Luke 13: 10-17 / Offered at Berkshire Presbyterian Church – August 24, 2025
In today’s good news story from the Gospel of Luke, we are told about the last time that Jesus is recorded as teaching in a Synagogue. It is significant that we be aware of what is going on in Jesus’ ministry because this is evidence of the fact that Jesus was beginning to be denied access to the religious centers in Judah. The religious authorities as we will see in this passage were aware of this Rabbi’s radical teaching and his flaunting of the Law and were building up a resistance to his presence and his teachings. Certainly, the word about him was getting out – not only to the people but to the religious authorities in the surrounding towns and villages, as well.
So, let’s examine what Luke is telling us in today’s story. The first thing to observe is that Luke isn’t retelling one of Jesus’ typical parables or discourses. Instead, Luke is relating a story of a real “event” that he believed stood out as one noteworthy in Jesus’ ministry. Now remember that Luke was not an original member of Jesus’ inner disciples or even a follower in the entourage that followed him. In the scheme of things, he was a late comer who heard the stories about Jesus and was called by God to write them down to preserve them for us. So why did this event make such an impression of Luke that he felt it needed to be recorded. I think that as Luke was listening to the disciples relate the things about Jesus that impressed them, this story was foremost.
Luke tells us that Jesus is teaching in a local Synagogue on a Sabbath day when a woman comes near, passes by and it is evident that she is physically impaired in some way. She is hunched over unable to stand erect. We don’t know much more than that – other than Luke saying that she was possessed by an evil spirit. Further, Luke tells us that this had been the woman’s plight for eighteen years.
Jesus calls the woman over to him and simply pronounces, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Now this curing of the woman’s ailment is different from some of Jesus’ other healings. In other stories, we hear Jesus say, “Your faith has set you free.” Or we are told of epic battles between Jesus and the demons who possessed people. Recall the story of the wild man living in the tombs who was possessed by a legion of demons and who pleaded with Jesus not to send them into the abyss so instead he sent them into a heard of swine.
Neither of things happens in Luke’s story of the afflicted woman. In this story, the woman is just a passerby – perhaps she is walking by the crowd of followers trying not to be noticed. Remember in ancient times if you were afflicted with some malady, some disease, then it was assumed that you were being punished by God for your sins and hence you were considered unclean. And if you were unclean, you were not permitted to enter into a religious center – a Synagogue. So, perhaps, in an effort to go unnoticed, the woman is quietly passing beyond the eyes of the people.
So, what happens? Jesus calls to the woman. She does not go to him first like woman in the crowd that reached out to touch the tassels of his robe; or the parents of the young woman who came to Jesus to plead for their daughter who was ill and dying; or like the Centurion who came on behalf of his servant. In all of these instances, Jesus remarks that it is the faith of those who came to him that redeems and saves them. Faith was the basis of these lifesaving miracles.
No. In this instance, Luke tells us that Jesus initiates the contact and calls the woman to him.
What was unusual about this? Well first, it would have been unusual for a woman to be up front in a Synagogue. Usually, it was the men who were up front, and the women were delegated to a place in the rear. So, for Jesus to call this woman to the front was unusual. For a Rabbi to associate with a woman he did not know speaking to her in public was an even greater departure from accepted norms.
Why would Jesus do this? Was Jesus purposefully trying to break norms by calling the woman to the front? Remember that I had told you that Jesus was being squeezed out places of worship because he was considered a radical who flaunted or ignored the Law. What was he doing here? Was he simply breaking a norm? Or was it one more way for Jesus to show how far removed the views of the authorities concerning the Law were from how God viewed the Law. The interplay here is important because it reveals to us some understanding about what is to follow.
Why would Jesus do this? Did he consider the Law to be obsolete, out of fashion, no longer relevant? No. I don’t think that was Jesus’ purpose or message. After all, he had told us that he had not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it; that not one jot or tittle of the Law would be changed.
But what I do think Jesus was doing was to draw a very clear and wide distinction between how God viewed the Law and how the religious authorities of Jesus’ time viewed, used, and even abused the law.
What was the purpose of the Law that God gave to Moses. It was to join together a loose confederation of nomadic tribes into a cohesive community whose first purpose was to have a righteous relationship with the Lord.
When Moses gave the people the Law that God had handed down, he told them what it was for and how to use it. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses gave the people the Shema.
Let me share it with you:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord alone is our our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
I think the most important thing that Moses told the people in the Shema is that the Law was to be written upon their hearts. And I think that is the distinction Jesus was making in how the religious authorities viewed the law and how God viewed it.
Take this instance of the woman trying to enter the Synagogue unnoticed and unseen. She didn’t want to be noticed because the religious authorities might have used the law to exclude her. Certainly, from the comments made by the President of the Synagogue in the story, we can gather that he was offended by Jesus calling her to him and curing her of her ailment.
This religious leader of the people would use the law as he understood it – to prevent this woman, this unclean woman from gaining healing – from coming to the Lord to receive his grace and mercy and healing touch. He would have kept her tethered to her pain.
I think what Jesus was doing here was exhibiting to all that in this man’s case, the Law was not written upon his heart. It may have been written upon his forehead; it may have been written upon his doorpost; but it was not written upon his heart. That was the difference between the religious authorities of Jesus’ time and God. God’s Law is written upon the heart of God. Its basis is God’s compassion and love, God’s desire for justice and the healing of God’s Creation through the extension of God’s Shalom. In this story, the Synagogue leader was only concerned with their own man written rules about the Sabbath and how Jesus was breaking them.
He admonished the crowds surrounding Jesus. Telling them that they have six days to come and be healed – remember according to the law, healing was defined as work – and other than trying to save a life no one was allowed to heal on the Sabbath. So, he chastised them not to come to the Synagogue on the Sabbath to be healed. And, indirectly, he was criticizing Jesus for doing the work – by healing the woman.
Now, his complaints and criticisms probably had some reception with those whose interpretations of the law were equally narrow and egalitarian. Their law was unforgiving and harsh. This religious leader was perfectly comfortable to force this woman to live in pain rather than allow her to come to the Lord to be healed.
I think I can feel Jesus’ rage building in his heart. What was his response?
You hypocrites!
Now let me stress this to you. Luke puts an explanation point at the end of Jesus’ outburst. You hypocrites! That’s in bold face font and in italics. You hypocrites!
“Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie your oxen and donkeys from the manger and lead it away to give it water?”
Now let me explain the point Jesus was making here. The Rabbi’s of the time believed and taught that it was cruel to leave animals tied up, unable to go for the water that they thirsted for on the Sabbath. They taught that it was not work but compassion to water their livestock. Therefore, the leaders of the Synagogue probably all untethered and watered their animals before going to Synagogue that day. Then when faced with the plight of this woman they quoted the law saying that she and Jesus had violated the law in his act of healing. They would provide water that their animals thirsted for, but they would deny the woman the healing that she thirsted for. They condemned Jesus for untethering this woman from her pain.
Can you imagine Jesus’ outrage? You hypocrites!
“This woman is a daughter of Abraham whom Satan has beset with this ailment. Should she not be set free from her bondage on this Sabbath day?” Should she not be shown the same compassion that your law provides for your livestock?
You hypocrites!
In the end, Luke tells us that when Jesus had slapped them down and put them in their place, their shame was revealed to the people and the entire crowd rejoiced at the wonderful things Jesus was doing. Presumably, Jesus went on healing that day.
Luke doesn’t specifically tell us that, but I think we might read that into the story.
This whole incident in the Synagogue that Luke tells about this morning, what does it reveal to us about “the Law” that God gave Moses – that was written upon God’s heart and that was supposed to be written upon the hearts of his people.
What do we learn about what the purpose of God’s Law is and how to use it and how to live it and how that differs from our law? The Apostle Paul tells us that when “the Law” [that is the Law with a capital “L”] is written upon our hearts then we are no longer slaves to the law [that is with a small “l”].
What does that mean? I think it means this, when we live our lives reflecting God’s love and compassion, then God’s Law comes alive in us and becomes the driving force in our lives. Then God’s Law lives in our hearts and is reflected out into the world. God’s Holy Spirit breathes into us a desire to live in God’s justice and God’s Shalom sharing it with a world in need of being untethered from its brokenness – in need of healing.
Jesus broke the rules because he wanted us to understand that the Law was created to display God’s love and compassion for us. That is how Jesus came to fulfill the Law – to complete it with God’s love.
Thank you, God, for being so loving.
