Proper 16, Year C
Luke 13:10-17
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
August 25, 2019
Jonathan Hanneman
“…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? – Luke 13:16
Healing can be a controversial topic in our era. We’ve been slow as a society to recognize the values of neurodiversity, for example, as well as the gifts and awareness that people often labeled as “disabled” bring our communities and culture. As Christians, who believe that humanity is made in God’s image, our faith practices should have helped us see beyond perceived physical limitations to recognize the full and functioning personhood of every individual among us, but we too have been guilty of presuppositions and prejudices based on incidental differences. We still judge by appearances. Those people who our prejudices have affected are pushing back, and rightly so.
So it might come as a surprise to realize that, despite the action that occurs in today’s Gospel story, the focus isn’t actually on healing. Instead, the passage is about liberation. At least that’s Jesus’ viewpoint. He keeps using language of freedom: bondage, unbinding, setting loose, and setting free (most of them based on the same root word). One word he uses is more literally translated as “sent away from” or “divorced,” as in “I pronounce you divorced from your ailment!” He never once talks about healing or curing here. The narrator does. The leader of the synagogue (basically their group’s Senior Warden) does. But Jesus doesn’t.
The leader of the synagogue wasn’t necessarily wrong in what he was saying, either. There were at least two major viewpoints on Sabbath observance around the time of Jesus. One was focused on deliverance and took its inspiration from instructions in Deuteronomy and the prophets, where the authors likened the reasoning for the Jewish day of rest to the liberation the Hebrew people experienced at the Exodus, when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt to their own land. Because God had set them free, they were to free one another from working for one day each week. King, foreigner, or slave—it didn’t matter. They were all equal for the day. No one was obligated to serve anyone else.
The other viewpoint took its inspiration from Genesis, Exodus, and what was known as the Writings—books like Nehemiah and Ezra—where the seventh day was to be a day of rest in memory of God completing the creation in six days. God rested; therefore, so should we. Both ideas had clear backing in the Hebrew Scriptures. Both traditions were born out of solid spiritual and historical reasoning. And both allowed for the saving of life on the Sabbath. Going with the actual volume of evidence from Scripture, the second interpretation probably carries more weight. That’s certainly where the synagogue leader seems to be coming from.
It’s easy to look at the leader of the synagogue as some sort of legalist or party pooper. He’s a prime target to vilify, and historically, Christians have used passages like this to “other” Jewish people and to stereotype the Jewish religion as inferior to Christianity, of being “works-based” instead of “faith-based.” But that’s a misinterpretation of what’s going on (in both religions, to be honest). For one thing, everyone in the story practiced Judaism—is practicing, actually—the woman, the crowd, the leader, even Jesus. They’re all Jewish, and they’re all at the synagogue to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
As I mentioned, both interpretations of the Sabbath commandment made exceptions for saving life. Had the woman been actively dying, I doubt the leader of the synagogue would have complained. But she wasn’t. This was clearly a chronic—though not natural—condition. After all, it had been going on for eighteen years—long enough for it to become normal, and normal enough that one day more or less wasn’t going to make a big difference in the scope of things, probably even for the woman. The synagogue leader clearly wasn’t opposed to healing. He actively encourages the people to come back for it. He simply wanted people to follow the rules as he understood and honored them.
You could even argue that he and Jesus are coming from the same side of the Sabbath debate. While the leader of the synagogue does use the word “work” in his description of what happened (a more word-for-word translation would have him say, “on six days it is necessary to work”), the word used for “cured,” while clearly talking about healing in this context, also carries a meaning of “to serve” or “to care for.” Even the pro-liberation party would have agreed that making someone “serve” another person on the Sabbath was wrong. Since the synagogue leader addresses the crowd instead of Jesus, I suspect he’s actually trying to protect Jesus from having to work rather than rebuking him for healing. Something more like, “On six days it’s necessary to work, but not today. Even Jesus needs a break—come back for service or healing later!”
So why does everyone get so worked up in the story? Why not have a reasoned conversation? The whole exchange confuses me. The woman praises God. The synagogue leader is “indignant.” Jesus calls people “hypocrites.” One group is ashamed. The crowd is rejoicing. Emotions are clearly high. And I honestly don’t know why. I get the excitement aspect of things—being around for a real, live miracle would be pretty incredible—but any reason for the anger and retorts flies right past me. Maybe the exchange happened exactly the way it’s written. Maybe it’s tilted a little to ensure we see Jesus as the good guy. I’m really don’t know.
But I do know that, as I said earlier, for Jesus, this incident was about liberation, not labor or healing. His words are all about freedom. Maybe that was a hot topic in Jesus’ day too. As Americans, we all like “freedom,” but in the modern context, “liberation” somehow carries a radical air to it. “Freedom” is something I can have in and of myself—even under the harshest regime, people can escape to the wilderness to find “freedom.” You as an individual can have freedom without substantial change to society.
“Liberation,” on the other hand, is a little wilder—a little more frightening. Liberation isn’t so much an individual experience as a group one. It suggests dramatic societal change and upheaval. You can have freedom for something, but you always have liberation from. Liberation implies an oppressor, and nobody wants to think about being oppressed. Especially in the West, we want to view ourselves as independent and able to act as we choose. We don’t like to think that someone or something else is controlling us. But language of liberation suggests that we don’t have control—or, if we do, it offers the uncomfortable insinuation that we may, in fact, be the oppressors.
Scary as it may be, what can liberation look like? In our story, it looked like Jesus releasing a woman from a long-term ailment. It looked like raising the importance of the human as a child of God over the expectations of institution or tradition—or even Biblical understanding! That’s right. Jesus is saying that rules (all rules, commandments, laws, etc.) are meant to be in service of people. In their proper place, rules are fine and good. But rules can’t interpret themselves; they can’t enforce themselves. It takes humble people working together with discernment to understand and ensure their proper application. And people, even the best-intentioned people, are imperfect: subject to sin, self-interest, and error. So any rule—even one that comes directly from God, as Sabbath observance does!—any rule or expectation that defies love and compassion, that overrides the dignity of a human person or group, is ripe to be overridden itself. All rules have exceptions. And wisdom comes with knowing that the well-being of the person or community outweighs the power of the rule.
Jesus has come, not necessarily to heal us or to alter God’s image as expressed through an individual, but to restore us, to release us from bondage. As Christians, we are responsible to use the liberty God has given us not for selfishness or oppression but to spread God’s kingdom, to bring that same liberation to others. Through the love of the Father, the power of Jesus, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may we continue to do so.