Proper 16 (August 21-27)
Texts: Luke 13:10-17;
Isa 58:9b-14; Heb 12:18-29
YouTube: https://youtu.be/w3IKrA-ID0Q
Sermon Take-Home Notes
DOUBLING DOWN ON THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD’S HEALING
It’s a bonus day for Gospel Readings! On this day when we focus on healing, we get two healing stories for the price of one. The first is the one I just read, about Jesus healing a woman bent over by a spirit for eighteen years. It’s the Gospel assigned for today in the lectionary. The second story is not in the lectionary. I won’t read it, but I’ve printed it for you, side by side with the first on, in the Sermon Notes. Especially, if you look at the outline version you can see how similar the two stories are.
The second story tells how Jesus heals a man with dropsy, or bloating, what we might diagnose today as edema, or water retention. But in the ancient world “dropsy” was a blanket term for being bloated for any cause which led to illness. Dropsy was also associated with being rich, with living a lifestyle of greed and over-consumption. This story, coming only a few verses after the one about the woman bent-over, is a twin to it.
As you can see from the outline version in your Sermon Notes, they follow the exact same pattern, only a few verses apart. Both take place on the sabbath. Both occasion challenges to Jesus, one stated and the other implied, to his healing on the sabbath. Jesus responds in the same way to both, asking whether or not they would help their children or farm animals when they need help on the sabbath. Both stories end with his opponents looking bad and keeping quiet.
There’s another thing helpful to know about these twin healing stories. Together they open the second of six encounters of Jesus with Rich Men in the middle of Luke’s Gospel — this second encounter comprised by our Gospels this week and next. Given, the association of dropsy to being greedy, the story of the man healed of dropsy is itself a story of Jesus healing a rich man. Its setting is also significant. It takes place as Jesus is about to dine at the home of a leader of the Pharisees, a wealthy man. Next week we will see Jesus giving wisdom to the wealthy about where to sit at dinner parties and who to invite in the first place. The story of healing the woman bent over, who likely is poor, is a prelude to the Second Rich Man Sequence. It provides a contrast as Luke’s Jesus is about to have another encounter with rich folks.
Which brings us to the double bonus nature of this week’s twin healing Gospels. They are not just two healings, but the stories of the healing of two bodies at the same time. Jesus doesn’t just heal the woman bent-over and the man with dropsy. He sets them free. He is liberating them. In the case of the woman, Jesus elaborates that she has been in bondage to Satan for eighteen years. In the Gospels, Satan is the figure of the powers-to-be in our social worlds — naming the ways in which those in authority practice control by dividing and conquering. So these two healing stories also give us the healing of two different bodies: our physical bodies but also our social bodies, that is, the social dimension of who each of us are.
What’s a “social” body? It’s the body politic of the communities in which we live that greatly affect our physical bodies. We grow up in communities and cultures which tell us how to feel about our bodies? Are we attractive or unattractive? There’s influences all around us that shape the way we see ourselves, right? There’s also the basic things we’re taught about how to dress our bodies, how to feed our bodies, and how to take care of our bodies. I think this is most crucial when we are teenagers, which is why the social media today can shape the social bodies of our teens in ways from which they need liberating. We need to find ways to protect them from too many negative influences that can lead them into depression and even suicide. Having our teens set free from such harm to their social bodies is serious business indeed.
But for all of us there’s another way in which our body politic greatly affects the health of our physical bodies. How does greed on the part of the wealthy impinge on the availability of good healthcare for everyone else? I invite you to ponder the crucial connection between the health of our physical bodies and the health of the part of our social body which is the healthcare system. How available is healthcare to us? And can we afford it? The wealthy can usually afford the best available healthcare. How about the rest of us? This, I believe, is the main challenge which Jesus is setting for us in this Second Rich Man Sequence. How can we transform our the politics and economics of our social body to justly give healthcare for everyone? Jesus, as the bringer of God’s reign into the world, came to heal our body politics, too. He came to set us free from the affects of greed on our systems of healthcare. And do you know what? Humankind is actually making progress in this respect. In all the other industrialized nations — except for ours — universal healthcare has already become a a primary goal in making health affordable and available to everyone.
So here’s what I believe about that. Today’s double bonus Gospel Readings about Jesus not only healing physical bodies but also setting free social bodies should prompt us to see our healthcare system as a scandal. We’ve made some progress, but we still have a long ways to go in liberating our healthcare system from the negative affects of greed. The passing of the recent Big Morally Repugnant Bill is another example, as it plans major cuts to Medicaid for after next year’s mid-term elections. We have work to do in advocating not only to reverse those cuts, but also to continue to speak up for healthcare as a human right for everyone.
What can we do? I look back on July 2017, when Congress tried to cut the Affordable Care Act, which would have left millions without insurance once again. It came down to being a tie in the Senate, with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski crossing the aisle to vote no on cutting it. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, John McCain famously gave a thumbs down, voting no. [Photo in the Sermon Notes.] The Affordable Care Act was saved. Millions of people were set free in their social bodies to continue their needed care.
But that John McCain thumbs down didn’t happen magically. Millions of people were free enough to make their voices heard. Hundreds of people were arrested protesting right in the capitol office buildings. One group of protestors remains memorable for me, especially given the picture of Jesus healing the bent-over woman, enabling her to stand up straight. This group of protesters — led by a young man with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, named Ady Barkan — were wheel-chair bound. In their physical bodies, they were literally bent-over and could not stand up straight. But in their social bodies, they were set free to metaphorically stand up straight to have their voices be heard. They needed that insurance which the ACA provides. Their lives, and the lives of their families, depended on it. It was an amazing sight to see some of them even arrested. The poor capitol police were made to force them out of their chairs and carry them away to jail. [Photo in the Sermon Notes.] It was their freedom to speak out, and the voices of so many others which liberated millions from having to suffer the greed of cutting the ACA. Will we make our voices heard over the next weeks and months as millions face the loss of Medicaid?
Siblings in Christ, on this Healing Sunday, we come to pray for the healing of our physical bodies. I believe we also come to pray for the promised liberation of our social bodies from the affects of greed on our healthcare systems. Jesus offered up his own body on the cross — as we remind ourselves in a few bodies, “My body broken for you” — so that he might confront the powers of greed and violence that not only inflict our physical bodies but also enslave our social bodies. He confronted the powers-to-be not just for the promise of life-after-death but more importantly for liberation from deadly powers like greed in this life. With his suffering and resurrection, we are not only healed but set free. How will we express that freedom, live that freedom, in confronting the deadly powers of greed in our own time and place? Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, August 24, 2025
YouTube: https://youtu.be/w3IKrA-ID0Q
Sermon Take-Home Notes
