Welcome. Last week, we started a new series titled “Make every effort”, going through Luke 13. This line comes later in the chapter, where Jesus says
“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. (Luke 13:24 NIV)
What could possibly be so good for us to try hard at getting through this door? What is on the other side? What is worth the effort?
Today, we will see that Jesus is offering something that people have been willing to die for, and He wants us to make every effort to get it too.
In the past, Israel was rescued from slavery, and God gave them the 10 commandments. The fourth commandment was to have a sabbath, a day off from work. This was to be a good day, one of rest and worship. When they were slaves, they did not get a day off, but their rescuing God said they were free to rest and spend time in worship.
Hundreds of years later, while in exile, the scattered Jews set up local gatherings on a Sabbath to hear from God’s word and instructions in how to live. This gathering was called a Synagogue. It was kinda like church on their one day of the week that they would have off.
And in our text, we find Jesus in a synagogue, teaching. It would have been great to know what He was teaching, but that is not what Luke wants us to notice.
Jesus sees a cripped woman, who has been bent over for 18 years. For eighteen years, this unnamed woman must strain to see the sun, the sky, and the stars. For eighteen years, she has become accustomed to looking down (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Theological Perspective). For eighteen years, she could not see the people’s faces in front of her or look up and praise God.
Today, we will see that Jesus is offering something that people have been willing to die for, and He wants us to make every effort to get it too.
Setting: Sabbath and Synagogue
Our setting is on the Sabbath in a synagogue.In the past, Israel was rescued from slavery, and God gave them the 10 commandments. The fourth commandment was to have a sabbath, a day off from work. This was to be a good day, one of rest and worship. When they were slaves, they did not get a day off, but their rescuing God said they were free to rest and spend time in worship.
Hundreds of years later, while in exile, the scattered Jews set up local gatherings on a Sabbath to hear from God’s word and instructions in how to live. This gathering was called a Synagogue. It was kinda like church on their one day of the week that they would have off.
And in our text, we find Jesus in a synagogue, teaching. It would have been great to know what He was teaching, but that is not what Luke wants us to notice.
The Woman
Instead, we are drawn to notice a hunchback woman.Jesus sees a cripped woman, who has been bent over for 18 years. For eighteen years, this unnamed woman must strain to see the sun, the sky, and the stars. For eighteen years, she has become accustomed to looking down (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Theological Perspective). For eighteen years, she could not see the people’s faces in front of her or look up and praise God.
And, Jesus sees this woman and her state, He summoned her, and then He said to her
“Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”
Jesus reached out and touched her, and straight away, she was able to stand upright. This was something she could not do in verse 11, but in verse 13, she immediately could do it.
Jesus’ touch healed and restored her. His touch would have brought this woman back into the community. She was now able to look at the faces of the people in front of her, and she was able to look up and praise God. Jesus touch was like a restorative handshake, welcoming her to back into communion with others.
This was a great moment. In this Synagogue on this Sabbath, this lady was heald and responded in praise to God. It was just as the Sabbath was intended to be used for. But not everyone was happy about this.
I always find it interesting to see how people react to Jesus miracles. When Jesus calmed a storm that He and His disciples were stuck in, the disciples didn’t respond by saying “thank you”; instead, they were afraid. When Jesus heals a man that the townsfolk could not control, the people from that town don’t say “thank you”; instead, they ask Jesus to go away from them.
The Synagogue Leader
And in our story, it is the synagogue leader who is not happy about this healing. This is not what was on the meeting agenda for today.This leader responds, not to Jesus, but to everyone else, and tells them
“There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
He says this mayhem. People are being healed on the Sabbath. Work has been done. This must be stopped!
By this time in Jewish history, some well-meaning folk put in extra rules around the Ten Commandments to ensure that no one was going to break them. Like an extra buffer to keep you further away from them. The extra rules were to define and divide what was and wasn’t considered work. Sometimes it got complicated and would be exhausting work just to figure out what work you can and can’t do on a Sabbath. And really, all of these excess rules became a burden around the people’s necks.
And somehow, when Jesus touched this woman, He worked. All he has done is to address the woman and touch her. (Luke Original Meaning)
So it really isn’t clear, from this leader, what work Jesus did. Maybe he thinks somehow the woman did some work? But she was completely passive in all this. She didn’t seek Jesus out; Jesus called for her.
Anyway, for some reason, work has been done somewhere, and the rules say this is the wrong day for it.
Do you remember last week, just before this passage, Jesus told a parable about a fig tree that didn’t produce any fruit. That fruit tree had one more year before it would be cut down. In the Old Testament, a fig tree was used as a symbol of Israel. And here, on the Jewish day of rest, in this Jewish synagogue, a Jewish leader is saying that this healing shouldn’t be allowed. The fruit, on display here, isn’t healthy. It isn’t good. These rules are getting in the way of helping others. These rules are restricting and controlling people. The Sabbath was meant to celebrate their freedom from slavery, and yet, the synagogue leader is using Sabbath rules to keep a woman enslaved to her condition.
Jesus responds
So Jesus responds. He wasn’t worried about what day it was to heal her.The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:15–16 NIV)Jesus uses a lesser to a greater argument. If it is ok, on the Sabbath to untie a donkey for it to drink, then why can’t Jesus heal this woman on the Sabbath? And notice how Jesus explains the woman and the healing.
This woman is a daughter of Abraham. Abraham was kinda of a big deal in Jewish history. He was known as the faithful guy who trusted in God's promises. God promised to bless Abraham and the whole world through Him. Abraham wasn’t perfect, but he trusted God and so was considered right before God. And all who believe in the promises of God are like Abraham. And this woman, who turned up to the synagogue, when she was healed, she immediately praised God. Is she so much more valuable than a donkey? She comes from the lineage of Abraham, the faithful one.
And this poor nameless woman, we are told, had been bound. A donkey on the Sabbath was bound for a day, but this woman was bound for 18 years.
Of all the days, and of all the places, surely on a Sabbath in a Synagogue, this woman from Abraham should be free from her disability after 18 years.
We aren’t told why or how she was bound by Satan. From last week, we can’t directly make any correlation between sin and punishment. Jesus might say, “Do you think this woman was any worse a sinner than anyone else?”
We are simply told that this woman was bound by Satan, and Jesus was able to untie her. We might not talk much about Satan and the devil and all that, so we might err on ignoring those spiritual dimensions in life, but also being consumed too much on this topic can be unhelpful. And so here, with a healing like this, it tells us to be aware but not afraid, for God is more powerful than anything such hostile forces can throw at us. (Luke Bridging Contexts)
With just a word, Jesus can free people from this dark power.
The first time Jesus taught in a Synagogue in Luke 4, He quoted from Isaiah, saying that
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,And here, the last time in Luke, Jesus is in a synagogue. He is freeing an oppressed woman from the power of Satan. This was what Jesus said He came to do. This is what Jesus is doing now.
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18 NIV)
The next bit in the chapter, Jesus goes on to teach what the kingdom of God is like, and here we get a bit of a glimpse. Where Jesus is, there is healing, there is freedom.
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. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Homiletical Perspective)
Freedom
Jesus offers freedom to all who are bound. With our narrow door, we are to make every effort to enter it, and freedom is behind it. Freedom, real freedom, is what Jesus came to bring.And this is great because we love freedom, people die for freedom, and Jesus is offering that.
Remember William Wallace from Braveheart? He said, “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom”. He fought and died for freedom.
We value freedom. We all hate to be restrained. But sometimes we don’t notice that we are bound and caught up in ourselves and in things we enjoy and are addicted to. Jesus’ freedom is a different freedom. It isn’t about being self-autonomous; it is about freedom from the power of sin.
Martin Luther said that sin was a curving in of self (incurvatus in se). Sin stops us from looking upward to God and outward to others. He said that we can even do good religious things to make ourselves feel good, and not for God Himself. Our hearts can be so self-absorbed that we don’t realise we can’t look away from ourselves in a mirror.
We may feel free to choose, but our wills are bent back towards ourselves. We do things that only benefit us and not others, we use people and things for our own enjoyment and create habits we like doing, but in the end, trap us. Binge-watch this show, eat this comfort food, visit that website.
You may feel bound already. You may feel like you have tread a deep path and are facing the consequences, and are trapped by them. That you have lost control. You may feel a great burden on your back, or be weighed down by guilt and shame, but the good news is that Jesus has come to free all who feel trapped.
Jesus came to free us from the powers of self, Satan, and death. He came to straighten up our focus from self to be able to worship God. And that is why the gate is narrow, even though on the other side is freedom; the freedom Jesus offers is not something some people want to give up so easily, and yet it is bigger and better than we realise.
Blaise Pascal said "It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants." (300 Quotations for Preachers from the Reformation Too Much Freedom Is Not Good)
It is better to see a doctor who gives you what you need and not what you want.
As someone else said
"A man’s free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or of a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul." [Augustus M Toplady] (300 Quotations for Preachers from the Modern Church Deception of Free Will)
Jesus offers us true freedom from ourselves, sin and the devil. It is Jesus who has the power and the heart to grant rest to the enslaved, and we can, in response, praise God for what He has done and look out to the people in front of us, regardless of circumstance.
William Cowper, in the 18th century, experienced great loss in the first six years of his life, losing his mother and four of his siblings. Then he was sent away to school, and from then on felt the pressure and constraint to succeed in life (William Cowper: The troubled and talented saint)
He felt great pressure for him to become a lawyer, and so did the studies, but he really wanted to be a poet. After his studies, a friend arranged for him to get a job as a clerk in the House of Lords, which would require a public examination of his life. Facing this prospect, he broke under the pressure. He didn’t think he had what it took, that he was living a lie. On top of that, he had religious doubts; he thought he had committed an unpardonable sin and was destined to hell.
Under all this weight of career and religion, Cowper tried to take his life in at least four different ways. After that, he was sent to an Insane Asylum. During his time there, he read the Bible and in Romans he saw that Christ’s death was sufficient to pardon him, and was sealed in Jesus’ blood to complete his justification.
Cowper continued to struggle with depression, but he held on to his faith and went on to write more than 60 hymns (some alongside John Newton) and many poems.
In one of these poems, Love Constraining to Obedience
He described his life before conversion as:
How long beneath the Law I layHe goes on, and the poem ends with this:
In bondage and distress;
I toiled the precept to obey,
But toiled without success.
To see the law by Christ fulfilledCowper was in bondage and distress from expectations thrust upon him, and from what he was told about the judgment of God. But when he saw that Christ pardons people for their sins, He saw that in Jesus was set free. And now the weight of the law is gone, and Cowper was free now to choose to follow Christ.
And hear His pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.
And that can be true for us. Today, on this day, in this place, Jesus can set us free from the bondage of sin. Look to Him and see that His heart and mission is for those who feel oppressed.
Jesus has come to release us from our own entrapments, to help us to stop looking down at the dirt of our past and to start looking at the face of our liberator. Jesus is our only hope; no other can break our chains and rescue us from bondage.
In Jesus’ Kingdom, the rule and power of Satan is broken. There will be no disability. Everything that’s crooked will be straightened, and all glory will be given to God. (Exalting Jesus in Luke The Lord Announces the Kingdom of God with a Miracle (13:10–17))
So, let us make every effort to make sure that we are willing to enter that narrow door. Where we look to Jesus as the one who can give us real freedom from ourselves, so we can live for Him.
Lord we thankyou that in your Son Jesus ChristWith a single word and touch you can free anyone from bondageWe thankyou that the heavy weight of the law has been liftedand that in Jesus our sins have been forgiven.Give us the strength to seek freedom in you, and not in ourselves,so that we can walk upright in your ways.We ask all of this in your Son’s saving name, Jesus. Amen.
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