Through the lens of the gospel, today’s texts offer a clear identification of God’s work. What is God doing? God is reaching out to the bound-up to proclaim release from captivity. God is lifting up the oppressed. God is satisfying the needs of the afflicted. God raises up foundations. God restores and rebuilds, reconciles and sets free. God, whose word can shake the very foundations of the earth, speaks a better word than we’ve ever heard, or that we could ever speak. Like yeast that’s included in bread dough or the seed of a particularly stubborn weed sown in the garden (Luke 13:18-21), when God speaks, there’s no going back. The bread will be leavened; the garden will have a mustard bush; and precious daughters and sons of Abraham will be set free. It is God’s work and God’s activity that Isaiah calls us to be about. Why is the prophet so confident that light will conquer darkness and needs will be satisfied? Because this is already God’s work, or as the prophet says, because “the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
These texts focus us on the verbs, the actions, of God. When we’re attuned to the verbs of God within passages like these, it might make it easier to see and give witness to God’s work and the verbs around us right now.
Luke 13:10-17
Jesus heals a woman on the sabbath, offering her a new beginning for her life. When challenged by a narrow reading of the sabbath command, Jesus responds by expanding “sabbath work” to include setting people free from bondage.
10Now [Jesus] 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. 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. 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.” 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?” 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.