A sermon on Luke 13:10-17
Preached Sunday, August 25, 2025 at Ballston Spa UMC

Would you pray with me?

Saving, healing God, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I was lucky enough yesterday to be able to see a friend of mine who’s moved overseas for her husband’s deployment, and reminded of just how good it can be to gather together in person. I also got to meet her baby for the first time, just about a year old, and he is what the young folks call “a chonker.” He was 11 pounds when he was born and he has stayed in the 99th percentile since. Like so many events, it was joy mixed with sorrow: Abbi was back in the States for her mother’s funeral. So while his mom was doing the eulogy for her mother, I was holding Liam, walking around the room, hoping to lull him to sleep. I wouldn’t trade it for the world but man, my arms are tired.

But it was beautiful. And in its own way, the funeral was freeing, as events like that can be. We can find a freedom in sharing grief and sadness and fear out loud: rather than being prisons we build for ourselves, we can find relief when we realize that others feel the same way.

In our gospel story this morning, we see Jesus healing a woman with a bent back, telling her that she is set free from her ailment. But I don’t think she’s the only one who’s set free in our story today.

This is going to be a sermon for the seasoned Christians among us, and by that, I don’t necessarily mean the older folks here. This is a sermon for folks who have been trying to live this Christian life for a while, who have been walking the walk to the best of their ability for some time now, and who have run into this fear: What if I can’t do enough?

We’re going to spend the whole sermon exploring that question, what if I can’t do enough, but I don’t want us to get lost in that exploration, so I’m going to tell you the end of the sermon now, so you know where we’re headed. What if I can’t do enough? That’s okay. You’re free to do good now. You’re free to do good now.

I think many of us have experienced a time when we decided to make the Christian faith our own, when we decided we were really going to try to live like we believe this stuff is true. For some of us, it was a bright realization of God’s deep love for us and a turning toward a life of thanksgiving and gratitude. For others, it was an awareness that life wasn’t as it should be and that we needed to be saved, even if just from ourselves. For still others, it was a slow progression toward understanding that Jesus really does have a claim on our heart, our faith. And there are still more ways that you can arrive at this precious time in your life, but I think many of us have had this experience of really trying to live the Christian life.

If that doesn’t sound like you, though, I want you to know that you are loved and you are welcomed and I would love to talk to you at coffee hour.

But I think that many of us have had this time where we were really zealous for the Lord. I grew up a little bit Evangelical in the 90s and 2000s and so for me, this meant I wore a lot of WWJD bracelets, carried binders with lyrics from Christian songs printed on the back, read the Bible and prayed a lot, and got very into doing stuff at church. I have always been a fan of rules (if you think I’m type A now, you should have seen me in 10th grade), but when I was in my New Christian, Zealous for the Lord phase, man, there wasn’t a rule out there I wasn’t trying to follow.

But I was also trying to do a lot of good, too. I was volunteering as a tutor and helping out with the kids’ choir and working at a summer camp for kids in the department of social services. I participated in the clothing drives and the food drives and the service projects. I really was trying to follow the Jesus I met in the gospels.

But all those things can become exhausting, can’t they. There’s always another good thing to do. There’s always another opportunity to volunteer, another Bible study to attend. (By the way, lectionary reading group is on Tuesdays at 2 in the cafe, everyone’s welcome.) But it’s easy to tire of doing good, especially when you realize the depth of the world’s sorrow. Just like most of us have had that moment of claiming our faith for ourselves, many of us have had the realization that there is more hurt in the world than we are capable of healing.

What if we can’t do enough?

I think this is where Sabbath is so helpful. I know the sabbath rules are the villain in our gospel story this morning, and we’ll get to that, but even Jesus knew the importance of rest and taking time away. Jesus took naps- he famously slept through that storm on the boat. He’s always going off by himself to pray. He tells us to follow him because his burden is easy and his yoke is light. Jesus understands rest.

And he understands the importance of the sabbath. Before there was the 9-5 grind or hustle culture or shift work, before factories and mines, before traders or fishers or farmers, before there was toil at all, there was sabbath. Even God rests. And this idea is so important that we see it throughout the Old Testament, throughout the Jewish scriptures. It makes the Commandments, it becomes a way of life. Sabbath is important, sabbath is essential, it is the beginning of our weeks. Never tire of doing good, yes, but we must rest. Jesus knows this. It is rest that enables our good work.

It seems to me that the synagogue leader in our gospel story today knows this too. From what he’s telling the crowd, it sounds like there’s a system. “Six days of the week you can come for healing”, just not on the sabbath. And I know this man and I do not share a faith or a cultural background, but gosh, his words sound so familiar to me. “Listen, six days out of the week, I’m yours. I will show up at your bedside, I will pray with you, I will listen to you, I will bless your babies and bury your dead, I will organize your food train and run your donation drive, and six days out of seven I will do this and do it with a smile. But please, dear God, give me my day off.”

I think many seasoned Christians have moments like this, too.

And you can hear the panic behind the synagogue leader’s voice as Jesus heals this woman, right? “Now they’re going to want healing on the sabbath, too.” There goes the day of rest.

And healing on the sabbath is just the start. Next, they’ll want him to teach like Jesus, to lead like Jesus, to provide like Jesus, to inspire them like Jesus. When Jesus leaves, the crowds will start to come to him, asking him to meet their needs, and, as I suspect the synagogue leader knows, all humans, myself included, are endless pits of neediness. There is too much need to be met and he’s not Jesus. He doesn’t have an endless store of miracles.

What if he can’t do enough?

This is maybe too sympathetic of a picture for someone who Jesus calls a hypocrite. Maybe the synagogue leader deserved that. Maybe he wasn’t caring for people as he should. That’s certainly how I’ve always heard the story.

But I don’t know. The longer I travel this Christian journey, the more I empathize with the synagogue leader. Lord, I set a boundary. The sabbath was the last thing keeping me sane, my one last break, and now you want me to give that up too?

Well, yes.

And no.

Jesus knows we need rest. The sabbath was created for us. It is good to rest. But just as the woman with the bent back was set free from her ailment, so too was the synagogue leader set free from what held him bound. And so are we.

We are free to do good now.

In the face of a world of troubles and woe, troubles and woe that come to visit all of us at least once in our lives, in the face of this world, we are free to do good now. I’m the face of sickness and conflict, problems and pain beyond our control, we are free to do good now. In the face of overwhelming need and loss and grief, we are free to do good now. Nothing, not our limitations, not our fears, not our worries, not even the Sabbath, has to stop us from seeing those around us, and being compassionate. We are free to do good now.

My friends, fresh Christians and seasoned alike, not one of us is Jesus, but all of us together, we are the body of Christ. And just like when you’re holding a chonker of a baby, when one arm gets tired, you switch to the other. When we, like the synagogue leader, are overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s grief, let us remember that we are set free. We do not have to complete the all good work that needs doing in the world, but neither are we free to abandon it.

So what if we can’t do enough?

Jesus has set us free to do good now.

Amen.