Loving God, you sent your Son, Jesus, to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free. Help us, by the power of your Holy Spirit, to find that same release from all that keeps us bound; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is a striking contrast that we find in today’s gospel. On the one hand, we have this woman who has been weighed down, crippled and quite literally bent over for eighteen years. She comes into the synagogue while Jesus is teaching there – kind of like entering in the middle of the sermon. Jesus stops what he is saying, invites her to come up to the front and sets her free from her ailment. This frail, crippled woman who has been bound for so long is suddenly able to stand up straight and throw her hands in the air, praising God. What an occasion for celebration! Yet, the contrast with the leader of the synagogue is unmistakable.

He is standing there saying, “Do you people see what just happened here? Don’t you know that this is the Sabbath? You’ve got six other days when you can come and be cured. Come on those days, but not on the Sabbath! You should know better, and so should Jesus!” – Nope. – No celebration happening there. Why should it be so difficult to rejoice with somebody who has just been set free?

Perhaps this synagogue leader is just as much in bondage as the woman was. Perhaps he simply can’t see past all of his preconceived notions about how things are supposed to be. For one thing, he believes that healing people is against the Sabbath law. To him, it constitutes “working” on the Sabbath, which is simply unacceptable and should not be done by any rabbi. At the same time, he most likely believes that this woman sinned in some way and caused herself to be crippled. However, Jesus makes it clear that Satan is responsible. Finally, he would object to the fact that Jesus treated this woman as if she mattered, right in front of the whole assembly. Women simply were not to be given that kind of public attention.

This man also is in bondage, and cannot see what God is doing right before his eyes. Are any of us in the same situation? Are any of us weighed down and bent over as the woman was in the gospel? Are any of us bound by preconceived notions as was the leader of the synagogue? What are the things that keep us in bondage?

Tony de Mello tells the story of a man who was searching for freedom. He went to the Teacher and said, “Teacher, can you help me? I want to find freedom. I want to be free.” The Teacher replied, “Go and find out who has bound you.” And so the man went away, and he thought about this for a while. Finally he came back to the Teacher and said, “Nobody, sir. Nobody has bound me.” The Teacher replied, “Then what do you want freedom for?” And in that moment the man’s eyes were opened, and he was free. – Go and find out who has bound you. In many instances, we do it to ourselves.

We get into our heads all of these preconceived notions about how things are supposed to be, and we allow ourselves to be bound by them. And then somebody like Jesus comes along and speaks and acts in a totally new way, and we simply don’t know what to do with it. For example, how many people still believe that if something bad happens to you, then God is punishing you for something? How many people still believe this in spite of the fact that Jesus teaches us differently (Jn. 9)? How many people still believe in “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” even though Jesus teaches us to repay evil with good (Mt. 5:38-42)? We say that we believe in Jesus, yet we continue to hold on to old ideas about how we believe that things “should” be.

Can we allow Jesus to set us free, or do we prefer the nice, manageable box that we’re in? Sometimes the box is made out of preconceived ideas, as we’ve already seen. However, sometimes that same box is made out of the refusal to forgive. I have a little poster which I know that many of you have seen. It says, “To forgive is to set the prisoner free, and then discover the prisoner was you.” Truer words have never been spoken, but how we love to hang on to our anger and our hatred and our righteous indignation over how we’ve been wronged!

For some people, it ends up consuming all of their energy. Consider the man who was adopted as a child and spends his whole life trying to show his birth parents (whom he does not know) that they made a mistake in giving him up for adoption. Consider the woman who was treated badly simply because of her ethnic heritage who has lashed out at everybody ever since, driving people away from her. Consider the man who cannot forgive himself for things that he has done and constantly makes a mess of things in order to punish himself. If any of these people were ever able to let go of the past and forgive, they would experience a whole new life. There is good reason that the ideas of forgiveness and release from bondage go together in the Scriptures!

And finally, how about fear? How many people are boxed in by fear? Fear of not having enough. Fear of failure. Fear of what others might think. Fear of getting sick. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of flying. Fear of death. Fear of rejection. Fear of bad things happening. Fear of terrorists. Fear of the unknown. I’ve met people who are quite literally afraid of everything and spend all of their energy trying to protect themselves from life. Talk about bondage! Will we not allow Jesus to set us free? Will we allow ourselves to learn the truth that perfect love does cast out fear (1 Jn. 4:18)? Jesus teaches that there is only one who is worth fearing, and that is God – the same God who loves us and who gave his only Son for us (Lk. 12:4-7; Jn. 3:16).

The first time that Jesus taught in the synagogue in the gospel of Luke, he quoted the following passage from Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Lk. 4:18-19; cf. Isa. 61:1-2).

Jesus is all about releasing people from bondage, just as the woman in today’s gospel was released from her ailment. Will we allow Jesus to bring that release into our lives, or will we continue to allow our preconceived ideas and our refusal to forgive and our fear to box us in?

It’s not always easy for us to see how that release happens, but it starts with putting our trust in Jesus Christ and opening our hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit. For, it is the Holy Spirit who allows us to see things in new ways and who opens our eyes to what God is doing right before our very eyes (Rom. 12:2). It is the Holy Spirit who gives us a new heart (Ezek. 36:26) and who teaches us to forgive just as God has forgiven us (Eph. 4:32). It is the Holy Spirit who fills our hearts with the gift of love and who teaches us to live in love for God rather than in fear of everything else. May that same Spirit renew our hearts and minds this day. Amen.

Lectionary 21(C) Luke 13:10-17
August 26, 2007
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison Moore

(c) 2007 Lynne Hutchison Moore All Rights Reserved