Proper 16, Year C | Luke 13:10-17
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
August 24, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page (available for three weeks after the date of streaming).
“Ought not this woman…be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” – Luke 13:16[1]
There are different ways we can approach the Bible when we read it. For the course of most of Church history, there were four primary models, or “senses,” for interpreting what it tells us in hope of applying it to our lives in an appropriate way.
One is looking at the text with an eye to how it’s talking about either Jesus or the Consummation of Time (aka. the End of the World).[2] This is what you see when people talk about finding Christ in the Hebrew Bible or attempting to read supposed “end times” concepts onto past or current realities. Second is reading with an eye toward what’s right and wrong,[3] essentially the idea of how whatever passage we’re looking at shows us God’s expectations in regard to how people ought to behave. Third is the notion that everything means something and our job is to find the parallels between whatever the text is saying—including things like chapter after chapter-long lists of names—and how our own lives might reflect core realities sometimes obscured within the words.[4]
The fourth traditional method of reading the Bible is called the Literal Sense—which is not the same as what today calls itself Biblical Literalism, but we’ll get to that in a minute. With the Literal Sense, one looks at the words on the page and considers what’s called the “plain meaning.” Throughout Church history, this has actually been the least popular method of interpretation, with some simply considering it too boring and others realizing that it takes extensive knowledge of often obscure background information to be able to directly apply and even understand what exactly particular events or statements may have meant in someone else’s culture and time. Recognizing not only the danger but the hubris of making absolute declarations of “what the Bible says,” most people have simply found it easier to interpret passages along the three other lines.
About 150 years or so ago, a new method of reading, known as Biblical Literalism, began to grow more and more prominent in Western understanding of how one ought to approach the Bible. On its face, Biblical Literalism sounds like a good thing: the Bible means exactly what the text actually says. And I think most people would agree that, yes, the Bible does mean what it says. The problem with this method of interpretation is that it ignores most of the context within which the texts appeared and arose, simply presuming that modern thought, context, and culture is identical to how people thought, understood the universe to work, and lived in the ancient world.
While it’s true that people behave in broadly similar patterns throughout time, we need to recognize that knowledge and understanding grow and change throughout the ages, meaning no one era or society is truly identical to another. Rejecting the reality of the differences and of developments over the course of history is not only foolish but allows vast amounts of opinion, propaganda, and straight up lies to masquerade as so-called “truth.”
Actual truth is, there have always been different ways of understanding and interpreting what the Bible says—even before the Church existed! We can actually see that at work in our Gospel passage today.
Jesus heals a woman who’s been trapped with a hunch or some other painful stoop for 18 years. This event takes place on the sabbath—the traditional day of worship, rest, and overall stillness incumbent upon the descendants of Israel. The head of the synagogue gets wind of what Jesus is doing and, as a leader of that era’s Moral Majority, steps up to rebuke the people for daring to look for healing on this special day.[5] With an eye toward shutting down Jesus’ activity, they announce, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”[6]
On the surface, this sounds like a simple, even obvious, statement. By this point in history, Jewish culture had developed norms around what it looked like to “work” on the sabbath versus what might be considered “rest.” Presuming that “rest” involves various forms of inactivity, the leader’s proto-Biblical Literalism tells him that healing involves work; work is forbidden; therefore, healing is forbidden.
Jesus’ response, however, shows a different method of interpretation at play. Rather than focusing on the Mosaic restrictions regarding “work” on the sabbath, he instead turns to prophets like Isaiah, who reference the sabbath in terms of liberation: the sabbath doesn’t exist so you or I as an individual don’t have to work every single day of the week; it exists so our neighbors don’t have to work all the time. If your neighbor is in distress or facing difficult circumstances, then it’s necessary for each of us, as their fellow child of God and God’s Image-bearer, to find ways that allow them to rest. If that means taking care of their animals so neither the people nor other living beings suffer, then its my responsibility to take care of those animals. If that means putting together a team to lift a fallen tree off someone’s house, then I should take on that project, even on the sabbath. And if that means I can relieve someone else’s long-term illness or lighten their longstanding burden, then I observe the sabbath by taking on that work for their behalf.
Both interpretations may be considered “literal,” as both have texts to which they can point. And we could take the unfortunate path of reading them as competing narratives, forcing us to choose between a “right” and “wrong” way of doing things or honoring God. But in reality, the two are intended to complement one another, the second clarifying the often dominant over-literal interpretation of the first. Both attempt to offer respect to God, but only by recognizing the significance of the second and living into its message can we reflect God’s actual nature. God gives. God supports. God is compassionate. God is generous. God evidences love through action, uplifting and providing for all Creation, not just six days a week, but even on the sabbath.
“Ought not” any individual—whether woman or man or person or minority or majority or foreigner or neighbor or friend or enemy—“be set free from…bondage on the sabbath day?”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] The Anagogical Sense
[3] The Moral Sense
[4] The Allegorical Sense
[5] We should also note that the text doesn’t suggest the woman was actively looking to be healed; Jesus is the one who initiates the interaction.
[6] Luke 13:14