, when your body is bent in pain and stuck in pain, you carry that pain with you in all you do. And, other people, if they are paying attention, will see you there, unable to stand up straight.

     Jesus heals a lot of people in the Gospels. That is why some people seek him out, because they want to be healed or they want someone they love to be healed. They follow him to lakeshores and out into the wilderness for healing. They shout his name as he walks by. They reach out to touch him, in hopes that some of his grace is sticky enough to cling to them, and bring healing with it. As Fred Craddock points in his commentary on the text, the bent over woman does none of these things. She simply shows up at synagogue, like many faithful people with and without chronic pain. And, Jesus saw her.
Scripture tells us that she’s been hurting for a long time. We are also told that her physical condition is a product not of a repetitive stress injury but of a spirit that was harming her. I would encourage any modern-day readers to avoid assuming that someone with a visible disable is possessed by a spirit. Visibly disabled people have enough problems without other people making assumptions about the state of their souls. While the authors and curators of our scriptures often use physical disfigurement as a shorthand for spiritual disfigurement, we don’t have to, and in fact, it can harm disabled people when we do. It is probably wiser to pay attention to what the author wants to show us about Jesus through his actions than make judgements about the woman based on her stature.

     In his commentary on the text, David Jacobsen talks about it being both a healing story and a pronouncement story. It is a healing that tells us how we should understand our obligations to God and to each other. How ought we demonstrate our faith in God? But offering care to someone who needs it. Scripture tells us that Jesus would often go to Synagogue on the Sabbath, read Torah, and offer up insight with the other men. Jacobsen believes that the arguments are intended to demonstrate Jesus’ deep connection to his community, not place him outside of it. Because he knew their shared religious law well, he knew that the Torah, the law, had been given to God's people to help them organize their whole lives in service to God and neighbor. These conversations about Torah show us a people who are always trying to figure out how to follow their religious laws in the response to what they are facing on that day. It points to a living and breathing tradition. The common arguments we see between Jesus and the Pharisees show us that they all took the law seriously but they often disagreed on how to live it out.

     As I have said before, religious observance was always a dynamic tradition, an on-going conversation woven throughout Jewish life for literally thousands of years. It hasn’t stopped, in fact. So, we should not be surprised to see Jesus involved in this conversation about religious observance. It was the kind of conversation and argument he’d heard his whole life.  And, likely so had the woman who needed healing. Jeannine K. Brown pointed out that this same synagogue that Jesus had entered to discussed the law had probably been a source of support for this woman throughout the whole of her illness. I don’t imagine that she showed up at the service that day assuming her health would be at the center of a debate about Torah.

     Brown, in her commentary, helps give some contour to the argument Jesus is having for those of use unfamiliar with all of the ins and outs of first century Jewish Torah interpretation. It is a faithful reading of Exodus 31:14 to say that the Sabbath has been set aside for the people of Israel to rest from certain kinds of work. As there was a whole process around healing not described in this story, but that I’ve read about in some part of John, some of the activities around being granted official status of “being healed from a spirit” would have been considered work. And, following Jesus to synagogue in order to seek healing would have been considered work (though it’s not clear that the women did this).

     Importantly, according to Brown, Jesus does not argue that people should be doing forbidden work on the Sabbath. He argues that healing is not one of the restricted kinds of work. For example, you’re allowed to offer food and care for animals on the Sabbath, like untying a beast of burden so that it may have a measure of freedom while the humans rest. The woman who has been tormented by spirits so terrible that she could not stand up was certain bound. Did she also not deserve freedom? As Brown says, “What better day to heal (bring freedom) than on the Sabbath?” Jesus was not the only Jewish person to every argue that mercy was the most important quality to use to figure out how to live on the Sabbath. But, he definitely wanted to make sure his values were clear.  God is always honored in acts of mercy. God is always honored in liberation. God is always honored when those who have been bound up are finally set free, even if the unbinding upsets our understanding of what right religion is.

     What are the proper bounds of God’s mercy? This is a question that comes up for me pretty regularly when I’m trying to figure out what to do with our deacons’ funds. I was taught when I was called as pastor that we try to only share up to a certain limit and try to share with someone only once a year. Also, we don’t usually give people cash. We call and pay bills directly or write a check directly to the landlord or CMP or whatever bill someone needs help with. We are a small congregation. We have to be wise stewards of the money we give to other people, so we create bounds on the money we steward so it is as helpful as possible to as many people as possible. Sorting out how to be generous while also being reasonable and not over-extending the resources of the church is a pretty dynamic question for me.

     In the early days of the pandemic, when gas was expensive and it was hard to work and people were being pushed out of housing, it seemed like a good time to raise how much money we would share with someone. At the time, keeping people housed seemed like the Christian thing to do. Still does, actually, five years in, when it’s even harder to find affordable, low-income housing in our town. Off-season hotel room are at least double what they were when I started here eleven years ago, and the extended stay motels all cost at least a hundred more dollars a week.

     It seems to me like part of the reason we set aside so much more money for the deacons’ fund back at annual meeting in January was because we knew that responding faithfully to the reality of this moment meant renegotiating some bounds of how we share money with our neighbors. We decided, rightly, that it was the time to be more generous. But, I’ve still gotten three calls for help this week that totaled all together about $2000. I knew we could for sure help with one of them. The other two are still up in the air while I wait for some calls back. Even with the funds that the Friends meeting now donates for us to manage with our Deacons’ Funds, we couldn’t cover all of what’s left, even if we should or wanted to do.

     I don’t tell this story as a fundraising push. Not every call we receive is one we can help, for lots of reasons. Our boundaries are good ones at this moment. I tell this story in hopes of demonstrating that it wasn’t just Jesus and the Pharisees constantly navigating how to live out their faith in changing times. It’s us, too, and this question of mercy is a live one. I have undoubtedly missed opportunities to help someone stand up straight after years of pain. I also know that the help we offer has been just the right mercy at just the right time for people who really needed it. May we not forget that part of our call to follow Jesus is the call to evaluate if what is needed it this moment that might not have been needed in others. Jesus offered mercy. May we be unafraid to do the same.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
​Jared E. Alcántara: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-3/commentary-on-luke-1310-17-6
David Schnasa Jacobsen: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2956
Jeannine K. Brown: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=665
Fred Craddock, Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
An interesting discussion of the changes kosher food: Gastropod Podcast, "Keeping Kosher: When Jewish Law Met Processed Food": https://gastropod.com/keeping-kosher/