(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “You Need a Miracle”, originally shared on August 20, 2025. It was the 373rd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
When most people say that they need a miracle, they’re expressing
desperation. They’re taking a long shot or throwing up a “Hail Mary”. None of
these are what miracles are about. Today, we’re going to find out why.
Have
you ever been sick for a really long time? Or even just a couple weeks? Do you
remember what it felt like when you started getting better? And when you were
healed? Though today we might be more inclined to say “cured”?
Do
you remember how you suddenly had the energy and enthusiasm that you didn’t
know you had? How you saw things with new eyes?
Projects you had been putting off now went to the top of the list.
People you hadn’t spent time with for a while now became important. Where you
wondered if you would ever feel good again, now you were happy!
Your
values changed.
Life seemed more real, more like what it was supposed to be. You went
back to church and you were, what, grateful?
We
see all these things in Luke 13:10-17, only backwards, and with
different people, and with different things pushed to the center of our
attention.
The event takes place in one of the synagogues in the towns and villages
north of Jerusalem. Jesus was on His way to trial, humiliation, torture and
death on the cross.
It’s the sabbath day and, typical of Jesus’ time, most of the synagogue
service consisted of teaching. In fact, the structure of the worship service
used by Jesus was Gathering, Word, and Sending, exactly as the structure we use
today, only with the addition of “Meal”.
Jesus
sat down to teach. The word “Rabbi” means “teacher” and, typically, a scroll
from the Bible (what we would call the Old Testament) would be given to the
most learned man present, who would read a section and then teach its meaning
to those gathered (women were barely allowed to learn, much less to teach).
I
remember hearing about a study of human healing when I was in seminary. The
leaders of the study were trying to find out when a patient’s healing process
began. Was it when seeing the doctor? Being given a name for their condition?
Was it being told that a course of treatment was available? Filling a
prescription? Taking the medication?
Having the medication take effect?
The study found that it was none of
these things. The researchers discovered that the healing process began as soon
as a person decided to see the doctor. Healing begins with hope and action.
That’s where we see the woman in this text, Luke 13:10-17, the
Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the
world this coming Sunday.
Woody Allen is credited with saying that 80% of success in life is just
showing up.
That’s what the woman did. Jesus didn’t seek her out. Jesus didn’t ask
for sick people to come forward. She just appeared.
The woman, and we can only call her “the woman” because in the
patriarchal age in which Jesus lived as both divine and human, she is given no
name. Women weren’t viewed as being important. Except to Jesus.
She just “appeared”, our reading says, bent over and unable to stand up
straight. She had been like this for 18 years! She didn’t say anything. She
just stood up before Jesus.
Luke includes more stories of physical healing than are in any other
Gospel. Perhaps this is because Luke was a doctor. He begins with Jesus and
then he describes “the patient”.
We
see this in Luke 13:10-11,
10Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on
the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a
spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was
quite unable to stand up straight.
The first thing we are told about the woman is that she had come to the
synagogue at a time when women were only allowed to sit at the back or in the
balcony, apart from the men. And we see that she didn’t ask for healing. She
just came to the service. The next thing we learn is that she had a spirit that
had crippled her for eighteen years. This is not a good thing. 😊
I think
that the worst advice that I ever received on how to improve my golf game, when
I was playing golf, was that adage, “Never leave a birdie putt short.” I think
it means to be bold under pressure. But I found that what it meant for
me was that most of my birdie putts went way long! They were too bold.
The
woman in this text is bold, but not too bold. She just appears.
And
what do we learn about Jesus from his response?
First,
we see that he doesn’t see her condition. He sees her.
Second,
he heals her even though most people at the time would have believed that she,
or at least some ancestor, had sinned and that she was being punished for that
sin. Jesus makes no reference to this.
He
heals her with just his words, his will, in Luke 13:12-13,
12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said,
“Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13When he laid his
hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
What
else do we learn about Jesus?
Third,
we see that he doesn’t question the right of the woman to enter the synagogue.
He isn’t bothered that she has interrupted his teaching and the men’s learning.
Fourth,
we learn that he sees her ailment as spiritual bondage by something or someone.
And he sets her free from that bondage.
Fifth,
we learn that he called her to himself and healed her in speaking the words
saying that she is healed, as God brought everything into being, as recorded in
the first chapter of the Bible, in Genesis!
Sixth,
we learn that Jesus has power over the spirits.
And, Seventh,
from all of this, we learn about the meaning of a miracle. A miracle is not
the suspension of the laws of nature. A miracle is a glimpse into the way the
world was created to be before human rebellion against God messed it up. John
often calls them “signs”. What does a sign do? It points to something else. A
miracle is a sign pointing backwards and forwards. Backwards to the way things
were supposed to be. And forwards to the way they will be again, when Christ
returns for the Last Judgement, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.
But
there’s a problem. A problem? What’s the problem with healing someone?
The
leader of the synagogue is critical of Jesus without confronting Him directly.
We see
it in verse 14,
14But the leader of the
synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the
crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days
and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”
The
leader of the synagogue, a lay person, knew the Bible. He knew the
commandments, including the one about keeping the sabbath day holy.
Yep.
That’s not a suggestion. That’s a commandment. One of The Ten. It’s the
third of the first three, the third of the ones dealing with our relationship
with God.
We see
it for the first time in Genesis 20:8-11,
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your
work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any
work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock,
or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
The
sabbath day is holy because God made it holy.
The
third commandment was, among some people though, defined by keeping only the
letter of the law, defined down to how many steps a person could take on the
sabbath day and not be considered to be working.
How
does Jesus respond to the accusation of breaking the commandment? We see it in Luke
13:15-16,
15But the Lord answered him and said, “You
hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from
the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And 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, on another occasion, made this
statement about the keeping of the sabbath as a holy day of rest, in Mark 2:27-28,
27 Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for
humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
That is His authority.
The sabbath is a gift to us. It is given so
that we can rejoice in life, with the joy that comes only from God and can
therefore never be taken away from us.
So, the
sabbath is a day of rest. Jesus does not deny it. But he asks why it is
a day of rest? Is it not to give life, as his accusers acknowledge by their
actions, doing work to maintain the health of their animals? They didn’t want
their animals to get sick! Should not healing human sickness and ending human suffering
also be seen as acceptable on the sabbath?
Luke
concludes Jesus’ healing event with Luke 13:17,
17When he said this, all his opponents were put to
shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he
was doing.
His opponents were put to shame. But what
about everyone else?
The people were rejoicing at everything he
was doing.
And what was Jesus doing?
He was giving people a glimpse of the way
the world’s supposed to be, the way it was created to be, and the way it would
one day be again. And they ate it up! How did the woman respond? By praising
God!
They were happy! They were rejoicing!
None of them would always be happy, and they
would not always be healed by God on the spot.
But, in that moment, they saw the power of
Jesus to heal, and its meaning and its promise.
He has come to set us free from sin, death,
and from all the forces that defy God. He did it on the cross, and we
experience it in our Baptism.
Have you ever felt sick of that sin, sick of
death, sick of seeing the work of the forces that defy God? Have you ever
prayed for a miracle that you didn’t receive?
You may have heard of the TV series, “The
Chosen”. It’s a dramatization of the life of Jesus Christ. It was funded by
donations and has been mostly well received, especially for its emotional
impact.
Sally and I have watched it, and I’ve talked
about it occasionally in our media.
One, among many, of my favorite encounters
is between Jesus and a disciple who walks with a limp. The disciple asks to
speak with Jesus privately. He is being sent out to heal others, but he himself
has not been healed, and he wants Jesus to tell him why.
He doesn’t ask in anger or in an accusing
tone. He just wants to be healed, and he wants to know why Jesus hasn’t healed him.
Jesus speaks lovingly and with deep empathy
for the man. And Jesus reminds him that he has healed many people, and they
have mostly been grateful, and tell others about what God has done for them,
and they praise God. But, Jesus says, so what? Who wouldn’t praise God if they
had been blind, or deaf, or severely ill, and then they were healed by Jesus?
But, what if another person was not healed,
but still praised God! Would that not be a more powerful witness? That was the disciple’s
witness, Jesus said, but Jesus guaranteed that one day he would be completely
healed, and that he would walk and run with joy and no limping. Forever. He
promised this.
It’s kind of like the response credited to
16th century church reformer Martin Luther, who was asked how a
person could be certain of their salvation. Luther said that, if you can
imagine being condemned to hell and still loving God, you can be pretty sure of
your salvation.
Our hope is not in ourselves, not in our
efforts to keep the law, or in our belief that we are good people, or at least
not as bad as others. That is our hypocrisy.
Our hope is in the gift of faith, the living
relationship with God for which we were created, through Jesus Christ who
suffered that we might be made whole, and who died that we may live.
Are you sick of sin? Every day? Then you
need a miracle, the sign of the cross, the gift of a loving God who died
sacrificially to restore, now in part, the way things were created by God to be,
the life that we messed up in our sin, The cross that points to the to the new
heaven and the new earth that is coming.
Do you know somebody who is sick of sin,
even if they aren’t using those words? This week, I invite you to talk with
them about healing. Invite them to open their hearts, their lives, their true
selves to Jesus. Do they need a miracle, then they need the Savior.
For in Him alone is the power to be made
new. In Jesus is the power to be made a new creation, in the new life that is
actually our original life, and in the life that is to be forever. In Jesus. That’s
the miracle.
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