The Time Is Always Right
By Rev. Heidi L. Barham | August 25, 2025
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Read Luke 13:10 – 17 (NIV)
The Lectionary draws our attention this morning to a text from the Gospel of Luke. In this passage, we find Jesus healing a woman who is described in the Message Paraphrase as being “so twisted and bent over with arthritis that she couldn’t even look up...” that is until she had an encounter with Jesus.
Seeing the woman and recognizing her condition, Jesus called her over to Him and declared that she had been set free… then He placed His hands on her and “suddenly she was standing up straight and tall, giving glory to God.”
It is interesting to consider the order of things as they occurred. Jesus spoke the word of blessing FIRST… telling the woman that she had been set free... declaring what had not yet happened as though it was already done… In other words, Jesus let the woman know that she was already blessed BEFORE He actually blessed her…
And that is when He touched the woman…
And after eighteen years… this woman did not have to go back to physical therapy… she did not need to travel to the pain management clinic any more… she did not have to be bothered with all those x-rays and MRIs that had not yielded any successful results over all that time anyway…
None of that was necessary any longer because as the text tells us, “immediately she straightened up…”
And THEN... she praised God… She understood exactly where her blessing came from, and she knew exactly to Whom she owed all her praise and thanksgiving…
Now, just as a point of clarification... this woman had simply been in the synagogue where Jesus was teaching… there is nothing in the text to indicate she was there for anything other than to listen to the teaching. And based on what we can see in this passage... this woman did not break with convention by attempting to approach Jesus… which was simply not something a woman in her time would have done…
However, what the text tells us is that “When Jesus saw her, he called her forward…”
Jesus took notice of the woman. And He saw her for exactly who she was. He did not look past her plight. He did not discount her dilemma, nor did He ignore her infirmity.
On the contrary, the text says, “He called her forward…”
He singled the woman out from among the crowd that had gathered in the synagogue that day. And make no mistake, it was no small matter that although she was a woman... that did not prevent Jesus from seeing her and recognizing that she was someone in need in that moment. Despite the conventions of that day, Jesus did not hold the woman’s gender against her.
In fact, when He called her forward, instead of referring to her by name, He called her “Woman.”
Now, there are some who would look at that and see it as just another example of a biblical writer attempting to degrade women by not giving them a name... however, I believe there is more to it than that.
After all, there are many men in the Scriptures who have remained nameless throughout history as well.
But what I believe Jesus does by calling her “Woman” and then later referring to her as “a daughter of Abraham” is to put the onlookers (and subsequent readers like us) on notice that He was fully aware of the diminished status she would have held in the eyes of society…
And by calling her forward and healing her in front of everyone, Jesus actually elevated her status… This is something that Jesus does fairly often in the Scriptures when He refuses to go along with the tradition of ostracizing and marginalizing people based on some arbitrary set of characteristics…
Instead, Jesus makes it a point to bless those who others would simply write off and cast aside. They are the ones that He uses to set the example for how we should live according to the Word of God… those who have been pushed to the margins of society like women and children... as well as lepers and even foreigners like Samaritans... serve as witnesses to what it means to “walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
These are the same people who... like the woman in our text this morning... are truly grateful for the good and perfect gifts they have received... and who, in turn, give praise to God from Whom all blessings flow…
Now, just to be clear... the synagogue ruler who also appears in this morning’s text, did not join with the woman in praising God for her healing.
In fact, his was the exact opposite reaction… the Scriptures tell us that he became indignant and told the crowds that they should come for a healing on any of the other six days of the week… and most definitely not on the Sabbath.
Now, Jesus was not the least bit pleased or impressed by this synagogue ruler’s flawed attempt at following the letter of the law that forbid work to be done on the Sabbath… Instead, Jesus called attention to the fact that... even on the Sabbath... this hypocritical, religious leader and those there with him would still take their ox and donkeys out to water them… and yet they would want to keep someone from being healed... simply because of the day of the week?
It sounds pretty ridiculous, right? I mean, who would get upset if Jesus healed one of their loved ones on a Sunday? None of us would…
But that’s because we are nothing like those religious leaders of Jesus’ time… right?
After all, no one could possibly find fault with someone receiving a healing from a chronic illness after nearly two decades… even if that healing miraculously happened on the Sabbath… could they?
No one would be that hard-nosed about adhering to an Old Testament commandment, especially if it benefited someone who had been seriously ill… would they?
But what about those who people who have done everything in their power to put laws into place… to keep women from receiving reproductive healthcare that could potentially save their lives?
Or the ones who have gone out of their way to block access to healthcare for those whose sexual orientation or gender identity does not conform to their idea of what is “normal”?
These are many of the same people who lean on the Scriptures as the justification for making these outrageous declarations… claiming they are simply doing what is right… while at the same time ignoring Jesus’ command in Matthew 22 to love our neighbor as we love ourselves… as well as disregarding His teaching found in Matthew 25 to give food and shelter to those in need and to care for the sick and imprisoned.
It would seem that behavior like that would easily qualify someone to be labeled by Jesus as a hypocrite…
And I don’t know about you, but I do not believe any of us would want to fall into that category…
Especially when we look at what it says in that 25th chapter in the Gospel of Matthew... where Jesus speaks of the day when the Son of Man will come in His glory with the angels and sit upon His throne with all the nations gathered before Him… when He will separate the people in the same way that a shepherd separates the sheep and the goats…
The sheep… those are the ones who follow the Lord’s command to show love and concern for the wellbeing of others… they are the ones who will be placed on the right so they can receive their reward in the kingdom of heaven…
On the other hand, it is the goats… the ones who fail to show compassion to those who are in need… they are the ones who will be placed on the left and be sent to their eternal punishment.
There will not be an opportunity for them to try and justify why they failed to lend a helping hand to the homeless, the hungry, the sick and the imprisoned…
They will not have a chance to explain the point of view they espoused as to why those indigent, marginalized people should have done more to help themselves…
There will be no chance for them to try and rationalize their unwillingness and inability to empathize with someone else simply because they came from a different socio-economic or racial ethnic background or held different political views.
There will be no time for them to defend their failing to do what was right for those others… no opportunity to declare that they were too busy doing other things so there was simply no time for them to do the right thing.
But in the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT to do what’s right” (https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/MLKmainpage.html).
Now, just for the sake of clarity, let me assure you... there is nowhere in the Gospels that we find Jesus simply giving someone a pass to get out of doing what is right…
In fact, in the next chapter of Luke’s Gospel that follows our New Testament lesson for today... we read about Jesus healing someone else on the Sabbath... and then challenging the Pharisees and experts in the law with the question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” (Luke 14:3b).
And using a similar argument to what we read earlier in our text for today, Jesus pressed them further and asked, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” (Luke 14:5).
In other words, regardless of what day of the week it may be, there can be no argument that THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT to do what is right.
And that is the message that I want to encourage us to take from this text today… THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT to do what is right.
But the challenge for many of us is in actually figuring out what is right… and determining who has the privilege of saying what right is.
So, let me just state this for the record…
Right is not decided by where one’s beliefs may fall on the political spectrum. Right is not based on liberalism or conservatism... nor is it based on democratic or republican party affiliation... On the contrary, right is based on the Word of God.
Right is ultimately determined by what Jesus teaches us is right… that which is rooted and grounded, first and foremost, in love.
In his prayer for the Ephesian church (Ephesians 3:16 – 19, MSG), the Apostle Paul writes:
I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.The love of Christ surpasses our highest degree of knowledge... it is greater than anything we think we know... and it is Christ’s love that fills us with the fullness that can only come from God.
Love is what we were created for and what we are commanded to do… to love one another. We find proof of this throughout the Scriptures… we have been commanded to love one another.
In John 13 (34-35) we read these words of Jesus, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
In his letter to the Romans (13:8), Paul wrote “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.” While Peter (1 Peter 3:8) wrote, “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.”
And in the first and second epistles of John we find these words:
“And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us” (1 John 3:23).
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:11 – 12).
“And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another” (2 John 1:5).
Given the fact that repetition is an indicator of the importance of something contained within the Scriptures, I think it is fair to say that loving one another is very important.
And let me just add an extra note of clarification here… none of these admonitions to “love one another” come with any fine print or loopholes that exempt us from doing what the Lord has commanded us to do.
We have been commanded to love because God loves us… period… point blank… end of discussion… literally.
There is nothing that we can say or do to refute the Lord’s command to love. There is no defense we can mount that will win an argument in court that gets us out of loving one another… especially if we hope to spend eternity with the Lord.
The Ten Commandments found in the Old Testament, in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, fall into two basic categories… categories that Jesus explained in Matthew 22 (37 – 40):
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.Simply put, love God and love the people of God… and as Jesus told an expert in the law in Luke 10, “Do this and you will live.”
It really is not that hard… but we have this uncanny ability of complicating things… particularly things that cause us to move outside of our comfort zone… things that feel just a little too challenging or difficult for us to do.
But Jesus’ command to love one another… to love our neighbors as we love ourselves… as hard as that may seem… it really is possible… otherwise Jesus would not have told us to do it.
Jesus’ command to love God and to love others is a call for us to love everyone…
that means the argumentative family member as well as the friendly cashier at the grocery store…
It means the frustrating person who lives down the street as well as the sweet child we are sponsoring in a foreign country…
And yes, it also means the person who looks, thinks, acts, loves and votes differently than we do…
Jesus’ command to love has no exclusions that apply… after all, where would any of us be if there were exclusions that applied to God’s love for us?
Romans 5:8 reminds us that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
And because God loves us, without exception... even when we are at our worst… that means THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT for us to love one another.
And when we are willing to follow Christ’s command to love one another… what we are literally demonstrating is our love for Christ... it is why you will hear me keep preaching this over and over and over again... we have been called to love one another.
And if you have a desire to show your love for Christ by loving your neighbor as you love yourself... I want to invite you to stand now and join in singing our Hymn of Discipleship: More Love to Thee, O Christ (v. 1, 2, 4) #527.
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