Year C

Luke 13:10-17

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

God’s Law of Sabbath

As was his custom, Jesus went to the synagogue for worship that Sabbath morning. And we heard read that as he was preaching and teaching he noticed on the fringe of the crowd a very crippled woman. She was bent over and was unable to stand up straight. When he inquired, Jesus was told the woman had been that way for eighteen years. Hard to imagine? For almost twenty years, this woman spent every waking moment bent over. Luke tells us Jesus, moved with compassion by her plight, calls the woman over and says, “Woman you are set free from your ailment” and immediately the woman stood up straight and started to praise and thank God.

This irritated one of the leaders of the synagogue, nothing new for Jesus, and he began to criticize Jesus for healing the woman on the Sabbath. This religious leader believed healing required work and that there is no excuse for working on the day set aside for rest and worship. Obviously, his understanding of law and keeping is was more important than caring for people. Professor Noah Feldman wrote in 2007 the New York Times Magazine about his experience of having been educated in a religious school run by a group called “Modern Orthodox.” He tells of a school assembly in which a local physician, a member of the modern Orthodox movement, argued that ‘Torah, or the first five books of the bible, teaches one might break the Sabbath to save the life of a Jew, but not a Gentile, except under particular circumstances.

This understanding of the Torah (which is not unanimously held by all Jewish scholars) underlines how seriously observant Jews take the Sabbath. Even if the Sabbath may be broken to save a life, the logic of this view does not permit breaking it to heal an affliction that does not threaten the life of the victim. The crippled woman in this text is not in mortal danger and the leader believes could wait another day or more. As we often see, Jesus identifies with the woman rather than the leader of the synagogue. The law of the Sabbath, meant to call people to turn from their usual daily work and allow God to be present to them and touch their hearts and minds, is used here to try to prevent God from liberating a woman from Satan’s bondage.

Jesus causes the religious leader to be offended because the Pharisees control the Sabbath with their work of cumbersome rules and regulations that often imprisoned and enslaved the people. A religious observance to honor and liberate God’s people becomes a means of social control and oppression. We know from experience today that some laws and regulations established for the common good can limit people unnecessarily and sometimes even do harm. Laws can lock us in rather than protect and secure. Understandably, the synagogue leader felt threatened that he might lose control of his congregation who might think less of him as a result. Therefore, taking a literal interpretation of the law for his own sake, he ignored the benefit to the woman in an attempt to discredit Jesus and control the situation.

Yet, has he any idea what he sounds like as he tries to persuade the crowd that what they have seen is wrong and an affront to God? He keeps saying to the crowd, “Surely you can see that there are other days for healings” while waiting for nods of support. But he doesn’t get them because the crowd knows what they have seen. They have seen the presence of God, there in the synagogue, freely offered to an utterly unimportant woman. I’m sure it gave them all hope.

Perhaps worship is not a matter of rules laid down that someone else interprets, but is more like the joy and praise of God that pours out of the healed woman. The Sabbath should be about, worship and freedom, not worry about breaking rules. It’s no wonder that the leader of the synagogue gets no response when he tries to turn the crowd against Jesus. I’m sure he sees the logic in Jesus’ interpretation of the Sabbath, but hate’s it because it implies that every little person in the crowd is important to God, and if that is so, then what does that say about his prestige as a leader? Half his job of interpreting the Sabbath and its rules is gone if the Sabbath is to “be a day when God’s people can feely worship, praise him and be liberated.   

It is pretty clear that without a day on which we remember what we are created for, and who our God is, we can get into the habit of thinking only of ourselves and our own needs. The point of the Sabbath is it’s to be a day that turns us away from self and back to God and our real purpose, which is to ‘take delight in the Lord,’ who draws near to those who are lost in order to heal them so they might stand up straight. So they understand how much God loves and cares for all. The fiery prophet Jeremiah’s words today help to confirm that every little person is important to God.  “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” God knows us through and through and is so near to us that we cannot escape God’s gaze or care.

God is not selective in choosing only certain people to receive God’s gift of salvation and healing. God draws near to all people, awaiting their response in faith. Jeremiah and Jesus are God’s prophets whose mission is to call people to faith and to denounce and straighten out religious leaders of their day regarding who God is and who They ought to be. The religious leaders are not totally cold hearted. They do suggest that the healing might occur on another day. But Jesus’ words shake them out of their legalistic blindness and call them to common sense. When the fulfillment of the law would harm rather than heal, then and today burdening people and causing them to stoop rather than to stand upright, the law should be challenged because it is not true to the God of life, the very one who gave the law.   

The whole point of the story is that it says something about Jesus’ identity and authority and about the character of God, revealed by what Jesus does. He came preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand, revealing God’s healing power at work in him. He came not only to liberate bodies from sickness but to liberate minds and spirits held captive by the power of sin and evil. This woman’s healing gives us a picture of what God’s kingdom will be like. There will be no blindness or loss of hearing, no one broken and bent or disfigured. There will be no conflicts between what is good for one and what is good for all.

If this is the ultimate future God is preparing for us, we can worship and praise our God, who formed us in our mother’s womb, who comes to deliver and save us, to be our rock and our fortress where we can find safe shelter from the storms that sometimes threaten to overwhelm us. Let us give thanks for the new kingdom that God, through the power of the spirit of the risen Christ continues to usher in through Jesus and us. A kingdom that will not be shaken, where we do not have to worry about breaking Sabbath rules, a kingdom of sons and daughters who stand upright in virtue and grace before God.