24 August 2025. 10th Sunday after Trinity (Luke 13:10-17)

Healing on the Sabbath.

How do we use time to bring about change? This is the dilemma that lies at the heart of today’s Gospel reading.

Luke sets the scene in the synagogue on the Sabbath day where Jesus is teaching. A woman hobbles in. She is bent double, eyes to the ground, and has been like it for 18 long years. Luke does not offer us a medical diagnosis of her condition but tells us that she has a spirit of weakness or infirmity. What experiences have taken hold of her and weakened her? Have her self-esteem and self-confidence been knocked by the judgemental attitudes of others such that now she looks down and dares not meet their gaze? Is she the victim of abuse? Or perhaps she has been ground down by years of poverty and hard physical toil infected by the injustices of the Roman military occupation. Luke does not specify, but his silence gives us space to reflect on the forces that can possess, disfigure and diminish human lives, not least the lives of women.

Whatever her story may be, the woman’s condition will have pushed her to the margins, both of society and perhaps also of the synagogue. But after so many years she has grown tired of waiting for change and she has taken the initiative to come to the synagogue today. She arrives at the moment when Jesus is in full flow.

Luke does not tell us that she was noticed by the crowds or the synagogue official. But Jesus notices her. It would seem that he does not even wait to finish the sermon, his paragraph, or even his sentence. He breaks off and calls her forward straight away, bringing her from the margins to the centre.

At the beginning of his ministry, also in a synagogue, Jesus had announced that the Spirit of the Lord was upon hm to bring good news to the poor and liberation to the captives and here he is in a synagogue once more, living out his divine calling and announcing that this women is set free from her infirmity.

When called forward, what does the woman do? After 18 years of suffering, she is hardly likely to ask him to wait until next week or next year. She moves readily from the shadows into the light and welcomes the gift of Jesus’ hands being laid upon her. All eyes are now upon her. Luke tells us that she immediately stands up straight. We can almost feel her relief! Jesus’ action has restored her stature and dignity. No longer needed to be patted on the head or talked over. Her perspective has changed, and now, instead of worshipping God with her eyes to the floor, she praises God with her head held high.

But this is not the end of the story. There follows a debate. The official in the synagogue, a righteous man anxious to keep good order, is very ill at ease. People shouldn’t expect to be healed on the Sabbath! This woman, he implies, could surely have waited until tomorrow or later in the week to be healed. It didn’t need to be today. But Jesus reminds the crowd that an act of healing on the Sabbath is wholly in keeping with the spirit of the law. Now is always the time to put things right.

Todays’ Gospel, full of passionate urgency, reminds us that the reign of God, made known in Jesus, is for today, It warns us against siding with those like the official in the story who want to keep everything the same, care little about others’ suffering and offer excuses for inaction. Instead we are urged to stand alongside the woman and all like her, seeing the world through her eyes and interrupting what we imagine to be important business to follow Jesus’ example.

Many of us know how easy it can be to put off essential actions like saying sorry or mending a broken relationship. We can be expert at ignoring cries for racial justice or at making excuses for inaction for climate change. Yet, in the glorious purposes of God, the time is always right to do the right thing. Discipleship is not for postponing: we are called to be faithful followers of Jesus here and now.

As you leave the church this Sunday think of what one thing could you do today to act for change?

Amen.