Why did Jesus straighten a bent over woman in a synagogue on the day of rest?

Image credit: Barbara Schwarz OP

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 13:10-17. The English Standard Version supplies the passage with the title “A Woman with a Disabling Spirit.” J B Phillips, in his paraphrase, supplies the title “Jesus reduces the Sabbatarians to silence.”[1]

Sabbatarians are people who maintain that we must do only “essential work,” like feeding animals and milking cows, on the rest day – Saturday for Jews and Sunday for Christians. On Saturdays, some Jews won’t press buttons in lifts. On Sundays, some Christians won’t cook, shop or eat out.

But I suspect they don’t have a problem with helping people who are injured, or with doctors and nurses who work in hospitals, or technicians who keep electric power generators and water pumps running. Or the example Jesus used – untying animals and leading them to water.

My point is, because Christians believe God has commanded us to rest on one day in every seven – Sundays for Christians, following the practice of the early church – there’s often dispute over what we should and should not do on Sundays, the day reserved for rest and worship.

Famously, Eric Liddell, whose life was featured in the film Chariots of Fire, refused to run on a Sunday in the 100-metre heats in the 1924 Olympics. Some Christians often point out that God honoured his faithfulness to the fourth of the ten commandments: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8): Because he won the 400-metres, in record time.

But what Jesus did on that day was a healing; of a woman who’d been bent over for 18 years. The core elements of the story are healing, bent over, and 18 years, on the day of rest and worship. And Jesus had a bigger goal: he wanted to teach us something about the kingdom of God.

Let’s consider the elements of what happened, one by one.

It was a healing. People prayed for healing all the time. Prayed to God. To the God whom they worshipped together on rest days. Yet, their leaders were set in the belief that people rested on the seventh day because God rested. They thought healing was work, and therefore healers should rest when God rested (Exodus 20:8-11). They thought they should continue doing what they’d always done.

But Jesus said no, times had changed. A new era had begun. The old ways no longer applied. God was now in their midst. God was doing a new thing. He had initiated a new era. It was an era of healing, of restoration. Recall that he had announced in his first sermon, recorded in Luke 4:18-19, that he had come “to set at liberty those who are oppressed”. Then, he did what he had announced. He did it over and over again; often in places filled with people who believed they were God’s chosen ones.

Jesus said he had loosed the woman from the bond of Satan (verse 16). He did it and said it on a sabbath day. Perhaps there’s an echo here of the bond of oppression Satan placed on the first woman, Eve, in the garden of Eden. Also, readers who recall Jesus speaking of the new exodus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:31), will recall that the first exodus, the freeing from bondage to Pharoah, was also on a Sabbath day.

The healing was of a specific disability. The disability of being bent. Not of fever, of bleeding, of blindness, but of being bent. The correction was straightening. Does the type of disability and correction signal something? Perhaps her standing up straight is a foreshadowing of Luke 21:28, which says that when Jesus returns, people should “straighten up and raise [their] heads, because [their] release from bondage is drawing near”.

What about the 18 years? It’s probably a coincidence that earlier, Jesus reminded them of 18 persons who were killed at Siloam when the tower collapsed upon them (13:4). But some notice that in the Book of Judges, Israel experienced 18 years of oppression by Moabites (Judges 3:14) and 18 years of oppression by Philistines (Judges 10:8). From this, they suggest that the number 18 signals bondage, oppression, a time of being controlled by another.

We notice also that Jesus referred to the woman as a daughter of Abraham; we recall that later, he called Zaccheus a son of Abraham (19:9). He probably used such labels in order to remind his audiences that they were members of the chosen nation – and should behave like chosen people, should recognize that he had brought in the new era.

By doing a bold act, Jesus initiated a conversation with the leader of the synagogue, with the religious-leader-in-residence. The leader didn’t respond to Jesus. He responded to the audience, to “his own people.” Jesus’ answered his objections. Jesus grounded his response on “other facts” in their scriptures and practices. He didn’t hesitate to label as hypocrites those who held ideas opposite to his. Luke calls them his adversaries. Jesus shamed them. The people rejoiced. But maybe they returned to their old ways after Jesus left. We don’t know.

One other thing. In those days – as also in our day, in many places – women and disabled persons were treated as if God had cursed them. Some leading men even prayed daily, “I thank you God that I am not a woman …” In today’s reading, we see that Jesus put the marginalized, the sidelined, those whom society treated as cursed, in the middle. Recall that Zaccheus was a tax collector, another class of persons despised by society. Jesus was suggesting tax collection was a necessary occupation, and that it was possible to be an honest tax collector.

But why does Luke tell us the story? The answer lies in the word “therefore” in the following verses – which are not included in today’s reading. Luke tells us to read the account of the bent woman being made straight as a foreshadowing of the spread of the kingdom of God – of straightening, of healing from bondage, of growing, of spreading. Of the unstoppable spread of release from bondage, of straightening.

What are the signs of the spread of the kingdom today?

Peace be with you.

---

[1] I must say that Phillips is wrong when he says that her disability was psychological.