David Grousnick
In Luke 13:10-17, we are told that as was his custom, Jesus went one Sabbath morning to the synagogue for worship. As he was preaching and teaching, he saw 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.
Can you imagine? For nearly two decades this woman spent every waking moment bent double. When she went to the market, she did not see the distant green hillsides. She saw only the dirt path in front of her. Instead of the smiling faces of passing children, she saw the tops of dusty sandals. Luke tells us that the Master was deeply moved by her plight and he called the woman toward him.
He laid hands on her and said, “Woman you are set free from your ailment.” Immediately the woman stood up straight and she started to praise God.
This irritated one of the leaders of the synagogue. This fellow began to criticize Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. “There are six days on which work ought to be done. Healing equates to work and there is no excuse for working on the day set aside for rest and worship.”
This religious leader believed keeping the law more important than caring for people.
The man’s attitude irritated Jesus. The Master responded that the law permits untying and leading a donkey to water on the Sabbath. Certainly the law should care more for the needs of people than animals. The law should make an exception for unleashing this daughter of Abraham who has been kept from drinking from the waters of abundant life for eighteen years.
We assume that Luke, who remembers this story in his biography of Jesus, recorded the event because of this confrontation with the leader of the synagogue. That disagreement offers the most to learn. However, I want us to focus on that bent-over woman.
If we don’t look closely, we might assume Jesus healed the woman of a physical disease of the spine like osteoporosis or scoliosis. At first hearing, it does seem that when Jesus laid hands on her and told her to stand up straight, the power of God flowed though our Lord’s fingers, into her back, and healed a physical defect.
While plausible, that is not what Luke says.
Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers, suggests that Jesus’ action represented a revolution happening in seven short verses. Jesus tries to wake people up to the kind of life God wants for them. He often talks about the Kingdom of God where people have equal worth and all of life has dignity. But in the latter part of his ministry, he begins to act this out.
In the midst of a highly patriarchal culture Jesus breaks at least six strict cultural rules:
1. Jesus speaks to the woman. In civilized society, Jewish men did not speak to women. Remember in John 4 when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. She was shocked because a Jew would speak to a Samaritan. But when the disciples returned, the Scripture records, “They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman?” In speaking to her, Jesus jettisons the male restraints on women’s freedom.
2. He calls her to the center of the synagogue. By placing her in the geographic middle, he challenges the notion of a male monopoly on access to knowledge and to God.
3. He touches her, which revokes the holiness code. That is the code which protected men from a woman’s uncleanness and from her sinful seductiveness.
4. He calls her “daughter of Abraham,” a term not found in any of the prior Jewish literature. This is revolutionary because it was believed that women were saved through their men. To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God.
5. He heals on the Sabbath, the holy day. In doing this he demonstrates God’s compassion for people over ceremony, and reclaims the Sabbath for the celebration of God’s liberal goodness.
6. Last, and not least, he challenges the ancient belief that her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. He asserts that she is ill, not because God willed it, but because there is evil in the world. (In other words, bad things happen to good people.)
And Jesus did all this in a few seconds.
Author Max Lucado tells about his boyhood days of playing football out in the West Texas fields. The fields where Max and his friends played were full of grass burrs that stuck in their skin. Sometimes, after a big tackle, a player would have a leg or arm full of grass burrs. They stung horribly. The game came to a stop while the player pulled out each of the burrs.
Some players wanted to keep on playing in spite of the burrs, but it was usually too painful. Lucado trusted no one but his father to pull out the burrs. So he would leave the game, go home, and get his father to pull out every last burr, then he would return to play.
Friends, there are burrs that only our Father can remove. Fortunately God will remove them if we trust ourselves to Him.
Have a great weekend!
