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Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost – August 24, 2025
Luke 13:10-17
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I had to call our sister in Christ, Pat, this week, because I wanted to get permission to talk about her today. You see, as soon as I read the gospel reading, I thought of her. You would never know it from her glowing skin, her bright eyes and her even brighter smile, but Pat is one of our most “chronologically advanced” members. Her bones get achy and don’t move like they used to. She needs a little help getting into the sanctuary, which, of course, we are happy to provide. But she is in worship on a regular basis. She doesn’t love it when we are on our summer schedule and worship is an hour earlier for her, which doesn’t give her body as much time to loosen up in the morning, but most Sundays she is here.
And the reason she is here is because of what the Lord Jesus does for her here. Pat has a way of describing what Jesus does for her in the Lord’s Supper which I just love. It has become an ongoing bit of banter between us. Pat often says that she loves Holy Communion because, “It puts some starch in my spine.”
Can you see why I thought of Pat when I starting digging into our gospel reading for today?
As we heard, Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. There was a woman there who was bent over with a stiff and achy back. We don’t know her age, but the scriptures tell us she had been unable to stand up straight for eighteen years. That’s a long time to suffer with chronic pain! That’s a long time to have to deal with mobility issues! But there she was in the synagogue for worship.
This reminds me of a joke that gets passed around among my pastor friends every winter, especially those serving in the Midwest. When there’s a storm on a Sunday the joke is that “this weather is so bad that only the elderly and the infirm will be in worship!” There are just some people who will crawl over glass to be in worship, and often it is those who have a hard time getting around in the first place.
And what motivates these people to be in worship is what happens next in our gospel reading. Jesus called this woman to himself. He said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Jesus then laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God!
Jesus put some starch in her spine! Jesus healed her, and this was a spiritual healing as much as it was a physical healing. You see, this woman didn’t just have a bad back. The scriptures say that it was a spirit which was crippling her. Jesus himself describes her as being held in bondage to Satan. She was not only hurting physically – she was hurting spiritually as well.
And so this whole interaction points to something bigger than achy bones. It points to something bigger than physical healing. Jesus is setting her free from something much bigger than a back problem. He is setting her free from everything which has her bent over and weighed down. He is setting her free from her bondage to Satan, her bondage to sin, her bondage to everything that contributes to the groaning of our bodies and the decay of creation. He is setting her free to praise God as a redeemed and restored daughter of Abraham, as Jesus calls her.
This makes this relevant for all of us. Because you see, we all have this same ailment. There is a Latin phrase the church often uses to describe the universal condition plaguing humankind. That phrase is in curvatus se. It means to be turned in on yourself. It means to be self-centered rather than God-centered. The symptoms of in curvatus se vary from person to person. Jesus has a list of symptoms which include “evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, lying, and slander.” (Matthew 15:19) St. Paul has lots more lists, which include things like “idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” (Galatians 5:19) Paul mentions greed a lot too, which he says is a form of idolatry. Your symptoms may vary, but make no mistake about it, it is in our blood. It is in our bones. Our spines are curved in on ourselves. We all have this spiritual scoliosis. We are all bent over by sin. We are all in bondage to the fallenness of creation and the fallenness of our hearts.
It is here in worship on our sabbath day that the Lord Jesus sees us crippled by our condition. He calls us to himself. He speaks his Word of grace to us, forgiving our sin, setting us free from our ailment, setting us free from everything that has us bent over and weighed down. Jesus comes to us through Word and sacrament to redeem and restore us as daughters and sons of God, so that we can assume a posture of worship and praise.
This is what the sabbath is for. This is what worship is for. Sometimes we don’t get this. Sometimes others don’t get this. Sometimes people believe that the sabbath is for showing our righteousness, our obedience. This is what the leader of the synagogue thought the sabbath was for. The leader in the synagogue that day was indignant that Jesus healed on the sabbath, which was a violation of the ‘no work on the sabbath’ rule. Never mind that this poor woman had been suffering for eighteen years! For him, the sabbath had become an occasion to show how much more righteous and devout he was than everyone else.
But Jesus put him in his place, didn’t he? He pointedly asked him: “Don’t you untie your animals on the Sabbath day in order to water them?” Isn’t that technically ‘work’? “You hypocrite,” Jesus said, “how can you make allowances for the unbinding of livestock and then complain when I unbind this precious daughter of Abraham?”
Jesus does not abolish the Third Commandment, which is to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Jesus does nothing to undermine it. Jesus himself was a faithfully observant Jew, observing the sabbath and all the festivals from the time he was a baby. What Jesus is doing here is reminding everyone what the sabbath is for. It is for renewal. It is for healing. It is for the restoration of God’s people. God gathers us together into his presence on the sabbath so that we can be set free from our bondage to the world and the devil and our sinful selves and stand up straight, even if only in spirit, praising God. Jesus was restoring the sabbath to its original purpose, and as the scripture tells us, “The entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.”
These wonderful things continue here today. We gather here this morning having been hobbled by the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. We gather here aching from our in curvatus se, our spiritual scoliosis. We gather here bent over by the weight of the burdens we carry and the bondage we are in.
Sometimes people think we come to worship because we are a bunch of goody-two-shoes, trying to show others how righteous and devout we are. But that isn’t why I come, and I doubt that’s why most of you are here.
We come to worship not because we are a bunch of goody-two-shoes, but because we have stepped in it over and over again! We come because we have a hard time standing up on our own two feet. We come because we need to be straightened out. We come not because we are good, but because God is!
We come to worship because it is here that we hear the gracious Word that sets us free, the word that forgives sin, the word that gives us hope and peace.
As Martin Luther teaches in his explanation of the Third Commandment in the Small Catechism, “We are to fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” We come gladly to hear this freeing Word!
We remember the sabbath and keep it holy because it is here that we are redeemed and restored. It is here that we find true rest for our weary bodies and our anxious, sin-sick souls. It is here that we are healed from our self-centeredness as we spend some time being God-centered once again.
We come to worship because it is here that Jesus puts some starch in our spine as he gives himself to us in bread and wine, his own body and blood, so that our souls can stand up straight and offer praises to God.
Dear friends, the Lord Jesus sees everything that has you hunched over and hurting today. He sees you here in worship on this sabbath day, and through Word and sacrament he is doing a wonderful thing. He says to you, “You are set free from your ailment.”
So rejoice in his goodness and rest in his grace on this blessed sabbath day.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church