21st August 2022 (Pentecost 11)
Sermon Title: Jesus’ Boundary-Breaking Love
(Luke 13:10–17)
By Heeyoung Lim
Jesus taught people in a synagogue on this Sabbath, He sees a woman there who has been unable to stand up straight for 18 years. The crippled woman does not ask for healing. Instead, Jesus calls to her and sets her free from her serious illness by laying hands on her. Her response is to stand up straight and begin praising God.
In John 9, Jesus said that the sickness has nothing to do with sins when his disciples asked him, rather, this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. In this woman’s case from Luke 13, her back had been bent for eighteen years because an evil spirit controlled her.
When Jesus sees and calls the woman, she responds by coming forward. When He declares she is “set free” from her sickness, she stands up straight, praising God. Jesus’ loving, caring eye picked her out of the crowd. Jesus identifies her as a recipient of God’s blessing and a person of faith. Jesus healed by placing his hands on the sufferer, and healing came immediately. The woman recognized the source of her healing and praised God.
However, the synagogue leader is angry and criticizes those in the crowd who have come for healing on the Sabbath. Filled with righteous indignation, the religious leader pointed out that Jesus broke the law and people cannot work on the Sabbath. When Jesus taught or healed, the reaction was mixed. Many people were thrilled and praised God, but some became angry and indignant. In this leader’s eyes, Jesus has broken the Law. He insisted that this day is for God’s work but missed the whole point of what God’s work is. He was caught in the trap of placing form before substance.
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites!”. He asked him, “Is she less important than your animals?” Our Lord does not want us to be content for religious hypocrisy. Jesus untied her from the suffering she has faced by his love and mercy. If the Sabbath is to honour God, what greater honour is there than to restore someone to wholeness.
The religious leaders were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things Jesus was doing. The entire crowd rejoiced in response. Especially the least people who had no other defender against the religious system and the political oppression. They saw someone break the system or tradition which gives more attention to religious rules rather than human needs. They were delighted to see someone who cared for and helped those who are in need. They recognized that God’s work through Jesus’ boundary-breaking love was glorious, which seems to indicate they knew these were divine acts.
Jesus lived within the Law but came to help people understand the spirit of the Law in a new way. His action to set the woman free to worship on the Sabbath shows that healing and liberation take precedence over human rules. Dedication to God leads to meeting human need, while dedication to religion protects the tradition even at the cost of human life. May we have confidence that God is at work growing his kingdom even when we cannot see much evidence of it. Entering and experiencing the kingdom of God can be done by faith, listening to God’s Word, and practicing it, not by maintaining religious tradition. May we remember the Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day to keep it holy.
Jesus welcomes, loves, and restores all in the ways of God’s healing reign. We are invited to celebrate and praise God for His boundary-breaking love. We also are called to be agents of such healing freedom. Someone is probably living in the shadows in some way. May we reach out and invite people to the centre of our community’s life together.
Can we celebrate the worth found in all people in worship, learning and serving? How might we recognize every single person within Christian community? To be in the synagogue on the Sabbath in Jesus’ time was to be at the very centre of the Jewish faith. This is where life, faith, and community merged in a wonderful celebration of God’s presence and promise. It would have been a joyous, awesome, and holy place.
But Jesus calls and places the woman in the centre of the community and transform the crowd. May this service enable our congregation to praise God more and more, and all be more valued and passionately called by the Spirit of Christ into a loving community.
God calls us toward the places where grace and healing hope and justice exist. He opens us to new dimensions of faith and gives us courage to break the rules that bind and burden, to bring joy in abundance where joy has been depleted.
Jesus reaches out to the woman burdened and living in the shadows and proclaims she is “set free,” and we rejoice in our liberation as well. God, our rock, and refuge, affirms, calls, and sets us free to participate fully in God’s healing, reconciling reign. God breaks into our world and shakes things up.
As we approach the healing ministry, we realize God’s unlimited power and our limits and pray for the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual liberation. To ask for healing helps us step into Jesus’ invitation for healing and restoration. Even when the pathway seems to be unclear, in Jesus’ healing power, may we stand up straight to look up Jesus and praise God just like the healed woman.
The theology of the Sabbath in Jesus’ practice and teaching implies for us our memory of God’s healing and freeing power in Christ over the oppressive burdens on God’s people. This woman becomes a testimony to the freedom of the people of God from demonic oppression and the burden of disease and anything else that robs God’s people of full life. Jesus restored her socially, physically, and spiritually.
Jesus wants us to be renewed and transformed by the love that breaks boundaries. May we lean on and truly trust God, who is the Spirit and Hope in our lives. In the spirit of the Sabbath, may we accept the gift of rest and devote one day a week to focus our attention on God in a special way. I hope we can keep a holy day and devote ourselves to those things that deepen our love for God.
According to John Piper’s writing about the Sabbath, we can extend our holy exercises forward into Saturday night and dream together of new ways to sanctify Sunday morning. Lord is leading us to new dimensions of prayer, or new hours of personal Bible reading or study, or new deeds of mercy for the poor, or visitation to the lost or the least, or boundary – breaking love to each other.
It is right to do good on the Lord’s Day. Where Jesus is, the kingdom is. Where Jesus is, things begin to be made right. His ministry provides a foretaste of the coming kingdom. In the reign of God, the world will be repaired and restored. We are all witnesses to the world that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the sabbath and of our life. May we continue to do what Christ has called us to and seek to be productive and bear fruit in our Christian walk and race.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
(Ref. Bible, commentaries, theological books, UCA materials)
