Reflection by The Rev'd Dr Deborah Broome

Now [Jesus] 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 to 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 being done by him.

Luke 13:10-17

Can you imagine what life was like for that woman?  Bent over, unable to look people in the eye, she must have known others only by their feet.  I wonder about her struggle to be seen and heard: how many people, over the years, had ignored her, had literally overlooked her, as she went about her life?  Everything would have been more difficult for her – work, worship, even walking along the road: she was trapped by what her body couldn’t do.  Then she comes to the synagogue on the Sabbath when Jesus was teaching there, and everything changes.  She doesn’t ask Jesus to do anything: this isn’t a story about faith, but a tale of compassion and freedom and grace.  Jesus sees her and heals her and sets her free.

All this happens in a synagogue on the Sabbath – a day set apart for rest and worship.  The leader of the synagogue starts to complain, but let’s not fall into the trap of writing him off as the bad guy – essentially this is a debate about faithful practice carried out by two faithful Jews.  The synagogue leader was annoyed because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, and the fact is, he was right.  The Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15) does prohibit work on the Sabbath, for two reasons.  The first is the example of God, who rested on the seventh day, and requires that the day be kept holy, and the second is that the Jews were once slaves in Egypt, forced to work years without a break, so they shouldn’t do this to anyone else.  Not only are they prohibited from working on the Sabbath, they’re also prohibited from working their servants or their animals.

The rabbis had ongoing debates around what constitutes “work,” to help them figure out the way to observe the Sabbath in a proper way: a way that honoured God’s holiness.  It’s those discussions about what could still be done on that day that Jesus drew on when he used the example of untying an ox or a donkey to lead it to water and then argued that he should indeed heal this woman on the Sabbath: “ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”

Part of the issue here is about the role of laws and rules and regulations.  They’re there to help us order our lives.  They set boundaries which create a space in which we can live together in community.  The best rules are there to give freedom – as indeed the Sabbath rules set people free from the tyranny of overwork.  The command about not working on the Sabbath was given to the people on Mount Sinai by the God who’d liberated them from slavery in Egypt. The commandments are about freedom and grace.  When Jesus heals the woman and liberates her from her ailment he reveals the heart of God’s kingdom, characterised by a similar sense of freedom, compassion and grace.  What does our attitude to rules reveal?