Sunday sermon on the Gospel lesson from Luke 13:10-17 (November 30, 2025)
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
There she was, in the synagogue, among other believers like herself. But there was one difference between her and the others, one stark difference – she was bent over and unable to stand up straight.
Imagine every waking hour only seeing your own feet. Imagine not being able to stretch out and inhale lungs full of air. Imagine recalling all of the sinful acts that led to being bound and tortured by Satan.
Make no mistake about it, Satan and all the evil spirits desire nothing but our suffering. They tempt us, put all sorts of traps and road blocks for us, but they cannot bind us and possess us unless we let them. And we let them through our sins. Especially the sins that we stubbornly refuse to see or to confess.
The woman was bound by Satan for eighteen long years. Perhaps she even came to terms with her infirmity, with her state of being.
But there was One in that synagogue on that day Who did not accept her as she was, Who did not want her to remain bound by Satan.
He knows what we can be, He knows of our high calling because He created us and gave us this calling. He knows that we are imperfect and broken, but capable of being perfected in Him and through Him.
The posture of this woman, being bent over, signified her being humiliated, brought down by Satan. She could not look up to behold the glory of God; she could not even look up at Christ before He healed her. She could only look down, down at the mud and trash under her feet…
Interestingly, Saint Paul talks today about walking “worthily of the calling to which we have been called. Walk with complete lowliness, humility, and patience” (Ephesians 4:1-2). These three Christian qualities play a great role in our lives.
Being lowly, humble, and patient is often portrayed as a weakness today. At the same time, according to the powers that be, we are expected to be submissive, tame, and long-suffering, and obedient.
For Christians, lowliness, humility, and patience are good qualities, or virtues. The thing about these qualities, however, is that we can either choose to do them of our own accord, where they can become virtues, or be forced into doing them against our will, as they become infirmities. In either case, we will possess these qualities.
The woman in the synagogue, who was bent over, had them as infirmities, as the Lord clearly says. She was forced into submission by Satan, she was brought down against her own will.
Today, we tend to willingly become submissive, soft, and tame by assuming the crouching, bent over, position of the woman.
What does this remind you of?
And I am as guilty of this as anyone. Satan does not even have to trick us into binding us. We let ourselves willingly be bound by him.
These devices are not the problem, however; they are the symptoms of the problem. If there were no phones, or if we think that by not having or using this device, we avoid this fate, there will always something else – crouching over a newspaper full of lies, or gawking at the TV with even more lies, crouching over our deceitful egos and prideful self-righteousness. There is always something to take our gaze, and our whole bodies, down.
All of these things, and many others like them, are symptoms of the problem; and the problem is sin, lack of repentance, and laxity in our efforts towards piety.
Once we become lax, we become submissive like cattle. We let ourselves be muzzled and restrained, walking only in the direction we are told. That’s what these phones, and technology in general, and other tools, when misused, represent – the carrot on the stick, to keep the cattle moving in the “right” direction.
And, just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we should shun technology. Even though going through a tech detox is not the worst idea, especially during fasting periods.
What I am saying is that we need to use all these tools at our disposal carefully and properly. We need to balance it out with appropriate Christian actions. (I will get to what these actions are in a bit).
It’s safe to say that technology is being used today to make sure we keep our eyes only on what someone else wants us to keep them on.
Like horses with their blinders. They cannot see what’s in the back or to the sides, they can only see what’s in front of them.
And what’s in front is not always the full picture; sometimes what’s in front may be the backside of another horse.
Being bent down, we can only focus on earthly things, on proving ourselves that we are “right” and trying to convert others to the same point of view. Being bent down we cannot seek higher things, things of God, we cannot seek the truth.
All of this is cultivated, again, intentionally by the enemy. And the enemy is the same being that bound the woman for eighteen years. It’s Satan. It’s not any human being, even if they are in service to evil.
The enemy uses everything at his disposal, including and especially present technology, to humiliate and alienate us, to bend us over, so that we would not be able to stand up straight and see the truth.
So what do we do? We need to cultivate our souls and bodies in virtues of lowliness, humility, and patience, because we either choose to do them or we are forced into them.
The enemy has many weapons at his disposal, and so do we.
Like the woman who was bent over, we cannot neglect the worship of the Church. No doubt it was very hard for her to get up that Sabbath morning and go to the synagogue; but she was there because that’s what faithful people do. And there she encountered Christ, and there He laid His hands on her, and there He healed her. She was physically touched by God.
In the worship services of the Church, during the Divine Liturgy, we are physically encountering Christ in His Body and Blood. He physically touches us for no other reason than to set us free from our own infirmities. We can’t call ourselves Christians if we do not worship.
So that’s number one, in order to cultivate lowliness, humility, and patience as virtues we need to be in the Church.
Number two, in some of our prayers we ask for God’s grace to be able to avoid the various subtle snares of the evil one. As tempting as it may be to keep tabs on the enemy to know what he is up to, you know, “do research,” the best way to avoid falling into his traps is do just that – avoid them. When we “research” his traps, we already engage with him, which is the opposite of avoiding. His traps are subtle and they are various; we cannot outsmart the father of lies, so avoid his lies.
And lastly, to cultivate the virtues of lowliness, humility, and patience we need to remain one body, one Church. And that means that if someone is annoying us, we respond with patience. If someone is wrong about something, we bear with them in love. Let them be wrong, it does not matter (as long as they are not wrong about the core beliefs of Christianity, in which case correct them with love).
Unity in the Church does not mean that everyone thinks the same thing or agrees about everything. Unity in the Church means that we come together, with all our infirmities, to be touched by Christ, and to build up each other in faithfulness.
The enemy is cunning and his traps are many, but it is easier to avoid them when we journey this life together and choose to be lowly, humble, and patient.
The woman was bent over, infirm, and bound by Satan for a long time. But this was not her calling. She was where she was supposed to be, refusing to use her condition as an excuse. And she met God face to face. And she became a follower of the Lord in lowliness, humility, and patience.
Our own infirmities do not define us because God has given us a greater calling. This high calling is to be lowly, humble, and patient, willingly, so that they become virtues that help us on our journey of salvation.
To the Lord Jesus Christ, Who always extends His hand to touch us and take away our infirmities, together with His Father, and the Holy Spirit, we give glory, honor, worship, and obedience, always, now and ever and unto ages of ages.
Amen.
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Intro and outro melody:
Rule of Life
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/rule-of-life
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