Worship - 24 August 2025

Summary of this week's theme

In today’s world, where distractions abound, it is all too easy to be ignored. That’s a sad thing for creatures made for community.  But there are degrees of being ignored.  My late wife once observed that ‘there is nothing as invisible as a middle-aged woman in a station wagon.’  It was a humorous comment, but it carried truth: society often overlooks people, especially women of a certain age. That invisibility runs deep in history - women’s vital contributions, whether at Bletchley Park or NASA, were long ignored.  Luke, the evangelist, would be horrified, for his gospel highlights women as witnesses and disciples, often correcting the blindness of men. And Jesus himself consistently saw those the world ignored.

Take the woman bent over for eighteen years, bowed by pain and stigma, unable even to lift her eyes in hope. Everyone else ignored her, but Jesus noticed. He restored her dignity and gave her reason to look up again. The synagogue leader objected, bound by his narrow reading of the law. Yet even then, Jesus did not dismiss him. Instead, he reasoned with him - using the rabbinic method of arguing from the lesser to the greater: if one cares for an animal on the Sabbath, how much more should one care for a suffering human being? Jesus left the door open for him to change.

That is Jesus’ way. He notices the invisible, calls out prejudice, but always leaves room for repentance. No one is beyond redemption. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. Jesus understood that truth and offered people a way back from blindness, paralysis, and hardness of heart.

So what about us? Who do we fail to see because of prejudice, busy-ness, or indifference? Where are we guilty of holding others to standards we ourselves could not meet? And where might we be called to be prophets - voices that draw attention to what the world ignores - even though the task is hard and thankless?

The good news is that Jesus sees all of us.  He notices those who feel invisible, lifts up the bowed down, and calls us to do the same.  The church, then, must be a place where no one is unseen, where those bent low by life can look up and know they are seen, valued, and loved.