Sunday August 22, 2010 Luke 13:10-17

Greetings, I hope all are enjoying their last vacation days of summer before school starts. I know many collages are starting in the next week. Our text for Sunday is again in Luke.

V10-11 Jesus is teaching in a Synagogue on the Sabbath. A woman has come who probably is well known in the community. She has been crippled (bound) for 18 years by a disease that has bent her over. This must have been terrible uncomfortable for her.

V12-13 Jesus sees her and called over to her “Woman you are set free from your ailment.” The word used for “set free” is literally “untied”. He laid his hands on her and she was healed and able to stand up straight for the first time in 18 years. She began to praise God (not Jesus) for her healing.

V14 The leader of the synagogue became upset that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. Healing was work and no work was to be done on the Sabbath. Jesus has broken this oral tradition set forth by the elders. The people in attendance must be amazed at what they have witnessed and are probably talking about it to each other, excitedly. The leader of the synagogue kept telling the crowd that there are six days to work be cured on those days not on the Sabbath. He is trying to focus the crowd, not on the miracle, but on the law that has been broken. Instead of focusing on the healing Jesus has done he wants to keep the law.

V15 Jesus than rebukes him for his attitude calling him a hypocrite. Jesus knows that these leaders who fancy themselves keepers of the law break it and do work by untying an animal and leading it to water. They skirt the law for their own purposes but are pointing out his breach of the law in untying the woman.

V16 Jesus continues on in his rebuke by pointing out that he didn’t untie an animal but untied (unbound) a woman who is a daughter of Abraham, one of their own family. If they untie an animal isn’t untying one of their own members more important and right? Isn’t it appropriate for her to be set free on the Sabbath which is for worship and celebration of God’s reign? God is choosing to free this woman in celebration and all the leaders can do is complain about it instead of celebrating it. They are too intent on rule keeping and missing what God is doing in their synagogue. He is unbinding them from this restrictive law and the rituals they have focused on so much. They need to move beyond these laws to love as he loves us. Jesus is making the Sabbath a nonstop event, a celebration with compassion and mercy for people.

V17 His opponents were put to shame by his words and conviction of their breaking of the Sabbath. The rest of the crowd is rejoicing at all that he is doing. They are celebrating this woman’s freedom after 18 years.

So do we as a church focus on the breaking of “rules” or rejoice with mercy and compassion? There are so many events in the news recently that have Christians indignant over what they perceive to be broken “rules”; a mosque proposed to be built close to ground zero, homosexuals being allowed to officiate in the ELCA, political opinions being offered as “Christian values”. Jesus came to set us free from our self-imposed “rules” and to give us one commandment, love others as I have loved you. We are not to judge and condemn others but show them His outrageous love.