Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
Imagine the scene: there in the synagogue is Jesus, the exciting teacher who has stirred things up all around, and he is there teaching and preaching. It’s the sabbath, and therefore the synagogue is full of people, all there to fulfill their religious requirements. All eyes are on Jesus.
All eyes, that is, except for a pair of a woman, probably hiding in the back, as she has done for the past 18 years. Her eyes are focused downwards, toward her feet which has been the only way she’s been able to look for almost 2 decades. Her view for all those years has been of the area around her feet and slanted glances in other directions. She has been bent over at the waist permanently. After 2,000 years it’s a little difficult to make a diagnosis; her condition may have been medical or it could have come from too many years of difficult labor.
Luke, the author of our gospel, was a doctor and he says that she was crippled by a spirit that kept her that way. Luke, by the way, is the only one of the gospel writers to include this story in his account. Luke the doctor remembers this story and includes it in his gospel. Perhaps his training had made him more attuned to the healing stories of Jesus. Luke also includes more women in his gospel. So it’s natural that a healing story about a woman would catch his attention more so than the other gospel writers.
Jesus is teaching and notices the woman who likely has spent years trying not to be noticed. Illness and crippling diseases were seen as caused by sin, so the bearer of any ills has not only to deal with the disease but also the social stigma. So keeping a low profile was probably a part of this woman’s life: keeping out of people’s way, as best you can when you can’t see them, was standard operating procedure for her.
Jesus, for whatever reason he chooses, decides to heal the woman. Why this woman, we have to wonder. Surely there must have been plenty of other people there who needed healing. Don’t we all need some sort of healing, after all? Was she the most noticeable, hunched over as she was at the back of the room? No friends or relatives approached Jesus about her. He just picked her out of the crowd that was gathered there that day.
Now we don’t notice it but Jesus stepped over the bounds of the rules of their society in two ways that day: first, he healed on the sabbath, healing being a form of work and working on the sabbath is definitely not allowed; second, he touched the woman, which is something a man just doesn’t do, at least not a woman to whom he’s not related. We can almost feel the shock and excitement in the air as the crowd witnesses this act that crosses boundaries and breaks open rules that have long guided their world.
Maybe this is what Jesus was talking about in some of the verses that precede this passage, which were the lectionary reading from the gospel last week. In those verses, Jesus spoke about bringing division into the world, confusing words from the one we call the Prince of Peace. But certainly Jesus divided the crowd that day into two parties: the crowd who was electrified by his boundary-bursting healing and the religious leaders who could only see the laws that had to be followed…and weren’t being followed. Division was clearly a part of Jesus’ ministry, at least it was on this day.
In the controversy that arises, the leader of the synagogue, no doubt urged on by his fellow religious leaders, says that healings can happen any day of the other six days of the week besides the sabbath. Following that comment, Jesus then lets loose on them. He calls them hypocrites, which is as strong an accusation then as it is now. He points out that the rabbis have taught that it is permissible to untie an ox or a donkey so as to give them a drink of water on the sabbath, another activity that is considered work. Surely if God cares about donkeys and oxen that much, God will care enough about one of God’s daughters to heal her, sabbath or not.
Actually, Jesus refers to the woman as a “daughter of Abraham” which is the only time that term is used in the whole of the New Testament. In any case, she is worthy of Jesus’ attention as a child of God. She is worthy of Jesus’ healing ministrations whether its the sabbath or not.
Jesus breaks all bounds to unloose this woman from her own bounds; that which has bound her in her stooped condition for all these years. She couldn’t wait another day for her healing and Jesus knew that. The healing must come now, on the sabbath, on the day when no work is to be done.
The critics of Jesus could fume and fret all they wanted. But Jesus was not going to give an inch. This was an important event that needed attention right now. Jesus chose healing, and caring, and wholeness over the rituals and rules that had governed his culture for centuries. Jesus opted to bring that daughter of Abraham to completion over the strictures that would have bound him as tightly as that woman herself was bound by her condition.
How often do we choose rules and rituals over healing and wholeness? How often do we opt for the status quo rather than bringing our world a little closer to God’s realm? I think it’s more often than we’d like to admit. I think too often we take the attitude that it’s just easier to get along than it is to stir up trouble.
Oftentimes our rules are around possessions for example and what we own being what we are. The unspoken rules of our culture are that more is better: the more you possess the better you are. There’s even a movement within Christianity called the prosperity gospel which says that if God really loves you, God will reward you with greater wealth and more possessions. And too often, we do like to think that’s true. For many of us, in fact, it might be a comforting thought.
Though we might disagree with the premise of this belief, we don’t often act like it. We too often go along with the rules and rituals of our culture and work hard at accumulating rather than seeking the justice that God would have which distributes wealth among all of us, throughout all of God’s children.
Jesus healed the woman who was bent over at the waist against several proscriptions of his day. But he saw a chance for wholeness for one of God’s children and he seized the opportunity. May we be watchful to guard against ways that we might be more like the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, holding tightly to rules and rituals of our culture that no longer serve us. May we be more like Jesus, bursting forth through boundaries that serve no purpose other than to keep things as they are.
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