Luke 13:10-17
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
August 31, 2025
Many scriptures urge us to wait on the Lord.
But why do we have to? Has God grown slow in His old age and needs some time to get up to speed? Or has God lost interest and needs to stir up in Himself the motivation and energy to respond?
Both ideas are absurd! Though God is ancient of days, He retains His infinite strength for eternity and, though we give Him reasons to give up on us, He keeps caring about us with everlasting concern.
God is love, and God loves to love us. Jeremiah 32:41 says God takes joy in blessing us; Psalm 35:27 says God delights in making things right for us. Thus, God can’t wait to do what’s best for us and is ever eager to lavish upon us what’ll be of maximum benefit to us.
That God can’t wait to bless us doesn’t mean that we won’t have to wait for a blessing. For a blessing may need time to become all it can be for us. I’ve known people who have prayed long and hard for a promotion at work only to see that promotion delayed again and again, but who ended up thanking God for all the delays because they gave opportunity for certain things at work to fall into place and make the promotion, when it finally came, all the better for all the waiting for it.
The God who can’t wait to bless us may also delay the arrival of His blessing us because He’s waiting on us to mature into the kind of people who can make the most of the gift He yearns to give us. I’ve known people who have had to wait for a special relationship until they’d grown up enough to sustain such a relationship and make it equally special for the other person as well.
So the God who can’t wait to give good gifts may have to wait, sometimes for the gift to develop and realize its full potential and sometimes for its recipient to develop and realize their full potential. Because God has strong character and self-discipline, He will – despite His eagerness to give the gift right away – hold out for the best possible moment to bestow it. He’ll delay until we’ve become right for it and it has become right for us. But once that moment arrives, He won’t waste a second to bestow the gift. For then to give it quickly is to give it with twice the benefit.
Jesus was in that context the day He taught a crowd in a synagogue and healed a disfigured woman. Jesus, even when He was with a lot of people, always had an eye to spot the ones in exceptional need. So he noticed this woman overlooked by others due to her short, shrunk-down stature. For she had “a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years” and caused her to be “bent over” and “unable to stand up straight”. In a society that already disparaged the value of women due to their gender, this stooped-over woman was dismissed and disregarded by many – but not by Jesus! That small woman’s well-being was big on His heart.
It is noteworthy that Luke makes no mention of her having any kind of faith, and Luke reports her neither approaching Jesus nor asking anything of Him. It appears her miracle occurred entirely at Jesus’ initiative. He saw her, called her over and told her before she could say a word that she was about to be “set free from your ailment.” Then He laid hands on her and “immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” Jesus enabled this demeaned person to stand up, tall and proud, and gave her standing and dignity, as “a daughter of Abraham”, to glorify God in the synagogue before all the people.
By contrast, the leader of the synagogue gave neither God nor the woman any honor, but only criticized Jesus for violating the sabbath. For, to his thinking, the sabbath was a day of pure rest, free of work, and working a miracle was, well, work. And to him it made Jesus’ “sin” even worse that there was no rush to heal her right away, as she’d already suffered from her crippling affliction for 18 years and it would’ve done her no significant harm if Jesus had waited to work His miracle for her a few more hours.
But Jesus “couldn’t wait”, and saw no reason to try. To Jesus fulfilling the spirit of mercy mattered more than adhering to the letter of the law. Moreover, Jesus knew that God’s law provided exceptions to the no-work-on-the-sabbath rule. On a hot dry day it allowed people to free a thirsty ox tied to a post in order to lead it to water. Surely then, Jesus reasoned, one could free a daughter of Abraham tied to a grievous disability in order to lead her into new life and new standing in society! Jesus never forgot that the sabbath was given, not to burden the distressed, but to break them loose from their distress; and thus that that traditional protocols should defer to higher priorities. It made no sense to let unnecessary suffering and oppression continue until later if it could be ended today. If a big blessing is at stake, it can’t wait!
Valuing the sanctity of rules above the sanctity of human life is not unique to religion. One hot Chicago evening in 1998, a 15-year-old Black boy named Christopher Sercy was playing basketball half a block from Ravenswood Hospital. Three Latino gang bangers, looking for trouble, approached Sercy and shot him in the stomach. His frantic friends carried him to within 30 feet of the hospital; but, growing weak from his weight and fearing they were aggravating his injury, they ran inside to get help in bringing him in. But the ER staff refused to go outside to assist the wounded boy, citing a policy that only let them help those who were inside the hospital. Desperate, the boys sent someone to a nearby police station to ask for help. Upon their arrival, the officers called for an ambulance but held back from picking up Sercy, who was now bleeding out, because their regulations forbade their further involvement. When the ambulance was slow in showing up, the officers finally defied their orders and carried Sercy into the ER. But, by then, it was too late, and the boy died on the gurney.
To follow the God-Man who can’t wait to help people, His disciples must defy the rules if lives are in danger.
And lives all around us are in spiritual danger.
Let us then imitate Jesus and let go of the traditions and ways people tell us must be followed, so that no one will have to wait for the help we offer in the name of the One who can’t wait to bless everyone!
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