Read the Gospel here.
I invite you to imagine the scene of today’s Gospel story.
Jesus is in a synagogue, filled with people. Let’s say it’s mid-morning and it’s hot but not unpleasantly so and everyone seems comfortable and glad to be there. Jesus is teaching and has everyone’s attention; some have followed Jesus there and are looking forward to hearing him again; some are hearing him for the first time and are curious about this new rabbi who is starting to make a name for himself.
While he is speaking, a woman joins the group. Presumably, she has come for prayer and study just like everyone else and no one really pays her any mind.
Jesus, however, sees her and sees that she is living under conditions of bondage. Something has her bent over, unable to straighten up, and she has been that way for 18 years. She seems to manage reasonably well, regardless – there is nothing in our story to suggest she expects or is hoping for healing. She has just come to the synagogue on the Sabbath, like she does every week, when Jesus calls her to come to him.
I wonder how she felt about that attention. I wonder what she worried might be about to happen. I wonder if people before Jesus had called her out in order to make fun or turn her into an object lesson of some sort or perform some ill-fated attempt to change her body.
Then again, perhaps she’s heard of this Jesus person and so her worry makes room for just a whisper of hope.
Regardless of how she feels – he is the teacher and so she comes when she is called.
And then – without a question or an admonishment – Jesus says “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” He lays his hands on her. And she stands up straight. Set free indeed!
Can you imagine the glory in that stretch, after 18 years of being bent? Can you imagine the joy in receiving such a gift, unsought and unexpected? Can you imagine just suddenly being set free of your bondage? No wonder her response is simply to praise God – what else could she possibly do?
The crowd must have rejoiced with her – how could they not?
And yet there was a least one person who resisted; one person who scolded instead of rejoicing. This “leader of the synagogue” feels the need to remind the gathered crowd that there are 6 days on which to come for healing; the Sabbath is for something else.
Taken in isolation, it’s a fair reminder. The sabbath does matter and the inconvenience and discipline it requires is part of the package. And, too, everyone has the right to sabbath – even healers. Perhaps the leader should plan a teaching series on the spirituality and practice of Sabbath keeping.
And perhaps the leader should cultivate the grace of seeing God at work right in front of his eyes; in the unsought and unexpected freedom given to this woman, regardless of whether it happened according to his preconceived notions of appropriate.
And isn’t the Sabbath, ultimately, all about freedom? Freedom from toil; freedom from duty; freedom from other people’s requirements – freedom to attend to the one, great thing – love of God and neighbour. Just as the oxen must be loosed in order to drink, even on the Sabbath, God’s people must be loosed in order to offer their praise, even on the Sabbath. Let us look with compassion on that leader, who was himself so bound that he couldn’t receive the gift of Sabbath freedom when it was offered; even as we hear the cheers of the crowd as they celebrate the teaching of Jesus.
So now, I wonder, where do you see yourself in this story?
Are you the woman? Have you experienced being set free from bondage when you did not expect it? Have you experienced a gift of grace that maybe broke the rules but also revealed the deeper, truer rule of God’s desire for us to be free – free to be who God created us to be; free to stand tall and look other people in the eye; free to rejoice in our strength and our resilience and our belovedness?
Or perhaps you are the woman but you are still waiting for that miraculous in-breaking of God in your life; waiting to be allowed the space to be set free; waiting for someone to speak words of power and liberation over your ailment.
Or perhaps you are the leader of the synagogue. It breaks my heart but I think that this is who we, as the church, often are. Bound up in rules of our own making and attempting to demand that God follow up them too, we refuse to set people free and then complain if God does it anyways. We think we have the best of intentions – and maybe, sometimes, we do – but over and over we have gotten it wrong, placing limits on who people are allowed to be; how they are allowed to worship and live and love. We teach God’s freedom and God’s grace but, burdened with hypocrisy, we can’t actually live it or let anyone else live it either.
Happily, Jesus came to set us free from this bondage, too. Our church is, I believe, growing in this freedom as we repent from past actions and teachings and seek, more and more, to be Jesus. And, as individuals, when we find ourselves falling into this hypocrisy, we too are called to repent and return to the Lord so that we, too, might be Jesus in the story, noticing the person living under conditions of bondage and boldly, compassionately speaking words of liberation to set them free.
This is who we are called to be. Indeed, this is who we offer ourselves up to become, Sunday by Sunday, as we gather at this table to be fed with the body and blood of Jesus and so to be transformed, more and more, into his likeness. It is no small thing we do here – although we are free to treat it as if it were and reject the freedom it offers us so that we don’t have to extend it to anyone else either. But if we embrace it instead, if we make a true offering of ourselves, transformation follows as we truly become the Body of Christ – a gift freely given to us so that we can be freely given to the world, empowered to defeat Satan and every force that would keep God’s people bound in pain or oppression or judgement. We will be made truly, fully alive to God’s uncontainable creative power and bound only to the true rules of God’s unbounded grace and love.