A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on August 24, 2025 by Revd Richard Carter
Reading for address: Luke 13: 10-17
I, like many of you I expect, find it quite hard to believe in miracles- if by miracles you mean those moments of magic people describe where through the intervention of prayer an astonishing healing or event takes place: someone is miraculously cured of cancer and the doctors cannot explain it, someone who is paralysed suddenly stands up and walks, or someone survives miraculously against the odds when everyone else is killed in a disaster and this is seen as an act of God, and an answer to prayer. I am not doubting that these things can sometimes happen but for me the problem with those kinds of miracles is all those who don’t get them. It seems almost random and unfair that God should intervene in a very direct and miraculous way for one person and not for another. If God was going to intervene in this kind of direct supernatural way, why does he not cure the cancer of someone you love? Why does he not stop women and children dying in Gaza. Why does God not help set those Israelis taken hostage free- we are all praying for them. Some may say that we need to have faith in order to be saved. But why should one be saved while others die?
So how can we understand the miracles that Jesus worked, like the miracle in today’s Gospel? I asked advice from someone who, like the woman in the story, has spent more than eighteen years of her life physically disabled and coping with a lot of pain on a fairly constant basis. ‘How do you understand this miracle of being healed after 18 years of being crippled?’ I asked. She said that she found it incredibly hard. In her own case at first she felt that she did not deserve to be healed and then she got angry with God, and then she lost her faith completely. ‘What about now?’ I ask.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I have begun to realise there is a difference between being cured and being healed and that although I may never be physically cured I have been, and am continuing to be, healed by God.’
‘What’s the difference?’ I ask her.
‘To be cured involves only our bodies and they are mortal and do break down- and all of us will eventually die. But God’s miracle of healing is about the soul- the life of the Spirit. This healing of the soul is like a spiritual unfolding. It often takes time, it takes courage, it involves opening up, an opening up of the whole of one’s life.’
I write down the words she has used, unfolding, courage, opening up- these words all seem to apply to the woman we have read about in today’s Gospel.
The miracle described in today’s Gospel speaks a truth far beyond its immediate time or context. It is a miracle not just for that one woman then but for all of us. This story is a story of human liberation. This woman at the beginning of the story is bent over, literally bowed down by eighteen years of oppression. There is a very strong sense here of the way we are cowed by suffering, carry it on our shoulders. This woman like so many of those who Jesus cures is at the bottom of the pile, so overlooked that she can no longer even look up- like the leper, the Samaritans, the sinners, she represents one of the excluded. It is significant that she meets Jesus on the edge of the synagogue on the Sabbath, the place of male patriarchy and religious power. Notice the way Jesus calls her over from the margins to take the central stage. He calls her into the centre. And his first words are words of freedom and release: ‘You are set free’. Like a slave being released from servitude. Then he lays hands on her. There is this wonderful sense of touch in Jesus’ miracles, for those who have been in so many ways as untouchable. The miracle is a call into relationship and connectedness. A call into covenant. There is a powerful tenderness here that breaks the taboo of exclusion. He names her a daughter of Abraham and he goes onto advocate for her as the religious authorities seek to condemn this act of liberation because it has taken place on the Sabbath. Notice the way it is often those who claim for themselves religious superiority and self-righteousness who are the most fearful of the miracle taking place in their midst. ‘You hypocrites!’ says Jesus. Walter Wink writes:
By healing this woman on the Sabbath, Jesus restored the Sabbath to its original meaning of healing from bondage… by placing her in the middle of the synagogue, Jesus challenged the male monopoly on the means of grace and access to God. Jesus liberated her from domination, whose driving force is Satan. This tiny drama takes on world historic proportions: Jesus released her from the encompassing network of patriarchy, male religious elitism, and the taboos fashioned to disadvantage some in order to preserve the advantage of others. For her to stand erect in a male religious space represents far more than a healing. It reveals the dawn of a whole new religious order which celebrates life and freedom of all rather than repression.
The miracles of Jesus are miracles of liberation. Jesus shows us a woman no longer cowed by oppression but standing up and by her very being becoming the true witness of God’s covenant of grace. And these words and the healing touch of Christ are not just for her, but for each one of us because all can be the oppressed- bent over ourselves trapped by the burdens and prejudices which prevent us becoming true sons and daughters of Abraham. And make no mistake we too can become the oppressors- the hypocrites or guilty bystanders- who, because of fear or the desire to control, fail to recognise the life of God in others. The true miracle, as my friend said on the phone, is not a superficial cure but the healing of the human soul.
To see those moments where an individual stands up are moments in our life which you never forget. These are the moments when a person in their life says ‘Here I Stand’. Here I stand is not about arrogance, or superiority, it is about saying I stand equal before you and unafraid. I am no longer going to be cowed down by others’ power of privilege or status or wealth or even their threats of violence.
It has been a painful week for those watching the news. Outside hotels where some members of our own congregation are living not through choice but because that is where they have been placed by the Home Office and denied employment which they would love- each day they have had to face crowds chanting for their eviction and deportation and celebrating a court ruling that denies them sanctuary and a safe place to live.
Throughout this week on a daily basis we have also seen agonising pictures of emaciated children and those dying from starvation while Israel’s leaders still claim there is no famine in Gaza. ‘This is irrefutable testimony… It is a famine, the Gaza famine,’ UN Relief Director, Tom Fletcher told reporters in Geneva just as the IPC, a 21-agency partnership which includes UN entities and non-governmental organizations, released a report detailing that more than half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic hunger conditions while more than a million more are in a food emergency. The report states this is an entirely man-made catastrophic famine that could have been prevented
On Sunday 14 September the Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde will be giving the first lecture in our Autumn Lecture Series ‘Here I Stand: where do you Stand?’. Many of us witnessed the moment when in the prayer service after the inauguration of the President of US she stood up and spoke truth to power. Not just to the US President but to all political leaders across the world. In fact to each one of us. When she stood up this is what she said:
What are the foundations of unity? Drawing from our sacred traditions and texts, let me suggest that there are at least three.
The first foundation for unity is honouring the inherent dignity of every human being, which is, as all faiths represented here affirm, the birthright of all people as children of the One God. In public discourse, honouring each other’s dignity means refusing to mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ, choosing instead to respectfully debate across our differences, and whenever possible, to seek common ground.
A second foundation for unity is honesty in both private conversation and public discourse. If we aren’t willing to be honest, there is no use in praying for unity, because our actions work against the prayers themselves….
A third foundation for unity is humility, which we all need, because we are all fallible human beings. We make mistakes. We say and do things that we regret. We have our blind spots and biases, and we are perhaps the most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded, without a doubt, that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong
The truth is that we are all people, capable of both good and bad… Unity is relatively easy to pray for on occasions of solemnity. It’s a lot harder to realize when we’re dealing with real differences in the public arena. But without unity, we are building our nation’s house on sand.
Let me make one final plea, Mr President. Millions have put their trust in you… In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives.
And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labour in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals – they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They…are good neighbours. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.
Have mercy… Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.
May God grant us all the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.
Those were her words.
Jesus says to each one of us, ‘Stand up you are set free from bondage’. That is the true miracle of which today’s Gospel speaks. To be set free, to stand up. But not just to stand up ourselves. For to stand up ourselves and to celebrate our own freedom we need to let others stand up too and if we are preventing someone else from standing up then we need to get off them – stop scapegoating them and start treating all people with the dignity we all deserve- it is only then that we will all be set free.
It is worth any sacrifice
however great or costly
to see eyes that were listless
light up again
to see someone smile
who seemed to have forgotten how to smile
to see trust reborn
in someone
who no longer believed
in anything
or Anyone
To see a soul set free
To see someone bent low stand up
Dom Helder Câmara
