Grace Community Church in Potlatch is one of our synod’s four ELCA/PCUSA federated churches, meaning it is fully a member of both denominations. The two churches began sharing a pastor in the 1970s and fully federated just over ten years ago, according to what I heard today. They kept the PCUSA building for its size and I can see the sanctuary filling up for funerals. The congregation is a site for the Idaho Food Bank each month. I loved that many people led different parts of worship. Four different pastors rotate through each month, each assigned a different Sunday. This was not a Holy Communion Sunday so I offered to lead Affirmation of Baptism by the Assembly–such a joy.

Aug. 24, 2025

Luke 13:10-17

This gospel passage can so easily be simplified and we can be too quick to judge.  What was it really like for the crippled woman and the leader of the synagogue?  Settle in and walk in their shoes.

For eighteen years she has strained to see the sun, the sky, and the stars. She knows people in her community by their sandals and feet, maybe the bottom of their tunics. Most of us look into one another’s eyes. She looks down at children and small animals. Most people’s landmarks are buildings; hers are large stones and tree roots sticking out of the ground. She has grown accustomed to looking down. It is always difficult to look up. She turns from side to side to see what you who stand upright can see with just a glance. They say her illness is caused by Satan.

Jesus has come to our community. He is teaching in our synagogue. The woman is a faithful Jew and so has come here this Sabbath day. We all have heard that Jesus is a healer. He has done extraordinary things. Still, she dares not ask him to heal me, or even to approach him. She is here to listen, to learn from this teacher.  She can barely see his eyes; it is so painful to look up.  

Jesus sees her. He calls her over and says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” He lays his hands on her. Immediately she stands up straight. She give thanks to God, with the whole assembly. We are rejoicing.  But a leader of our synagogue is fuming. Why?

The Sabbath is a day for rest and renewal. Honoring it has been a law since the days of Moses. In Egypt our people, the Israelites, were slaves and worked under the command of our masters. We never rested. Then Moses came down the mountain with a command to set aside one day of the week to rest and pray.

It is all too easy to start making exceptions to this rule, to any rule. It is the woman’s job as a spiritual leader of the people to help them hold fast to the laws.  What will happen if we decide that we are going to go out and work in the field because it has been neglected? What is to stop us from making another exception to the rule? Where will we stop? Will we start making exceptions to lying or gender roles? Doesn’t this Jesus, an Israelite himself, know that he is threatening our way of life—the way God gave us to live?

This parable is thick. What is Jesus thinking? Is he encouraging a domino effect of law breaking? My former congregation Trinity, in Nampa partnered with the University of Idaho Extension to teach food preservation classes. Students always asked about substitutions. They asked if there were exceptions to this rule or that rule. In some cases following the rules of food preservation was a matter of serious illness.  

Jesus is not encouraging a break from the rules. However, he is suspending a law for mercy’s sake. He can heal. He sees this crippled woman and knows that he can heal her, change her life. She will not only be restored physically. She will live a whole new life in her community. Of course he heals her, just as he heals you.

One of Jesus’ names was Emmanuel, “God With Us.” Jesus is God up close and personal; God as God really is rather than whom we had imagined God to be; God is often too close for comfort. And one of the main things we learn about God after watching God With Us in action is this: God is merciful.

Someone said, “I spent the first thirty years of my life thinking God was mad at me for something. Then I saw Jesus.” Jesus could have passed by that suffering woman that day, could have preached to her some sweet sermon on bearing up under misfortune. He could have averted his eyes from her and focused instead upon the well-heeled and more attractive people, the defenders of scripture, the keepers of religious rules. Jesus didn’t do any of that. What he did was to feel her pain and to respond to her in mercy.

Jesus saw her. But he didn’t just watch. He didn’t continue with his teaching. He really saw her. In the gaze of Jesus, which must have been the kind of gaze that goes directly to the heart, Jesus raised her up by laying his hands on her. She straightens up, and you can almost imagine their eyes meeting, their gaze locked. How she must have gloried in being seen, apart from her evil spirit, no longer that old, bent-over woman but now the friend of Jesus. Eye to eye, person to person, partners in the life of God. And she sees too. She sees God right in front of her.

The laws were given to order our lives.  Commands to protect life (do not murder), protect relationships (do not lie), to help us rest (keep the Sabbath holy) can be and are life-giving. But the greatest command is to love. We are to love God and we are to love our neighbors. Such love has the final word, is the law above all laws, is the greatest command, is the most life-giving law there is. Such love pours from the baptismal font and the promises made there, the promises we will remember today. Love poured into you from the promises of the baptismal font. At the font, each of you was seen, claimed, named child of God, a name you can never get rid of.   

What life does this love call us into? Jesus saw the crippled woman who had become invisible to the people who lived with her each day.  Perhaps we, like the crippled woman who Jesus heals, are able to see things that before we could not.  

Who do we not see when we are burdened and weighed down? Surely there are people today in bondage who need to be loosened from fear or grief or anger.  There are people who are lost and forsaken. There are other people who no one else takes time to see. Who do we not see day in and day out? Washed, forgiven, claimed as God’s own, we know that God sees us and loves us. We have new eyes to see the lost and broken in our community of faith and beyond these walls.

God’s love for us frees us.  You are recipients of this love when you are washed clean in the waters of the font. You receive God’s love and mercy when you turn to the font every week and hear words of forgiveness. You receive God’s love and mercy when you gather around the table and feast on the bread and wine—the bread of life, the cup of salvation.

Of course we can be disheartened easily. I am sure that the woman Jesus healed did not go on to live a perfect life, always praising God and never tripping up. Our work will never be done, and it will never be done perfectly. God will love us no less.  God’s mercy will bend beyond our brokenness. God will never forsake you.  God sees you for who you are and calls you by a name that is never erased, “child of God.”  Amen.