Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Rev. Jennifer Masada - St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church - Kapa’au, Hawai'i
August 9, 2025 - Ninth  Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

Opening Prayer - O Holy One, you are truth beyond our knowing and love beyond our imagining. Shake us free from what binds us, open us to your Spirit, and set us on the path of freedom in Christ. Amen.
For the second week in a row, Jesus calls people hypocrites. Last week, he chastised the crowd for failing to read the signs of the times. “You pay attention to the weather, but you ignore what’s happening in the world around you. I see you hunched under your umbrellas, but you’re heading straight to the edge of a cliff.” Who would do that? 
This week, Jesus scolds the temple leaders who forbid healing on the Sabbath. “This woman came here to seek sanctuary. Yes, this is the Sabbath. On this day, you give your donkeys what they need to live, but you withhold healing from this woman?” Who would do that? Hypocrites.
Before we get too smug, let’s be honest: hypocrisy is a human tendency. We don’t intend to contradict ourselves, but every one of us has had moments of saying one thing and doing another. I tell my kids to give others the benefit of the doubt while quietly assuming the worst. I urge patience while rushing someone else along. We have all experienced this tendency.
The synagogue leaders in today’s story are not villains. They are us. They assumed the woman’s condition was permanent. They assumed healing could wait until another day. They assumed the Sabbath rule they had inherited was the way to honor God.  Assumptions give us a framework for making sense of the world.
And sometimes, assumptions can be useful tools, but only if we hold them lightly--only if we remain open to learn and to grow. But if we hold too tightly to them, we risk closing the door to Spirit’s surprising work. We risk assuming we know best. 
History gives us examples. People once thought the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun, other planets, and stars revolve around the earth. Some assumed all Japanese living in the US were a threat after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. 
Who would think that? Today we would not make these assumptions. Or would we?  We all have moments of saying one thing and doing another. 
We like the idea of peace, justice, and freedom, but to live them requires risk. The risk of letting go of control. The risk of taking a stand that unsettles the comfortable order. The risk of stepping out of line with what “everyone knows” in order to make space for what God is doing. Faith always carries that risk, because real faith opens us to transformation.
Jesus, in challenging the temple leaders, shows us how to break free of the assumptions we carry. And some of them we carry without even knowing it. 
For example, you’ve heard the saying “Stop and smell the roses.” Or how about “No pain, no gain.” These are contradictory sayings: “Stop and smell the roses” versus “No pain, no gain.” They reveal how easily opposing assumptions creep into our lives. We carry them both, and we act out of both, often without noticing. And that’s how hypocrisy slips in—not from malice, but from unexamined patterns that shape our choices.
Jesus wants to help us break the hypocrisy habit. He breaks the bonds of false assumptions with compassion. He truly sees the woman bent over for eighteen years. To him, she is not just a medical case, not just a problem to be solved. To Jesus, the woman is a human being who deserves freedom and dignity. While others argue about Sabbath law, Jesus sets her free. 
The problem is not the law itself. The Sabbath is a gift of rest. The problem is the human habit of control—of deciding in advance how to work in sync with God’s grace, deciding who is worthy or unworthy of freedom. That is the root of hypocrisy: saying we have faith in God’s way of love, while clinging so tightly to control that we leave no room for love’s grace.
Letting go of control is not easy. Our habits of judgment and assumption are patterns we once needed to survive. Think of a student cramming for a test—it works in a pinch, but if the habit never changes, it becomes harmful. Judgment works the same way. It helps us make quick decisions, but when it hardens into a way of life, it bends us over, too.
In today’s story, Jesus shows us another way. Letting go of judgment, letting go of rigid control, means leaving space for possibility, space for what we cannot yet imagine. This is what good scientists do. They form a theory based on current knowledge, but they stay open to changing it as new knowledge emerges. Faith is no different. We live with the truth we have, but we keep our hearts open for more.
Jesus shows us the way. God’s love sets us free even when human rules say otherwise. In the coming weeks, we can ask ourselves, “Where do we feel bent over, caught in the weight of old habits and assumptions? What rules or judgments keep us from seeing one another and ourselves as beloved children of God?” 
Some of you know I’ve been working on making a paʻu paʻu for hula. It’s long, hard work to strip and clean the hau bark. For weeks I hunched over a bin, thinking that was the only way. Then I visited a hula sister and saw her cleaning station, set up so she could work standing tall. In that moment I realized I was making it harder than it needed to be, simply because I assumed there was no other way. Who would do that? 
That experience has stayed with me—not just because my back feels better, but because it reminded me how easily assumptions bend us over. Sometimes we don’t even realize how heavy they are until someone shows us another way. That’s what Jesus does in the synagogue. He sees the woman, bent low under years of weight, and he shows everyone another way: a way of freedom, compassion, and dignity.
The paʻu paʻu taught me something about assumptions, but also about humility—being willing to see, to ask, to learn. Jesus invites us into that same humility, that same openness to Spirit’s surprising work. When we loosen our grip on control, when we release our old habits and judgments, we make space for grace.
May we learn to lay down the weight of our old assumptions, and find that the work is lighter, the way freer, when we stand tall in Spirit’s flow. May we be a people unbound—co-creating with God in love, lifting one another from what bends us down. And may we see in every face the children of our Creator, freed by grace to walk in dignity and hope.

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