Sermon for August 16th
Sermon for August 16, 2026
You must wonder where the priorities of the world are sometimes. We live in a world of increasing pressure. The population increases and continues to put strain on the world's resources. Proper sustenance, shelter and medical care seem increasingly difficult to secure on a global level. More and more people go without. Stories of such situations stalk the news. Yet things really don't seem to change. The priorities of the world, priorities that we find ourselves often immersed in, are not centered on the increasing need of our world and how we should deal with that need. Rather, global priorities remain focused on material gain and securing that gain and power through any necessary means. The ways in which many in our world suffer when others are finding ways to increase their wealth are not often addressed in serious ways, because the practices that are causing the destruction of so much in our world have not really changed. We still use up resources at an alarming rate. We still buy into a system that lets many do without. We still war upon each other and continue developing new and better ways to war upon each other. We are still letting this happen. We are centered not on the good of our world when we do so, but on what we see to be necessary. We don't want to rock the boat too much. After all, the boat may be leaking, but it is all we have. So, we shouldn't upset the system. Even when the voices of many cry out for healing and relief from their suffering. Even we are asked to be courageous and step out of the boat to experience something new, to live in a different way. What is proper, what is necessary, must take precedence.
This idea of maintaining what is proper and necessary occurs in the Gospel lesson for today. We find Jesus teaching in the synagogue. Yet even as he is doing so, he does not fail to notice the woman who has been afflicted for so long. In the middle of whatever he is doing, he stops, calls her over and heals her, even before she asks. The result is that the leader of the synagogue, so intent and focused on what should be done, criticizes Jesus' act, labeling it as improper. Jesus should never have healed the woman on the Sabbath.
How many times have we heard the accusation of “improper” behavior issued against someone who spoke out and acted against the perceived “norm” for the good of another or a community or the world?” There have been many who have done so. Mother Theresa. Martin Luther King Jr. Ghandi. Nelson Mandela. Each in their own way saw how many in this world suffered and tried to reach out to ease that suffering. But rather than look at what that healing might mean, many echoed the leader's sentiment. This action is improper. It goes against how things are done. How dare anyone challenge the system in such a way? We might not think that way about these figures now, but there are others who seek healing for the world who continue to upset the many who do not want to rock the boat.
When faced with one making such accusations against him, Jesus does not back down. Instead, he reverses the leader's words, challenging him to look at his own priorities. “You do indeed work on the Sabbath. You just will not lift a hand to help this woman. Why? Why should she, who has suffered so long, continue to suffer? To let her do so makes you the hypocrite.”
Jesus' actions are a challenge to anyone who is part of this world and who sees the world around them and still chooses to ignore the cries for healing, for comfort, for relief from suffering. He challenges the priorities that would allow people to ignore the cries from their midst. He challenges us.
And he demonstrates the nature of healing. It knows no boundaries and it can transform lives. When one or a thousand cry out, it should indeed be our priority to reach out and offer our hand in comfort and in love. It is not our place to ignore the one suffering within our midst.
But beyond that, Christ's actions demonstrate a fundamental truth about God. God knows no boundaries. God's love and healing cannot be restrained. God explodes into life, unrestricted, unfettered. This healing can come in many ways, but its culmination comes in the form of Jesus Christ, who healed our bondage to death itself and granted us salvation. Christ shows us God's infinite love which knows no bounds and which both heals us and challenges us.
God's love demonstrates to us the need to re-prioritize our lives. We cannot be so hung up on what is “proper” or “necessary” when often those ideas only help perpetuate a system where the suffering are left to suffer, and we are unable to see what is truly necessary, namely to trust in God who brings healing into our lives and who loves us in spite of the boundaries we would like to erect between what is safe and what God calls us forward to do. For we are to share that healing which God has given us to the world. Wealth, war, and our own desires can no longer be what drive us. Instead, we must stop and hear the world crying out for healing and then go beyond our self-imposed boundaries to the world.
I have always appreciated the novel “Of Mice and Men” for the images it conveys of healing and of community. In the novel, the dream of two men, George and Lenny, ends up uniting not only their own lives, but the lives of the stable hand Crooks and the old ranch worker Candy. It is in the hope of this shared dream that each man finds healing. Crooks, an African American with a disabled back, is brought into this community when no one else gives him any notice, except to scorn him. Candy, an older man who lost his hand in a farming accident, loses his only friend, an old dog, and soon starts to question whether he has any use. But as the plan to buy their own farm starts to become more real, he finds purpose again. Lenny, a man of enormous physical strength but who has a developmental disability, delights in the idea of a real home and rabbits to care for and cherish. George, although physically healthy, finds a sense of real independence in the dream that the four share. They have found healing in their shared community together. Although that dream is torn apart in the end, the healing that takes place for these four men when they abandon what was “proper” and “necessary” for that time, namely looking out for only themselves and leaving behind any who would be a “hindrance”, is very profound.
What would such healing look like for us if we also put aside thus perceived “necessities” and truly followed Christ's example in the world? What kind of healing could the Spirit inspire within our midst?
Our prayer for individual healing today becomes a prayer for healing for the entire world. For as Christ enters our hearts, to refresh and renew us, so we can go forward, empowered by God to reach out for the healing of the world. “Sometimes we feel discouraged and think our work is in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives our souls again. So let us never be discouraged, for Jesus is our friend and if we lack the knowledge, he'll never refuse to lend. For there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.”
Amen