“Set Free”

Luke 13:10-17

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, August 24, 2025

A drunk staggered into the service and sat on the front row. As the pastor began to preach, the man shouted “Amen!” “Praise the Lord!” or “Hallelujah!” after almost every sentence. The entire congregation was becoming agitated about this behavior so the usher went to escort the man out. When the usher informed him that he was making too much noise, the man replied, “Well, brother, I’ve got the Holy Spirit!”  To which the usher replied, “Well, you didn't get it here, so get out!” 

Again and again, Jesus notices those that others fail to see: the ones too old, too young, the disabled, the disenfranchised – the ones who don’t “count” when plans are made; people others have written off. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus sees a woman in the crowd at the synagogue one Sabbath. She is doing nothing to call attention to herself. In fact, she is probably trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. She suffers from a deformity of the spine which will not allow her to stand up straight – maybe it was severe arthritis or osteoporosis – we don’t know, but whatever it was, it prevented her from looking anywhere but at the ground.

She could not look up at the sun, the stars, the moon, birds flying overhead, treetops swaying in the wind. Dr. Ralph F. Wilson writes in his study on Luke,  “She has been broken and beaten down with pain and physical deformity. Children would make fun of her. Her husband may have rejected her, we don't know. When this goes on month after month, year after year, sometimes we begin to think less of ourselves. Sometimes we see ourselves as hopeless, as failures, as cripples, as defeated, as small in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.” Probably that day no one in the crowd really noticed the woman, but Jesus did. Jesus called her forward and healed her. Jesus set her free.

Unlike many others whom Jesus healed, she doesn’t approach him and ask for healing. Jesus sees her and calls her forward. Then he places his hands on her and heals her. Yet, there are some things she does which help make this healing possible.

First, she put herself in a place where she could be blessed. The synagogue on the Sabbath was a sacred time and space. By her presence there, she was available for Jesus to do his work.

She could have easily made excuses not to go to the synagogue, but she didn’t. She wanted to worship God and to hear what Jesus had to say. God can bless us at any time and in any place, but I think God wants us to seek out his presence in worship. We are more likely to encounter God when we are looking for him.

         Secondly, when Jesus called to the woman, she came forward – she didn’t hang back or refuse to come, even though she might have felt embarrassed at standing up in front of everyone. If you hear God’s voice calling you, listen to what God is saying, and do it. Sometimes it is a still, small voice, other times you may hear God’s voice in a song or hymn or scripture, advice from a friend – even a Christian podcast. Don’t be afraid. Step out in faith and do what God is calling you to do!

         Third, after her healing she praised and glorified God. She told others the wonderful thing God had done for her. When God does something good for you, praise him! Tell others about it. You will strengthen their faith, and your own faith as well.

         We notice also a few things about Jesus in this story. First, he was not hindered by the amount of time the woman had been crippled. Eighteen years is a long time to not be able to stand up straight. But for Jesus it made no difference whether it was 18 years or even 80. We may have come to the point of thinking things will never change – that there is no hope, that we just have to live with our situation. Sometimes we’ve carried a burden so long that we have come to accept it as normal, just the way things are. But that is not true. God can make a way where there seems to be no way. It’s never too difficult for God.

         One of our deacons, Samuel Ndingwan, used to work at the Presbyterian Eye Hospital in Bamenda, Cameroon, founded by Christians who wanted to help people with eye problems in an area where good health care is scarce. He tells the story of an elderly  woman who had been progressively going blind. For eight years her eyes had been getting worse, until she could hardly see at all. 

When the community outreach team of the Presbyterian Church Eye Services of Bamenda visited her rural community,

her sons brought her to have her eyes looked at. After a thorough examination, she was told that she could benefit from cataract surgery. She was terrified, not understanding how her eyes could be operated on, and refused at first, saying that she would be buried with the eyes she had. Finally, she agreed to come to the hospital after a month for follow up.

         When she got to Bamenda, she attended the hospital prayer service. The chaplain told of Jesus healing the sick, and giving sight to the blind. The elderly mother asked the chaplain how Jesus made the blind to see by just rubbing mud on a man’s eyes and she was told her eyes were to be operated on. “Why can’t they just put mud on my eyes?” she asked. The chaplain responded: “Jesus finished his earthly work but commissioned people – doctors, nurses, and other specialists – to take charge of what he was doing when he was on earth. Because of that, everyone who comes to a place like our hospital never goes back the same.” The elderly woman, still doubting, said, “Until it happens, I won’t believe it.”

Thanks to a free cataract program offered by the hospital for poor patients, the following day the first eye was done with good results and the next day the second eye was successfully operated on. Now this grandmother could once again see the faces of her family clearly for the first time in eight years, and could go about her daily tasks with ease. She became an ambassador for the hospital in her community, and an ambassador for Christ, whom she thanked for her healing. As Samuel told me, “She saw the word of God come to pass in her life through the work of the hospital team.” We can be thankful that God still works healing miracles, maybe not the way Jesus did so long ago, but with the same effect.

         Back to our gospel: some people in the synagogue that Sabbath would have prevented the woman from being healed, but Jesus healed her anyway. Jesus chastised the synagogue leader for his rigid, unfeeling attitude. He accused the religious leaders of caring more about an ox or a donkey than about this woman. Lest we be too hard on them, let’s examine our own behavior.

Do we sometimes stand in the way of others’ drawing closer to God by judging them too harshly, or simply by ignoring their plight and going about our business as usual?

In healing the bent-over woman, Jesus reveals the character of God, who desires wholeness and healing for the entire creation. He showed what the Kingdom of God is like, and reclaimed the Sabbath for the celebration of God’s goodness, a time to restore people to wholeness and health. By healing the woman on the Sabbath, Jesus demonstrated that God’s compassion for people is more important than legalistic rules and regulations. He treated the woman with warmth and kindness, as a beloved child of God. He calls her “daughter of Abraham,” a term not found in prior Jewish literature. As a disabled person and a woman, she did not have status or value in that community. Calling her a “daughter of Abraham” gave her equal standing with any Jewish man. Jesus recognized her as a person with dignity and worth.

Sometimes there are social structures that stand in the way of healing and wholeness for God’s people and creation.

As Jesus said at the beginning of his ministry, “[The Spirit of the Lord] has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed…” The Pharisees were part of an oppressive religious system. What kinds of oppression exist in our world today? How can we be a part of God’s work to free those who are captive to it? In his meditation on this passage in this week’s Presbytery newsletter, Executive Presbyter Neal Presa writes, “Consider all those ways you, in your own life, in your own slice of the world, can and do embody the love and justice of Jesus Christ. How are you being called by the Lord to labor…for the healing of the nations, for the comfort of the sick, the protection of the vulnerable, advocacy for the disempowered, the feeding of the hungry, peacemaking for the war-ravaged?”

One detail we skipped over: scripture says that this woman “was crippled by a spirit.” What kind of spirit cripples you?  Anger, bitterness, fear…? An unforgiving spirit, failure, guilt?

These kinds of spirits cripple us, keeping us from being all God wants us to be. What keeps you from fully knowing the love and grace of God? God wants to heal us of anything that keeps us from being the person God created us to be. We are the daughters and sons of Abraham and Sarah; we are worth Jesus’ dying for. As poet Miriam Therese Winter writes:

Surely

You meant

When You lifted her up

Long ago

To your praise, 

Compassionate One,

not one woman only

but all people

bent

by unbending ways.

In a world that so desperately needs Christ’s healing touch, let us stand strong - as sons of Abraham, daughters of Sarah. We need to allow God to heal us, so that God can work through us to help meet the needs of our world, a world that needs healing in so many ways. Amen.

Sermon ©Deborah Troester 2025