Making Her Welcome, Setting Her Free

“One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, He saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said, ‘dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!’ Then He touched her and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. ‘There are six days of the week for working,’ he said to the crowd. ‘Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.’ But the Lord replied, ‘you hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?’ This shamed His enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things He did.” (Luke 13:10-17) (Also read Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29) She knew what many of you, reading here, know all too well: chronic pain. She could not stand straight; maybe she had arthritis or some other problem with inflammation or maybe a loss of bone density as in osteoporosis or maybe she had disk problems. We don’t know what a modern doctor examining her might say, but we can guess what she said every morning when she tried to get out of bed. Did she have a family or was she facing daily pain all by herself? We wish we knew her better, but we don’t even catch her name.

I.) A welcoming community? But we find her inside a religious community, at synagogue on a Sabbath, there with other worshippers from her village, listening to what the travelling Rabbi teach. Whatever mean things we’re going to think about the leader of the synagogue, we need to remember this point: she’s there, as one of the group. She’s there of her own free choice, just as you are going to your churches and nothing in the story would make you think that other worshippers thought she didn’t belong. The narrator in the story tells us that her illness came from an evil spirit, but the narrator has a YAHVEH’s-eye view of the story, as it were. We aren’t told what the other worshippers at the synagogue thought; even if they had concluded that a demon was plaguing her, they nevertheless thought it was fine for her to be in worship. Are your congregations as welcoming as this? Well of course you may say and maybe you’re right; I don’t want to judge you unfairly. Nobody would want to exclude a woman whose life is made miserable by chronic pain. But what are you doing to include her or to make your congregation a supportive place for her? Endless physical pain often makes people depressed or angry; it often makes church buildings a challenge or worship services something to endure. And if you broaden your thinking to include people with other chronic challenges; the physically or developmentally challenged, those with deep and persistent emotional struggles; you have to wonder about how well you do. This story pushes everyone to look for those people and to do what we can to make them welcome.

II.) A liberating community? The action starts when Yeshua spots her and calls her over. He asks her no questions. In Luke, Yeshua is presented as a Prophet with YAHVEH-given insights into the hidden thoughts of men and women. He knows what she suffers and why and as YAHVEH’s agent, He steps up to free her. Immediately she is able to stand and to praise YAHVEH. Just as immediately, the leader of the synagogue complains about what just happened, fussing at the woman, not YESHUA: “There are six days when a person is supposed to work, so come for healing on one of those days and not on the Shabbat.” Let’s listen to the ruler with as much sympathy as we can. YAHVEH’s people were commanded to keep the Shabbat holy; in other words, do what you can to make sure that Shabbat is for YAHVEH and for no other purpose. YAHVEH’s people were specifically forbidden to work on the Shabbat. What counts as work? Well, all sorts of things could be considered work. If you really want to use the Shabbat to honour YAHVEH, then shouldn’t you take a pretty broad definition of work, leaving off anything that might be considered labour? So if part of Yeshua’s calling is to heal, maybe that’s work for Him and to keep Shabbat holy, He should not do it on the Shabbat. But the rabbi’s criticism is off target; he fusses at the woman for seeking healing, not at Yeshua for providing it. That’s wrong; according to the story, she didn’t come for healing. She didn’t ask; Yeshua just did it. More significantly, the synagogue leader is wrong to think that healing dishonours the Shabbat. Yeshua’s analogy of watering your livestock on Shabbat shows that everybody agrees that providing for life-needs, even if doing so involves work, is fine for Shabbat. Your ox and your donkey have to eat and drink, so you have to feed and water them. This woman’s life is sheer misery. What she needs is relief from her constant pain. Healing her on Shabbat honours YAHVEH. Liberating her from satan’s grip gives glory to YAHVEH, as only YAHVEH’s power could have made that happen. In fact, Yeshua argues, the Shabbat is the most appropriate time for this to happen, especially because she is Abraham’s daughter; a member of that group that YAHVEH chose so long ago. YAHVEH created this people from one elderly couple, freed them from slavery in Egypt, rescued them over and over from oppression by other kings and brought them back from exile in Babylon. Of course YAHVEH wants this woman to be free and releasing her on Shabbat shows where YAHVEH’s heart is.

III.) How is your congregation doing as a force for liberation? Again, I don’t want to judge, but many Christians and pastors/preachers may be more like the synagogue leader than we’d like to admit. When we look at what many congregations actually does, would those things honour YAHVEH by helping to free people from what binds them? If our measures of congregational health are bodies in pews and money in collection plates, we may be doing less liberating because we just don’t have time for it. Find the bent-over women, those people who are trapped by life-sapping forces too big for them and make sure they are welcome in your congregations. And then judge what you do by what it does for people like that: are you helping to set them free? That’s a good Shabbat’s work, according to
Yeshua.