Worship on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
10:00 am Aug 24, 2025
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Lynn Vaughan Welcoming Elder: Iris Routledge
Children’s time: Brad Reader: Laura Patterson-Fortin
We gather to worship God
Music Prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship
Call to worship:
L: We present ourselves to God as living sacrifices
P: We will offer our time, talents, and treasures to God
L: We consecrate our lives to God’s glory
P: We will shine God’s light in the darkness
L: We proclaim God’s truth to all nations
P: We will be witness to God’s love and power
Opening praise: This is amazing grace
Prayer for inner peace
O God, our strength and refuge, we come to you with hearts lifted in praise.
You are our Maker, our Redeemer, and our Sustainer — in you we find shelter, hope, and the steady hand that holds all things.
We worship you for your loving‑kindness, for the gift of life, for Jesus who repairs what is broken, and for your Spirit who calls and equips us to serve.
In your presence we pause; we lay down the distractions that clutter our minds
and open ourselves to your quiet truth.
Creator, Christ, and Spirit, revive our hope and our energy; ready our hearts to answer your call and to live your love in the world.
Merciful God, our judge and our hope, we confess we do not always live the truth we sing.
We promise compassion in words and withhold it in deeds.
We worship and then ignore the needs of our neighbor; we speak of justice and fail to act.
Forgive our divided lives, our self‑centered choices, and our smallness of vision.
Awaken us where we have grown numb, and make us tender where we are proud.
By your mercy, soften our hearts; by your judgment, restore our direction.
Holy Spirit, breathe your peace into us now.
Quiet the anxious thoughts, steady the restless heart, and heal the inner wounds we carry.
Teach us how to rest in your presence, to trust your timing, and to walk in the freedom you give.
Fill us with the calm courage to lay aside the burdens that slow us, and grant us the inner peace that enables us to forgive, to mend, and to hope.
Lord Jesus, author and perfecter of our faith, accompany us as we go from this place: help us carry your peace into our homes, our workplaces, and our streets.
Let our lives be a testament to the renewing power of your love, so that others may see and be drawn to you.
We offer these prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, trusting your grace, now and always. Amen.
Response: We come to ask your forgiveness
Assurance of God’s peace
God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Believe the good news of the Gospel. In Christ, God has offered us mercy and love. Receive God’s forgiveness this day and share it with each other for Christ’s sake. In him we find true peace that passes understanding. Amen.
We listen for the voice of God
Response: Open our eyes Lord (445)
Children’s Time
Story: Not long after the I.Q. test was developed, several studies were conducted to see how different groups might do in relation to each other. The tests were given to groups of younger people, older people, wealthy people, poverty-stricken people, ethnic groups and all kinds of things. In this context, someone presented the Hopi Indians with the test. When the Hopi received the test, they immediately started to ask each other questions and to compare their answer right in the middle of the exam. When the instructor saw this happening, he quickly intervened, telling them that they each had to take the test alone and without any help. You are not permitted to help each other or share answers among yourselves, he told them. When the Hopi heard this, they were outraged and they all refused to take the test, saying, “It is not important that I am smarter than my brother or that my sister is smarter than I. It is only important how smart we are together.”
I like that. God created us to live in community with each other – to work together to share resources with each other and to help each other. Now I’m not suggesting you share answers on your tests, but what I am saying is that God doesn’t want us going it alone, and if you can help someone else, you should. This week, I hope you think about the Hopi and maybe act a bit more like them, too.
Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer (535)
Song: Great is thy faithfulness (324)
Scripture readings: Psalm 103:1-8; Isaiah 58:9b-14; Luke 13:10-17
Response: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
Message: Mercy and Compassion
Winston Churchill: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
Because of the way creation is described in Genesis, the ancient Hebrews generally thought of the day beginning not at sunrise but at nightfall. As a result, the Shabbat or Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday evening and goes to Saturday night. By the way (and just as a fun fact), in many Christian traditions, Saturday is still the sabbath and meant to be a day of rest, but Sunday is The Lord’s Day (commemorating the resurrection) and the two are intended to be different (one for rest – Saturday, and one for worship, Sunday). We tend to think of Sunday as being both.
The Sabbath, a day ordained for rest, reflection, and later on for remembrance of God’s freeing of Israel from Egyptian bondage, arrived as it always did. It was a long time ago and the world was a different place. It was the Sabbath in a small community somewhere around what we might think of as the Syria/Israel/Lebanon border area. And just like any other day of worship, this particular woman showed up for the service.
In a way, this woman is not unique. She was bent over (probably with a fused spine) and had this medical issue for some time. Instead of tiny invisible germs or viruses nobody can see, she was thought to be harmed by spiritual entities nobody could see. The result is the same. And perhaps the truth is more in between than most people think. The physical and spiritual are perhaps more intertwined than we might like.
In any case, how many people today have shown up just the same? She was at worship because she always was, rain or shine, ill or not. And again, how normal is this – people suffering from something and they keep coming? I think this is a typical worship service.
At this particular time, opposition to Jesus was escalating, as was enthusiasm. Luke is written thematically and not chronologically but this was likely near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He had just begun to make some enemies. And Jesus had some people rather upset by this point, as well as others excited. As Jesus travelled from one place to another, he was very welcome in particular congregations and very much not welcome in others. But he was travelling and teaching in the Synagogues within a six-day walk of where he grew up.
He came as a guest preacher. Almost certainly, he made his way through Galilee to Jerusalem as a travelling rabbi who had made a name for himself as being uniquely wise. But remember: early in Luke’s own recollection, the people tried to murder Jesus on at least two occasions. He was not always welcome.
There was growing concern. He was rocking the boat quite a bit. And yet he still found welcome in some places of worship. Remember, the synagogues were created after the Babylonians destroyed the temple. The Only place to meet with the historic Ark and Aaron’s staff and the Ten Commandments had been destroyed. As a result, people built small meeting places to read and discuss scripture. By Jesus’ day, the Temple had been rebuilt, and yet Synagogues continued to exist and to be vital community centers.
It is here, in this setting… a seemingly random woman appears.
The original Greek uses a word that grabs our attention. Although it may be somewhat lost in English Bibles, the translators have done a reasonably good job of conveying its importance. It generally reads today as “Behold!” “SEE THIS THING”.
We are told that for eighteen years, this woman had been bound.
In the 1st century, a synagogue was primarily a local assembly house for prayer, Torah reading, teaching and communal life (not a temple). It could serve as a school, meeting hall, and court of local affairs as well as a place of worship.
Typically, these were very simple rectangular halls with one main room large enough for the congregation, with benches or stone seats built along the walls and facing the center. The entire community would chip in to have a copy of the first five books of the bible on a scroll kept in a niche in the limestone at the back wall.
Jesus would presumably be sitting on the “bema” or masonry platform.
Depending on the community, people could be in family groups, or the women and children might have been relegated to a separate area in the back. Contrary to popular belief, complete gender separation in Jewish communities wasn’t a standard until the Middle Ages.
I surmise, nevertheless, that because she is a SHE, and because SHE is INFIRM, and BECAUSE of her INFIRMITY, SHE is VISIBLY different, so I’m just going to go ahead and say I do believe she was probably at the very back of the congregation, where it might be hard to hear.
She’s bent over and suffering, and at the time, it’s important to note that for eighteen years, she had likely not seen the sun or the stars. Her world was probably made up of the dust at her feet. She walked as if searching for a grave. Yet, she came to the synagogue. I doubt she very often got a seat at the front. But this was surely her typical practice. I wonder how many times she came to the house of prayer to pray for healing?
The text just casually says, “When Jesus saw her, He called her forward.” I wonder if she stood out. I find this pretty interesting. She didn’t seek Him out; she probably couldn’t even lift her head to see Him correctly. But He saw her. And with a word of compassion and authority, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity,” and a touch, she was healed.
For eighteen years, she went to the synagogue in bondage until the day Jesus saw her there. It was a spiritual affliction manifesting physically, bending her double and preventing her from standing upright. For eighteen years, she was trapped, her gaze fixed on the ground. We should not assume every physical ailment has a spiritual root, but we also cannot deny that the spiritual can impact the physical. As Spurgeon said, “For eighteen years she had not gazed upon the sun… all the light of her life was dim.” If that is not a spiritual issue, WHAT IS??? Note that she made no request, had no expectation. Yet, Jesus saw her. He spoke a word – a word of compassion, a word of authority: “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” And He touched her. After eighteen years of bondage in the synagogue, she encountered Jesus, and everything changed.
In that moment, Jesus demonstrated His absolute power over sickness, deformity, and disease, regardless of their origin. He could have healed her from afar, but He chose to touch her, showing compassion for her suffering. The impact was immediate and profound. After eighteen years of being bent over, she stood tall. This was more than a physical healing; it was a restoration of dignity, a renewed ability to engage fully with life, and a restored connection with God. This is what love looks like. This is what the Sabbath should be.
The miracle itself is almost understated in the text. It’s a blip on the radar. It’s barely in there. Luke (who is our closest thing to a biblical-feminist) rushes past the details to get to the heart of the matter: the conflict to come. The miracle serves as a catalyst for the lesson that comes next.
The miracle is the spark that ignites the real focus of the passage.
It’s a heartwarming story. A woman is healed at a church service. But notice, it doesn’t seem that odd to anyone. It seems like the kind of thing the people saw and heard all the time. When the Leader of the Synagogue gets mad, he’s not angry about the healing. That was apparently totally normal. Nobody appears too fazed. He says, You can do that healing thing any other day, just not Sabbath – Rest Day. ‘You don’t work on REST DAY’.
And by the way, he’s not wrong. Jesus was a practicing Jew. He wasn’t supposed to work on the sabbath. What follows is simply a debate about what constitutes work.
It might seem shocking that the synagogue leader was upset, but strict adherence to Sabbath laws was held by many at that time. It still is. The core of the conflict is whether a miracle constitutes work. And honestly, that’s what this is all about.
Luke subtly undermines this notion. The miracle itself lacks fanfare. Jesus announces her freedom, and God acts with healing. The Greek text emphasizes the divine passive: she “was straightened up.” God both “set free” and “straightened” her on the Sabbath. Thus, God did the work and everyone else was passive. In other words, Jesus didn’t do work, the Father simply healed her.
The synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
He also doesn’t appear to be upset with Jesus. He doesn’t say “Don’t heal people”. He doesn’t even talk to Jesus. I noticed he lacked the courage to confront Jesus directly, instead addressing the crowd with his complaint. As the Barclay commentary notes, his words may have been meant for Jesus, but spoken to others. The imperfect verb tense suggests the leader repeatedly made this demand: “Six days are for this! Come back then!” Meanwhile, the woman “was praising God,” also in the imperfect tense, suggesting continuous praise. She’s jumping all over the place for the first time in years. And we are meant to see the two happening simultaneously.
Jesus didn’t respond with gentleness but with a sharp rebuke. Jesus’s response was not quiet, but forceful. “The Lord answered him, ‘You hypocrites!’” The Greek word for hypocrite implies a playactor doing a part or ‘wearing a mask’. Jesus sees this complaint as a “Rules for Thee but Not for Me” kind of problem.
Jesus continues, “Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? If that’s not work, then how is this? If it’s not work to care for your animals, then it’s not work to care for this woman.
Here we have a classic rabbinic debate. Jesus says if animals deserve care on the Sabbath, then how much more so should a suffering human being? This is basically the same argument he makes with the Lost Coin (people would look for), lost sheep (people would look for), and prodigal son (who people would not look for) stories. In essence, it argues that the crowd would care about money and animals, but not their own children. It is called the “light and heavy argument”. If something is suitable for this unimportant thing, then how much more so is it true for significant things.
Jesus’ argument cuts straight to the heart of the matter: if you show mercy to animals on the Sabbath, how can you deny it to a suffering woman?
By prioritizing a human being over animals, Jesus shows that he didn’t break the Sabbath law, but instead revealed the true meaning of the Sabbath: a day of mercy, compassion, freedom, and restoration. And then the story ends in a typical hero fashion. It reads “17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.”
And that’s it.
So what do we do with this information? We need to consider places where we Christians might be hypocritical or prioritizing rigid ideas over people. Have we used scripture to create exclusionary practices that elevate some people and denigrate others? Do we discuss poverty and justice, yet do little to address them? Do traditions make us resistant to change? Are we dogmatic when we could be helpful? Are we political instead of ecclesiastical? Do we build massive cathedrals out of gold and then ask the people in the pews to feed the hungry? Do we have rules for Thee and not for Me? I’m sure we do.
What do I do? What do we do? Where are we off target? Maybe you’re like me – I don’t always know. It’s hard to see sometimes with this plank in my eye.
In the end it’s hard to know what to say about this section of scripture. It doesn’t come with a command to do something or not do something. It’s left with us to stew.
I guess, for me, all I can say is that I want to be more like Jesus. I want to do better. I want to improve. I want to see those places where I’m acting like the leader of the synagogue and I’m wrong. I want to correct those errors. And for now, I guess I’ll just have to keep reading this bible and start asking myself some harder questions. And I’ll need to ask God to help me see those places where I am or have been wrong and need to change. Afterall,
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” — Winston Churchill
Song: Broken vessels (Amazing grace)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
Prayers of the people
O God, we place our hope and trust in your loving kindness. Because we want to praise you with more than words, we offer our gifts to support Christ’s mission in the world. Bless these gifts and our lives, so that all the world will know your loving kindness.
Lord God, loving God, gather us into your presence as we pray.
Silence our hearts and minds in these moments so that we may listen for the movement of your Holy Spirit who prays within us through our sighs too deep for words.
O God, we lay before you our thanks and our concerns as we remember those who have come to our attention through conversations or chance encounters this week.
We offer gratitude for moments of joy and goodness, and remember pleasures stirred by your Spirit.
We remember all those whose situations are very close to our hearts today, those facing stress or sorrow, those challenged by pain or illness, those making a new beginning or searching for a new path.
We remember the things in the news lately that concern us deeply: the stress on the environment and worries about its future, the pressures on those who have lost jobs or cannot find work, the pain of those who meet discrimination or hatred in daily life, tensions among nations who threaten each other.
And we remember one another, and needs known and unknown in this community.
Bless us as we make a new beginning together as summer turns to autumn.
Show us the paths of ministry you are opening before us. And show us those places where we have allowed for too rigid a stance.
We believe you hear our prayers and will be faithful to answer according to your will.
Song: I the Lord of sea and sky (592)
Sending out with God’s blessing
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with each one of you, and with all those whom you love, and with all those whom God loves, both this day, and every day. Amen.
Response: The blessing
Music postlude
————————————————————————-
Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2025) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.
Video recordings of the Sunday Worship messages can be found here on our YouTube Channel.