START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 13:10-17
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OBSERVE:
This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings. However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.
The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed. But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).
We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.
Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).
Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue. Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.
It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:
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.
If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that. But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone. This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.
What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees. The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:
“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”
Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well. So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory calls triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that. What Jesus does is called de-triangling. He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:
“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?”
Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest. He himself observed the Sabbath. However, he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.
It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!
Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:
The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).
And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:
I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).
Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:
The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).
It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:
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.
APPLY:
We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace. The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing. Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.
Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.
The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian. Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.
But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.
The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath. A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.
Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings. The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.
RESPOND:
This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable. Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family. The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.
After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street. Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean. Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop. The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.
The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert. As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory. But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.
Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him. In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life. But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim, Valjean. Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable and drowns himself in the Seine River.
That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.
Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow. I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion. Amen.
PHOTOS: "Orthodoxy" by timchallies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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