Series on Luke
IV The Imperatives of the Kingdom
B Instruction in Rejection
8 Sabbath Healing
Text: 13:10-17
Introduction
Obviously, in this story we find the dispute over the sabbath that emerged so often in the ministry of Christ. It is important, but we have discussed it elsewhere in our study of the gospel. I want to focus our attention on the woman at the center of the controversy. It is true that the leader of the synagogue would have been equally upset if it had been a man Jesus helped. Our Lord healed a paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda on the sabbath, and a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on the sabbath. He purposely healed on the sabbath to make a point and his opponents were always angry. But the fact that this was a woman makes the story unique and suggests that Jesus is the hurting helpers’ hope and it was desperately needed. The Wisdom of Sirach, 180 BC says, “Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace.” According to the Talmud, a Jewish man prayed three benedictions each day, including one in which he thanked God that he was not made a woman. Jesus is the real answer to the woman’s need. She is a daughter of Abraham, a part of His Bride the Church, someone he created and redeemed to be the mother of his children. Here was a hurting helper and here was her hope.
I Hurting
We are told in verses 10-13 that this woman had an infirmity, an easily identifiable medical disability but one which was caused by Satan, On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. We sometimes forget that the fact that a disease or disaster may have a physical diagnosis or a natural explanation does not mean it has an entirely natural origin. The terms bent over and could not straighten up are rare medical terms from the vocabulary of Dr. Luke. However, Satan had caused this, and Jesus had entered the strong man’s house to bind him and free those whom he had bound. The binding of the woman was more significant because she was a daughter of Abraham, a faithful member of the church, in attendance at the service. Her presence and her pain disclosed Israel’s need and ours. It was an indictment of the community, and I am certain that Her deliverance signals Jesus’ ability to deliver from all of Satan’s power and that certainly includes the way in which women were ignored, oppressed, abused, and misused both then and now. In addition, as the story in John 9 regarding the man who was blind from birth discloses, it was typical in those days to blame such afflictions on sin. We read there in verses 2 and 3 that even Jesus disciples shared in this mistaken view, His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. I am sure that this woman was regarded as unworthy because she was both a woman and a cripple. The devotion of the synagogue ruler to the sanctity of the sabbath instead of the suffering saint reveals the heart of male domination and the insensitivity to human suffering. Satan oppressed not only through physical illness but through a fanatical devotion to regulations that blinded men to human need and made them insensitive despots instead of caring and serving leaders. They had failed to realize the true role of women because they were taken up with a rule about women being inferior. thus we need to see that role of the woman as helper.
II Helpers
There are two helpers here. The woman is a helper because that is what God created her to be, and Jesus is a helper because that is why He came. Jesus saw all women exactly the way he had created them. The spirit of Christ in Moses caused him to record the remarkable words of the first man who, failing to find an equal among the animals, proclaimed in ecstatic delight, this woman is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. God had created the perfect partnership equals with a leader. Neither Christ nor, later, His Apostles ever indicate that those original roles are changed. What they tell us is that they have been disrupted distorted and destroyed by sin. Part of the curse after the fall is your husband will rule over you, that is dominate. The bitter irony of our story is that they think more of their domestic animals than of this poor woman. Of course they had a prejudice against all suffering people, but especially against women whom many of the Rabbis considered to be nothing more than domestic animals. And so we read in verses 14-16, Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” Somehow, even the men of the covenant, the people of God, and even Christians today follow that sinful tendency to focus on the rule that the man is better. Focusing on that idea brings an “I am the boss” philosophy. However, focusing on the role that the woman is an equal helper brings a completely different philosophy, “I am the servant with my partner.” Ultimately the only hope of eliminating Satan’s oppression is in Christ, not in changing the roles, but in recognizing what they truly are. Jesus not only understood this, but He was willing to show us how it is done, and therefore He is the only hope.
III Hope
Christ is my hope because he became my equal. He did not simply thunder from Sinai, I am your Lord. Israel dare not touch the mountain lest they die. Even Moses was frightened. But, Jesus came down from the mountain and touched us in our sinful failure. He was not concerned simply with the rule but with the role. He became my equal though He was my exalted Lord. Listen to Paul describe the incarnation in Philippians 2 as he reminds us that Jesus was in very nature God, but he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. So if he did not choose equality with God what did he choose? He chose equality with me, for He took the nature of a servant and was made in human likeness. So I am called his brother. Jesus is not ashamed to call me brother according to Hebrews 2:11. When He washed His disciples feet He called them friends, and that sounds like an equal to me. When Paul writes to Philemon about Onesimus, his runaway slave, he says receive him as a brother. But Jesus went further than equal. He washed his disciples feet, he served them. Ultimately Paul says in Philippians 2, He humbled himself and became obedient unto death. He died for me. I never had any question that I should call him Lord because of the role he chose, to be my equal and my servant. The irony here is that men and women were created to be equal, but with different roles, but there is constant strife over who is better. Jesus, who is not our equal in any sense, chose to serve to show us how to get along. And their response is in verse 17, When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.
Conclusion
When Jesus delivered this daughter of Abraham from the power of Satan he delivered her from a bondage that held that congregation and that holds many Christians today. One counselor tells of a couple whose marriage was doomed from the beginning. He says they took no pleasure in serving one another. He said they fought so much over rights that whenever they sat down at the dinner table if an item was missing they started an argument over who would get up and get it. They divorced. It was the same blindness that afflicted the synagogue ruler, and that permeates our daily lives. In I Corinthians 11:7-9 Paul says the man is the image and glory of God and the woman is the glory of the man. It is precisely because the man was made first and the woman was made from him that she is his glory, his equal, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Motherhood is which we celebrate annually by gifts and tender sentiments, is not elevated by nostalgic sentiments or tears of regret, but by the way men treat their wives. Just look at Jesus.
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