August 24, 2025: Purpose Arising from God’s Heart

Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

Purpose Arising from God’s Heart

Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

given for the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church

August 24, 2025: Luke 13:10-17; Isaiah 58:9-14

What is Christianity actually about? There is a lot of understandable confusion about that given how very differently people who call themselves Christians believe and feel and act about any number of subjects.  But if you go back to our scriptures there are a few themes that resound like a heartbeat over and over again in scripture, that remind us what really matters, that remind us why we are here. These themes have resounded for millennia, across vast stretches of time and space in every corner of the globe, far beyond our current political and socioeconomic environment. They are eternal because they arise from the heart of God. What are they?

In Psalm 146, the Psalmist says this:

Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, who made heaven and earth, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers; the Lord upholds the orphan and the widow.

The prophet Isaiah says this (Isaiah 61:1-3):

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.

And Jesus quotes this very passage in Luke’s gospel, which is where today’s gospel reading comes from. He takes it as his manifesto, his mission statement. Jesus says his purpose is to do five things: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And then the rest of Luke’s gospel shows Jesus doing these very things, including in today’s gospel story where Jesus heals a woman who had been bent double so that she can stand tall again, so that she can be whole and free and self-sufficient and no longer crippled and in pain.

So these things—good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, food for the hungry, letting the oppressed go free—these are the themes that repeat many times in scripture and they are what we are about. They are why we are here.  They are why we are here in every dimension of human existence: physically, emotionally, spiritually.

I am saying these things because there is so much noise in this world. There is so much angst and so much distress. There is rage and contempt and pointing the finger in every plane of our religious and political and social lives. There are people starving in Gaza and there are immigrants in cages in the Everglades. And underneath all this, there is a sweet refrain, a beautiful purpose, the great meaning of all our scriptures and the person of Jesus: to bring love and healing and justice in this world. That is all. It actually is that simple, even though it is anything but easy. If we let all the noise of the world die down and listen to the still, small voice, the voice of the Spirit of Christ whispering in our core selves, we can have peace and purpose no matter what storms are raging in the world.

Let us view today’s gospel story through this lens, the lens of Jesus’ purpose and the purpose of the God of the prophets. So there is this woman who is bent double, quite unable to stand up straight. She has been this way for eighteen years, which is a very long time to be unable to stand tall. She must have been a beggar, because surely she could not work. And you notice that she does not ask Jesus to heal her. She is just there at the periphery of the crowd. And Jesus interrupts the service and calls her over, lays his hands on her and heals her. The leader of the synagogue gets upset because he thinks the people in the crowd who need healing should come the other six days of the week and not on the sabbath. But Jesus says that they all break the sabbath even for animals, so that animals can have food and drink, and why would they not do what was necessary to liberate this woman from her terrible bondage no matter what day it was?

But even more deeply, what was the sabbath about in the first place? The sabbath, this day we still honor on Sundays, began in the wilderness more than three thousand years ago, just after the people of Israel had been liberated from slavery in Egypt. God gave Moses the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, which include a command to keep the sabbath. Imagine that. Imagine people who had been slaves for 400 years being liberated by God, and then having this same God say to you “from now on, you may not work one day in every seven – you and your animals and servants must all rest.” I am guessing that as slaves they had not been given any days of rest. Imagine the liberation and joy and relief knowing that regular rest was going to be part of the new normal. This is the context in which God instituted the sabbath: this theme of liberation, that people should be free to be whole and to thrive, that no one should own or control another person, that regular rhythms of work and rest should be part of a community that lives close to its God.

And Jesus remembers the purpose of sabbath, and he allows nothing to prevent him from embodying his compassion through concrete action. He does not allow religious tradition to work at cross purposes with itself. He sees this suffering woman and he does what is necessary to liberate her so that she can thrive. We are to walk through this world doing the same thing. Allowing God in Christ to liberate us from whatever prevents us from being whole in body, mind and spirit. Then walking through the world seeing those who are oppressed and captive, dropping keys everywhere to people in cages, to people who are bound.

Who or what in your life is like this woman who is bent double, quite unable to stand up straight? Who is in need of liberation and healing so that they can thrive? How might you be part of that liberation? The love and healing power of God are available to us. We do not have to generate this power ourselves; it flows from the heart of God. Each of us can do small things every day, small acts of kindness, small shifts in attitude and expressions of support so that we fulfill our baptismal covenant to “seek and serve Christ in all people.” We can pray for God’s healing and liberation for ourselves and for others.

There may be people in your lives who remind you of this woman, bent double, severely limited in body or mind or spirit. I know most of us do not think of ourselves as healers like Jesus. But it would be a mistake to think we can do nothing. We can allow ourselves to fill with the compassion of God’s own heart. We can allow ourselves to imagine that liberation and wholeness are possible for them, even if we don’t know or can’t imagine exactly what that can look like. And then we can pray, and open ourselves to the power of the Spirit, and pay attention to the opportunities that arise to be agents of liberation and healing for them, trusting that God can do abundantly far more than all that we can ask or imagine.

Trust the heart of God, and the purposes of God for liberation. Trust that the mission and manifesto of Jesus to proclaim good news to the poor and release to the captives and food for the hungry are very much alive and the same today as they always have been. Have joy that you can be about something positive and immensely powerful in this world, with God’s help. Thanks be to God. Amen.

10am Service