Lectionary Commentaries for August 24, 2025
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:10-17
Jared E. Alcántara
First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 58:9b-14
Cory Driver
In Isaiah 58, we have two problems. The people do not know how to love God well, and they have no idea why God does not seem to respond to their prayers. Because of faulty worship, there is a massive disconnect between what the people have been doing for God and what God wants. The prophet gives insight into motivations and desires from both sides and points to how reconciliation is possible.
The worshipers of God, probably intended as returned exiles from Babylon, are practicing worship meant to evoke God to action. The people fast to convince God to answer their prayers. They ask, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (58:3). The problem is not that God has not perceived their actions. Instead, God notices that the people have a theology problem.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not need to be coaxed into action by human performance. Many generations earlier, Elijah mocked the Israelite devotees of Baal for afflicting themselves to try to provoke their god to action (1 Kings 18:20–40). Unlike the cognate gods in surrounding cultures, the God of Israel does not need to be persuaded to pay attention to humans. Instead, the problem is exactly the opposite. The God of the Bible does not miss a detail.
Where the people had been fasting and crying out to God, wondering why they were being ignored, the prophet tells them that God has actually been paying very close attention. Certainly, the people had been fasting. But they had also been committing injustice—abusing workers, looking only to their own interests on sacred days, and committing wanton violence (58:3–4). Not eating, covering oneself in ashes, and prostrating oneself while actively committing evil will never gain God’s sympathetic help. Instead, God desires active work on behalf of the poor and victims of injustice.
Don’t refrain from eating; instead, share a meal with the poor (verse 7). Don’t wear sackcloth; instead, share your clothes with the naked (verse 7). Refrain from building up your own household, and instead, do the work to tear down unjust systems that keep people bound in oppression (verse 6). If people worship God in pleasing ways, of course God will respond to them with alacrity (verses 8–9a). The reading for this week offers five “if” statements, followed by several promises. The obedience and actions God wants are not about provoking God’s attention but are focused on responding to God’s commandments.
The first two “if” statements focus on communal righteousness. In verse 6, the hearers are instructed to undo and break yokes that turn human bearers of the divine image into chattel beasts of burden. And in the second half of verse 9, the expectation is that the technology that enables dehumanizing, compelled work will not even be found among God’s people. If the yoke to be removed means the destruction of dehumanizing work, pointing the finger and speaking the evil word must be interpreted similarly. Humans are not allowed to say, “Your oppression is a price I am willing to pay for my comfort.”
In previous generations, Americans could look at chattel slavery in service to the southern cotton and tobacco industries and immediately hear Isaiah 58 speaking to their moral issue. Will we tolerate the yoke on others, or not? Without enslaved humans, the political economy of the Confederate states would collapse! Good! Are we willing to turn the same vision of moral clarity on ourselves today in considering how much of our technology is built from conflict minerals? Are we willing to examine how the AI that increasingly becomes part of our daily lives is an environmental and energy disaster that is accelerating global climate change and making survival for humans on the margins even more difficult?1
God’s promises for a community that rids itself of systematic oppression—and the evil words and finger-pointing that enable it—are striking. Gloom will become bright. God will meet needs in the difficult times—and there will always be difficult times after upsetting the abusive systems, let’s not kid ourselves. But here’s the thing: Ruined structures of community will be rebuilt. And areas that have been impoverished and deserted will, instead, be home to burgeoning communities that will house generations. Neighbors will know and care for each other on populated streets. This is God’s vision for thriving community that is a built-in reward for not tolerating injustice.
One of the greatest temptations to embrace injustice and idolatry is to succumb to the constant felt need to do and be productive. I teach and research in a university entrepreneurship department, and I see the direct, inescapable pipeline from “hustle culture” to burnout every day. God insists, in the last three “if” statements, that Sabbath can be a joy, if we are wise enough to obey God and embrace it. All too often, humans want to do more and reject God’s wisdom in insisting on rest. We trample the Sabbath to our own detriment, and to the detriment of those who are forced to work to cater to us.
Research by one of my colleagues shows how a “relational identity with God” (RIG) in which the person defines herself as a “child of God,” a “member of the Body of Christ,” or “a simultaneous saint and sinner” leads to a decrease in burnout, greater feelings of peace in anxious times, and a greater willingness to rest and honor Sabbath commandments to cease work.2 Obeying commandments to honor the Sabbath not only leads people to delight in the Lord (58:14) but also to be able to delight in the rest of their days, rested, rejuvenated, and free from guilt at being complicit in the oppression of others.
Isaiah 58 offers two starkly contrasted visions of worship. One is prayer and fasting that are unheeded by God because they do nothing to undermine the production of injustice. The worship that God would prefer is characterized by actively interdicting injustice and oppression, and in obeying commandments that God gives us for our own good. If we are wise, we will live in such a way that is good for ourselves, others and the planet.
Notes
- “One query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes. … So, you can imagine with millions [billions!] of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.” Dara Kerr, “AI Brings Soaring Emissions for Google and Microsoft, a Major Contributor to Climate Change,” NPR, July 12, 2024, https://tinyurl.com/4x29xphk.
- “From Research to Practice: Navigating the Highs and Lows of Entrepreneurship,” Life, accessed June 28, 2025, https://tinyurl.com/2er88b9j.
Alternate First Reading
Commentary on Jeremiah 1:4-10
Andrew Wymer
Who am I?
Who are my people?
What do we want?
What are we building?
Are we ready to win?
These are the five questions that Charlene Carruthers asks of organizers of social movements.1 When I teach class periods or courses on prophetic preaching or preaching for social change, I build in significant time for students to reflect deeply on her questions. For community organizers and preachers who organize, clarity about the answers to these questions and the ability to consistently communicate that clarity to others is essential to effectively building impactful movements for change. Perhaps the same was true for many Hebrew prophets—persons we might identify as “organizers” today.
Jeremiah’s statement of identity and purpose has meaning for us as we seek to articulate our own identity and purpose as changemakers in our communities.
This passage is a call narrative, something of a fixture in Hebrew oracles. Call narratives are frequently placed at the very beginning of oracles, identifying the particular prophet and making a claim for why they should be trusted and taken seriously. Jeremiah contains numerous references to “false prophets” (for example, Jeremiah 23 and 27–29), and the reality of conflict between prophets necessitated that he differentiate himself from other prophets.
The text contains several dimensions that intensify Jeremiah’s claim to authority:
- In Jeremiah 1:2, God initiates the call, directly interfacing with Jeremiah in a personal way.
- Another fixture within call narratives throughout Hebrew oracles is initial unwillingness from the prophet to accept God’s call. Here Jeremiah protests because he is too young, and—like Moses in Exodus 4:10—because he does not speak well. This initial unwillingness to accept the call of God has an important function of intensifying the role of God’s authority and power in this call narrative and others. We know today that we can often be suspicious of persons who are too eager for positions of authority, as manifested in contemporary variations of the saying “The best leaders don’t want to lead.”
- The claim to authority is also strengthened through God’s promise of protection in verse 8b.
- Finally, a frequent theme in Jeremiah is that what he is sharing is a very explicit word from God. The wording that “the word of the LORD came to” Jeremiah, and variations of that phrase, appear scores of times in Jeremiah. The text clearly articulates that Jeremiah is a trustworthy mouthpiece for God. It is within Jeremiah’s interests as a prophet who wishes to make change to leave as little air as possible between God’s words and Jeremiah’s words.
The practical necessity of Jeremiah establishing his authority and calling from God is heightened by engaging religious and sociocultural realities that occurred during his lifetime. While there is a great deal of scholarly disagreement about the specifics of Jeremiah’s life and ministry, and how the book of Jeremiah and particular passages within it interface with specific historical timelines and events, we do know that he lived and worked during the reign of Josiah, who rose to the throne after his father, Amon, was assassinated. Josiah initiated intense religious reforms, eradicating idolatry and restoring the temple in Jerusalem as the central site of worship of God.
Josiah was followed by Jehoahaz, who only reigned briefly and was then dethroned by Egyptian political influence and forcibly removed to Egypt. Jehoiakim was installed, and he was a king beholden to external powers (Egypt and Babylon), whom biblical and rabbinical sources document as being incredibly violent, idolatrous, and unjust. The dramatically shifting priorities of the monarchs reflect a general milieu of religious and social conflict amid which Jeremiah lived, and while we do not know exactly when this passage was written, we get a sense of the severe conflicts Jeremiah may have been addressing.
Who is Jeremiah, and who are his people?
For Jeremiah, the question of personal identity is blended with communal identity. In Jeremiah 1:1–3, he is situated as connected to the established religious order through the tribe of Benjamin, and this is the religious order he will exhort repeatedly throughout the book. The text explicitly states up front that he does so as an insider, fully aware of his place as a member of the tribe of Benjamin. This sets up an insider/outsider dynamic throughout his ministry, which may be familiar to many preachers and advocates for change.
What does Jeremiah want, and what is he building?
There is also an explicitly clear religious and political agenda that Jeremiah shares in this passage. Jeremiah is commanded by God to seek the overthrow of the nations—possibly referencing Egypt and Babylon, who exert violent power over Judah. It doesn’t get more political than that. However, Jeremiah’s mission is not just deconstructive but also constructive. God has called him to “build and to plant.” While less overt, this is both a religious and a political imperative to work for a better world for God’s people. These deconstructive and constructive visions of the world can be seen throughout Jeremiah as he shifts between punitive and restorative messages.
As we reflect on the meaning and significance of this passage for preaching good news to God’s people today, there are several key themes to consider.
First, one way for preachers to interpret this passage in an enfleshed way is to spend time reflecting on your own call and on Carruthers’ five questions. Ask yourself, “Who am I?” “Who are my people?” Take the time to identify your communal and social identities and formations (often simply called social locations). How does God’s call on you to proclaim good news interface with your social locations amid hierarchies of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability?
Then ask, “What do we want?” and “What are we building?” How do your call and identity integrate with your vision of the world and the agenda to achieve that? As a preacher, what is your religious agenda, political agenda, economic agenda, and cultural agenda? What are you seeking to tear down? What are you seeking to build? How does your sense of call relate to misogyny, cruelty to low-income persons, heterosexism, proto-fascism, transphobia, xenophobia, white nationalism, and white supremacy? As you engage these questions, you may find yourself beginning or continuing to articulate a call narrative that is eerily similar to Jeremiah’s.
Second, there is a shrewdness to this passage that has deep meaning for us today. We live in a world in which normativity shapes so many things, including people’s perceptions of how a “preacher” should be embodied. This extends to positions of leadership and power throughout our society—doctors, scientists, elected officials, et cetera. Many persons are excluded from the pulpit and from positions of leadership in church and society because of one or more reductive human characteristics. Women, racially minoritized persons, persons with disabilities, or queer persons who enter the pulpit or other positions of leadership in church and society often have to constantly do extra labor to overcome the spoken or unspoken normativities through which they are received differently than persons with dominant social identities.
Jeremiah raises for us the importance of curating personal and communal authority. Claim your place in the pulpit or whichever space of proclamation or leadership you inhabit. Share who you are and who your people are. Share how you are specially called to inhabit this space. Share the vision you have of a more just world. Claim and curate your authority and power.
Third, we live in a broken world in which there is so much harm to be torn down and destroyed. Let’s be very clear: It is a task of a preacher who proclaims the liberating presence and action of God in the world to do just that and to do it well. Deeply analyze and critically deconstruct the local manifestations of systems of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, ability, heterosexism, and other systemic expressions of violence, and also present a constructive vision of a more just world. What do you seek to build? Is your sermon activating the community of faith to build God’s kin-dom here and now—even if in small, never-inconsequential ways? This is the hard work of building the world anew.
This passage is the deeply personal call narrative of a prophet seeking to make the world a more just place, and it can hit close to home for preachers, leaders, and advocates for change. But this passage can also have deep meaning for all persons of faith who understand themselves to be called to work for change in our world. How might your own call narrative, identity, and purpose as a preacher help you effectively communicate good news from this passage? How can you help your people encounter and reflect on the dimensions of prophetic ministry that this passage reveals, while also helping them deeply engage their own sense of call to serve God in ways that make change in our world?
Notes
- These are rendered as three questions in: Charlene Carruthers. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (Boston: Beacon, 2018). Carruthers has used a variation of these in later projects such as: Charlene Carruthers, “Five Questions for the Left: Developing Grounded Assessments for Transformation,” Incite Seminars, accessed May 20, 2025, https://inciteseminars.com/five-questions-for-the-left/.
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 103:1-8
Nancy deClaissé-Walford
Psalm 103 is classified as an Individual Hymn of Thanksgiving, a psalm in which a single voice praises God for goodness to or on behalf of that individual, usually for deliverance from some trying situation.1
Hermann Gunkel, one of the great fathers of psalm studies, describes hymns of thanksgiving in this way: “A person is saved out of great distress … and now with grateful heart he [sic] brings a thank offering to Yahweh; it was customary that at a certain point in the sacred ceremony he would offer a song in which he expresses his thanks.”2
The psalmist begins the words of thanksgiving by addressing the nephesh, usually translated as “soul” but better understood as “inmost being”—the all of who a person is. (See the parallel “all that is within me” in the second half of verse 1.) The opening and closing words of the psalm (verses 1 and 22) bring to mind the popular praise song by Andraé Crouch, “Bless the Lord, O my soul … He has done great things.”
While Crouch’s song leaves the “great things” undefined, Psalm 103 outlines in detail just what God does for the psalmist’s nephesh. God forgives iniquity, heals diseases, redeems from the Pit (a reference to death), crowns with steadfast love and mercy, satisfies with good, and works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed (verses 3–6).
Verses 7 and 8 recall the time of the wilderness wanderings, when Israel repeatedly grumbled against and rejected God’s goodness, but God continued to provide for and guide them. Verse 8 brings to the mind of the hearer the golden-calf incident in Exodus 32–34, which culminated in God’s self-declaration in Exodus 34:6, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
The word translated “merciful” in Exodus 34:6 and Psalm 103:4, 8 is particularly interesting. It is derived from the Hebrew verbal root raham, whose noun form rehem means “womb.” God’s compassion is tied closely to the concept of “womb love,” the love a mother feels for her yet-to-be-born child. Over and over, the psalmists remember and call upon God’s mercy, God’s “womb love.”
- Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love. (25:6)
- Answer me, O LORD, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me. (69:16)
- The LORD is good to all, and his compassion [another word used by the New Revised Standard Version to translate raham] is over all that he has made. (145:9)
References to God’s mercy (or compassion) occur no fewer than 22 times in the book of Psalms.
Psalm 22 takes the metaphor a step further and actually connects God’s identification with “womb-love” to the physical referent for the metaphor. In verse 10 the psalmist cries to God, “Upon you I was cast from the rehem” (in the New Revised Standard Version, “from my birth”). Here God is intimately tied to the life-giving womb and is further pictured as midwife.
Phyllis Trible, in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, describes the image in this verse as a “semantic movement from a physical organ of the female body to a psychic mode of being.”3 In Psalm 77:9 the psalmist asks, “Has God in anger shut up his compassion?” The verb translated “shut up” (qapats) is used most often in the Hebrew text in reference to “shutting the mouth,” but one does not have to travel far metaphorically to connect “mouth” with “womb opening” in this poetic construction.
Another word in verses 4 and 8 of Psalm 103 is also found in God’s self-descriptive words in Exodus 34:6—hesed. It is translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “steadfast love.” Hesed is a difficult word to render into English; it has to do with the relationship between two parties of an agreement, a covenant in the context of the Old Testament.
God made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15:18, stating, “To your descendants I give the land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” In Exodus 19:4–5, God and the people of Israel entered into a covenant relationship at Mount Sinai. God said to them, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.”
God promised that the Israelites would be a treasured possession; they had only to keep God’s covenant stipulations. We might say that hesed is about covenant relationship or covenant promises. It has to do with the sacred agreement, the sacred relationship, between God and God’s people. Thus, Exodus 34 and Psalm 103 remind us that our God is a God of womb-love and a God of covenant promise.
The thanksgiving words of Psalm 103 stand in stark contrast to the lamenting words of Psalms 42 and 43, in which the psalm singer admonishes the nephesh, who is “cast down” and “disquieted,” to “hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God” (42:5, 11; 43:5). Words of quiet despair are transformed into words of thankful praise as the singer of Psalm 103 brings to mind all of God’s “benefits” (verse 2).
The word translated “benefits” (gemul), though, actually has to do with receiving in return what one has earned—what one should receive in return for one’s actions, words, and thoughts. The psalmist recognizes that, while God is not a God of retribution (note I said “should” above), we are called upon to respond to and embrace the mercy, the “womb-love,” of God and to uphold our human responsibilities of the steadfast love, the hesed, relationship.
Notes
- Commentary previously published on this website for August 25, 2013.
- Hermann Gunkel, The Psalms: A Form-Critical Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 17.
- Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 33.
Second Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 12:18-29
Madison N. Pierce
This lectionary text is a passage comparing two mountains where the people of God encounter him. The first is Sinai, drawing substantially on the narratives in Exodus 19 and Deuteronomy 5, where the people prepare for their encounter with God when he gives the law. God offers his presence, but the people are too frightened to meet him. But, as the author says, this mountain—which can be touched, both burning with fire and covered with darkness, gloom, and storm—is not the mountain they have come to (Hebrews 12:18). They have not come to a frightening experience with God (12:20) that led even Moses to declare, “I am trembling with fear” (12:21; see Deuteronomy 9:19).
Instead, they have come to “Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22). Throughout Hebrews, this place has appeared under many names, including “rest” (for example, 4:1) and the heavenly homeland (11:16). The author layers these labels for the place to utilize a broader range of scriptural images. The people also have come to a celebration—“innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn [ones] who are enrolled in heaven” (12:22–23).
The presence of the angels here fits within the Jewish worldview of the addressees. Many early Jewish texts depict angels in the heavenly worship space, just as we see in Revelation (especially chapters 4–5). They are celebrating the arrival of the people. The assembly (ekklesia) of the firstborn is a gathering of all God’s children, but here the author reveals that they have a new status. They are not just adopted as God’s children but counted as his firstborn ones. Strictly speaking, as you could guess, one would only have one firstborn, and earlier in Hebrews, Jesus has that privileged status (1:6); however, the author shares this honor, which would include the inheritance of the Father’s wealth.
The next thing the author says they have come to is “God the judge of all” (12:23). This may be surprising in a list of celebratory items, but this is because we generally have a negative view of judgment. The addressees probably did not. To those being oppressed and displaced in various ways, the promise that God would return and set all things right was a powerful image—one that minoritized and disadvantaged communities today continue to take comfort in. This relates to the next item in the list.
They have come to “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (12:23). This is likely another description for the “assembly of the firstborn,” though some interpreters argue that these “spirits” are those from previous generations who have passed. The problem with this interpretation is the implied exclusion of those people from the “assembly of the firstborn [ones].” Either way, these are righteous ones, perfected through the offering of Jesus (10:14), and the righteous do not need to fear the judgment of our just and merciful God.
Finally, the people have come to “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (12:24). The one who has made the offering on their behalf stands before them, joining in the celebration. His blood also remains present, which emphasizes the fact that Jesus retains a human body after his ascension.
From 12:25, the author returns to his comparison of the two mountains and, by extension, the experiences of the people within each of the covenants. They are warned not to “refuse the one who is speaking” (12:25). Those at Sinai disregarded the warning from God, and the consequences were stark. The author makes clear that this warning is even more serious and even more difficult to escape. With the “shaking” of the earth in the Sinai narratives in mind, the author introduces a quotation from Haggai: “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven” (Hebrews 12:26; see Haggai 2:6). This quotation is interpreted as a promise that more shaking will occur—and that the second shaking will include the heavens.
What this represents is the consummation of the ages, yet the imagery here is somewhat distinctive. Rather than describing the city of God coming down, for example (Revelation 21:2), the author describes a transformation (metathesis; not “removal” as per New Revised Standard Version) of all things (Hebrews 12:27). The result of that is the (newly) unshakable kingdom, which the author says is our inheritance (12:28). The right response to this inheritance is thankfulness, offering God “acceptable worship with reverence and awe” (12:28), “for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (12:29).
The image of God as fire emphasizes his transcendence, but like the image of God as judge, this image should not be terrifying to the people of God. The righteous should maintain reverence and a sense of God’s “otherness,” but the offering of Jesus provides us with confidence to approach God on his throne of grace (4:16).
In a world that struggles to pay attention, one does not have to work hard to be unnoticed. A toddler vies for the attention and affection of her parents. She turns her distracted father toward her, saying, “Look. Look. Me. Me.” In a home with a dozen devices, she pines after their undistracted attention. A middle-aged man walks into a break room at work and sits down with his coworkers. They do not acknowledge him; neither do they invite him to join the conversation. He is with them, but he is alone. A teenage girl posts a selfie on social media. None of her friends click “like” or write comments. Their silence is deafening. Perhaps they want to send her a message without sending her a message. She barely sleeps.
Almost no one chooses to feel invisible or unseen. Yet, for those who have felt this way or have been made to feel this way, you are not alone. The woman in Luke 13:10–17, the one bent over for 18 years, understood the pain of invisibility all too well. She knew it better than most.
She had a chronic disability in a time and place when a significant percentage of religious people associated her disability with God’s judgment. Before rushing to judge them, remember that 2,000 years later, many Christians still abide by the same unhelpful beliefs and theologies.
The woman also faced challenges on account of living in a patriarchal society. At the risk of oversimplifying the matter, she lived in a society in which the voices, needs, and rights of men were usually privileged, and the voices, needs, and rights of women were usually ignored.
Add to this the chronic pain that she must have felt every day, all the time. More than one biblical commentator believes she had a condition known as spondylitis ankylopoeietica, a fusion of the bones in the spine that created ongoing stiffness, inflammation, fatigue, and acute pain.
She endured two types of pain: the intense psychological pain of being rendered invisible and the torturous physical pain of having a debilitating condition. We do not know whether she suffered silently or loudly, but we do know that she suffered greatly.
Even so, Luke 13 tells us there is one near to her who sees things differently. More important to the story, he sees people differently. He encounters her after concluding his Sabbath teaching. Women were not permitted inside the sanctuary of the synagogue at that time, so he had to seek her out and break with custom. According to New Testament commentator James R. Edwards, “People with physical deformities were expected to remain socially invisible, especially if they were women. Women rarely if ever approached rabbis, nor did rabbis as a rule speak to women.”1
Jesus sees this woman when no one else does. Verse 12 says as much: “When Jesus saw her …” Throughout his ministry, Jesus had his eyes trained to see those who were forgotten, left out, and unnoticed by others. Perhaps this way of seeing is what inspired the apostle Paul to exclaim to the Corinthians, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view [literally, according to the flesh], even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view; we no longer know him that way” (2 Corinthians 5:16).
As great as it is that Jesus sees her, he does more. He acts to bring about the transformation she seeks. According to verse 12, he also “called her over.” The God who sees us is the God who calls us. She had been outside the synagogue, and he invited her in; on the periphery, and he brought her to the center; invisible at one moment, and he called her the next.
Jesus lays his hands on her to heal her. The imagery of laying on hands to heal occurs throughout the Gospel of Luke (4:40; 5:13; 8:54; 13:13). He also offers her words of life: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment,” he declares (verse 12). Through words and acts of healing, he sets her free. What a beautiful pattern! Jesus sees her, calls her, lays hands on her, speaks to her, and frees her.
However, not everyone rejoices at the pattern that unfolds. Jesus has healed on the Sabbath. The synagogue leader responds with indignation when he sees what has happened (verse 14).
Jesus does not spare him or mince words. He calls this man and others like him “hypocrites” (plural). He unleashes a classical rabbinical Qal wahomer2 argument: If one is willing to unbind an ox on a Sabbath day to give it water, how much more should you be willing to unbind a woman who was bound for 18 years? An animal, yes, but a person, no? One day? What about 18 years?
Jesus sees past our customs and procedures to a person in need, one whom he sees as “a daughter of Abraham” (verse 16). She is the only woman who gets this title in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus calls Zacchaeus a “son of Abraham” in Luke 19:9. It is curious that he gives sacred titles to two religious outsiders. In Luke 3:8, John the Baptist declared to the people that if they did not hear and heed, then God would “raise up children to Abraham” from the stones instead.
For those who are religious or who like being religious about their religiosity, remember: When you do not see others, Jesus confronts you. The church is not meant to be a country club, a health spa, or a gated community but, rather, a place where those who are seen and freed by God are empowered to see others with eyes of faith.
For those who know what it is like to feel invisible or unnoticed in a world that struggles to pay attention, remember: When others do not see you, Jesus sees you. Those whom Jesus sees, Jesus frees. Like the woman in Luke 13, you too can stand up straight.
Notes