Sermon for Sunday, August 24, 2025, Straighten Up!

August 24, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Luke 13:10-17




Here’s Jesus doing what he’s done throughout the Gospel of Luke. He’s teaching in a synagogue—check. He’s healing people—check. The one who is healed praises God—check. He’s angering the religious authorities—double check.


It feels so familiar, and it is—but it is also significant to the narrative in Luke. Today’s reading is the last time in the book of Luke that Jesus will teach in a synagogue, in first century his bodily incarnation at least.

The woman doesn’t ask Jesus for healing. She has no relatives to petition on her behalf. But she’s not cast out of her community, the way that some of Jesus’ recipients of healing have been. We can safely assume that she’s welcome to worship in the synagogue, even if she can’t stand up straight. Unlike other healings, Jesus takes the initiative.

Jesus is the one who decides she needs healing, and this approach is different from his past approaches. It’s not like the Syro-Phoenician woman who has to argue her case to be seen as worthy of having her child healed. Unlike the time when the bleeding woman touched the fringe of his cloak and caused power to flow out of Jesus without his consent, Jesus is in control here.

We might say, “Way to go Jesus! I like this version of you! Maybe next you could toss those moneychangers out of the Temple!” He’ll do that in Chapter 19, and in some ways, that chapter has more in common with this healing of the bent woman than the previous healings and teachings that Jesus has done in the synagogues so far.

Notice that Jesus isn’t rejecting organized religion, the religion of his ancestors. Throughout his ministry, he returns to the centers of organized religion, not to lead people away, but to bring them back to the core essence of what it means to be people of God. He’s there to remind them of the ways that religion as an institution needs to straighten up.

In some ways, this story reminds me of Martha, who has gotten so caught up in the tasks of diaconia, the work of discipleship, that she’s lost sight of the larger picture—much the way this bent woman cannot see much further ahead than her feet. Mary, Martha’s sister, has chosen wisely. Martha blusters at Jesus, much the way the synagogue leader does.

We might feel some sympathy with the this man who questions Jesus’ timing. I know that I do. I imagine how I would respond if in the middle of this sermon, one of you picked up a guitar and plugged it into an amplifier and started praising God in that way. I’d be more than annoyed. I’d try to get you to wait until the offering was being taken up—then you could play your song and praise God in a less disruptive way, at a time in the service where people would be expecting it. And if you did something even more miraculous? I might need to call Bishop Strickland for a consult to see how to proceed in the face of the miraculous. But in the meantime, I’d try to maneuver the worship service back to more familiar terrain—that’s why we have a liturgy, after all. And later, Jesus might show up in my thoughts, telling me to straighten up, gently asking me why I so often do not choose the best part so that I can do what is expected of me.

Even if we’re not religious leaders in our Monday to Saturday lives, we’re probably more similar to the religious leader in this story than we might like. There is good news in this—we’re not alone in our affliction. Again and again, Jesus preaches that rigid obedience to rules and tradition and the way we think the world must be—these are the things blinding us to the evidence of God at work in the world.

The language that Jesus uses in this confrontation with a religious leader is slightly different than language that he’s used in the past. Listen again to verse 16: “And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”

Jesus uses the language of liberation, freedom from bondage. We may hear the word bondage and think of sin and confession: “we confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves.” This would not have been true for first century listeners. They would hear the word bondage and think about being enslaved in Egypt and being set free from the forces of the Pharoah.

Jesus is not suggesting that it is the religious officials themselves who have enslaved the woman, in the way that Pharaoh enslaved their ancestors. But here he asks, once again, about the role that rigid obedience to rules and traditions plays in our lives. Here again, he warns us of how that blind obedience can keep us from seeing the ways that God is at work in the world. Jesus calls us to straighten up. Jesus comes to set us free from the forces that want to keep us bent over, looking at the dust.

Those forces won’t always look like Pharaoh. Pharoah’s forces have the benefit of being easy to recognize. In our current day, when we enjoy freedoms that first century humans couldn’t even imagine, Pharaoh’s forces are more likely to be the societal institutions that try to keep us away from what is life giving. Those forces aligned against Jesus too, and make no mistake, those powers and principalities are still at work in our world.

But this week, as with a few weeks ago in the story of Mary and Martha, Jesus warns us about the habits and traditions that come from institutions that might seem to have our best interests at heart, but really would prefer that we stay stooped over, never seeing the sun.

And let’s be honest, often the one keeping us in bondage is ourselves. What would we do, as individuals, as the Church, as citizens, as Christians, if we believed, TRULY believed that we are already set free to live in a more bold and outstretched way in our particular time and location?

In this last time teaching in the synagogue, Jesus’ message takes on urgency. By the end of chapter 13, just 14 verses later, the Pharisees come to warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. This is not news to him. He’s been on this collision path for a long time, and he knows that he doesn’t have much longer.

Jesus has told us that we, too, are on a collision course if we’re truly following him. We might be on a collision course with the people in charge, or maybe we’re colliding with old ideas, traditions, and ways of living our lives that no longer serve us.

Take heart. Jesus promises us that if we lose our life, we will paradoxically find it. And just think again about this story. Would you rather be the respectable religious leader, asking Jesus to hold off on miracles for another day or two, when it’s more appropriate? Or would you rather be the set free from the bondage of what forces are keeping you bent over?

We may hear the term “Straighten up” and think about all the ways we need to improve, all the rules we’ve broken and now we need to get back on the straight and narrow. We may think of the Martha types in our lives who tell us how we must behave, how we will be free if we just behave.

Jesus comes along to remind us that we’re already free, if we would but claim what is the good part of a life, as did Mary, the sister of Martha, as did the crowd in this story, who praised God knowing that Jesus is the announcement that our deliverance day is here.

Straighten up. Our day of liberation is at hand—today and every day.