Rev Hugh Park, 24 August 2025
Korea has experienced a lot of political turmoil for the past several months. It all began with the previous president unexpectedly declaring martial law last December, but at 12 pm that night, the Korean parliament quickly met and withdrew it. That night, thousands of people cheered outside the parliament building. Eventually, that president was impeached and is now in prison, likely for life.
In June this year, a new president, Lee Jae Myung, was elected. During his inauguration, he did something very unusual in front of the huge crowd. After his speech, he turned to a member of the Democratic Party, called her name out loudly, walked close to her, and gave her a big hug. He did this because she has a lifelong disability. She is blind and was his colleague during his parliamentary membership before the presidential election.
After that, his very first official act as president was to visit the cleaning staff at the parliament house. He shook hands and took a photo with every single one of them.
I believe Korea will be a very different nation because of his servant leadership, especially for those struggling financially and socially.
With this story and the Korean President’s actions following his inauguration, I’d like us to reflect on today’s gospel reading. In all four Gospels, many of the people who came to Jesus for help were those struggling with illnesses and disabilities.
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on one Sabbath. And amongst the audience, there was a woman with severe disability for eighteen years, virtually in her entire life.
In today’s medical terminology, she might have been diagnosed with degenerative spine disease. Degenerative spine disease is a chronic condition where the parts of your spine, causing back pain, stiffness, and other symptoms. With no cure and not even painkillers available at the time, her condition made her life terribly miserable all the time.
Probably, she was regarded almost as non-human. The reading today described her disability as the result of an evil spirit. She was regarded as non-human, being cut off from all her relationships, let alone from her own family. Simply put, she was an untouchable.
Everybody there in the synagogue on that day pretended she was not there. She was completely invisible to all of them, except one person. He was Jesus, the son of God, the Saviour of all humanity. Verse 12 describes the scene this way. “When Jesus saw her, he called out to her and placed his hands on her.”
The story should have had a happy ending, but it didn’t. The leader of the synagogue saw things differently. He challenged Jesus’ action because it went against all their laws.
He was very upset and said to Jesus. “Teacher. You have six other days during which you can heal people like her, and why on earth did you have to break our Sabbath rule that had been passed down to us for centuries? Leave us. You are not one of us any longer. ”
This way of thinking—”if you’re not with us, you’re against us”—is a very human idea. It’s how we often divide the world and its people. A good example is the Bush Doctrine from 2002, which was a response to the 9/11 attacks. It basically said, “If you’re not with us, you’re our enemy.”
However, Jesus presented a similar but substantially different idea. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, he said, “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.” In simple terms, Jesus was saying that if we’re not following his way of life, we’re eventually against his mission and his life.
The story of Jesus in today’s reading challenges the way we live our lives, even build friendships, especially with those who are struggling physically, mentally, or socially. To be honest, when facing people with whom we don’t feel comfortable, no matter what our reasons might be, we pretend we don’t see them. We pretend they are not there.
That’s what most people did towards the woman in the synagogue, except Jesus. Jesus didn’t just look at her; he called out to her, drawing her in from the crowd. He didn’t just talk to her from a distance; he came close to her and touched her.
We can see this kind of action almost everywhere in the four Gospels. Jesus did not just feel compassion. He always acted out his compassion. This is called divine compassion towards humanity, which is the core of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection.
The point is, true compassion or true kindness isn’t just a thought or even a prayer. It’s a specific action. It means getting close to people, physically and emotionally, and not being afraid to reach out to those who are lonely, to those whom our society looks down on, to those who are different from us.
Irena Sendler was a Polish social worker during World War II. Although she worked for the Social Welfare Department controlled by the Nazi government, her true mission was to rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. Under the strict rules of Nazi occupation, helping Jews was punishable by death.
Despite the extreme danger, Sendler used her position to create a secret network. She and her helpers would smuggle children out of the ghetto in ambulances, coffins, sacks, and even toolboxes. Then, she would give the children false identities and place them in safe homes or orphanages. To keep a record of the children’s real names, she wrote their names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in her neighbour’s garden, hoping to one day reunite the families.
Sendler was eventually caught by the Gestapo, but she never revealed the locations of the children. She was beaten, tortured, and finally sentenced to death, but her group managed to bribe a guard to help her escape. She survived the war and continued her efforts, saving over 2,500 children. Her actions directly went against the laws and social norms of her time, risking her own life. I believe that she was able to see people in need the same way Christ did in today’s gospel story.
We, too, should learn to see people in need the same way God does. Jesus knew the Sabbath laws very well. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to approach that untouchable woman. However, he intentionally broke their law to follow God’s law of love by looking at her, walking closer to her, speaking to her, and touching her to heal her.
I’m not saying we should be against laws or regulations. When following Christ’s example, however, we have to remind ourselves that we have a higher law from God: “Love your God dearly and love your neighbour as yourself.”
We are God’s kingdom people living in this world. Our true life on Earth is the life God gives us through Jesus Christ. Only when we choose to live this life above all else are we truly with God. And God will always be with us in everything we do and have. Always remember! You are His Kingdom people in this world. Amen. Irena’s Children: A True Story of Courage (Author: Tilar Mazzeo, 2017)