Luke 13:10-17
I had only been in Harleyville, SC, for a couple of months when I got a phone call from a panicked church member. There had been a terrible accident. One of my members, Hubert Scheider, had been killed and they needed me right away. So I got in my car and hurried up the street to find out what had happened. It seems that Hubert and a man that worked for him were taking some things in a dump truck to the back of Hubert’s property. When they went to dump the load, something got caught up in the truck in such a way that it couldn’t go all the way down. So Hubert got out to see if he could get it loose. Well, neither of them thought to turn the truck off or disengage the dumping function. So when Hubert removed the limb from the mechanism, the truck resumed dumping and Hubert was caught underneath. He was crushed to death. And his wife was hysterical with grief.
Over the next weeks, as we got through the funeral, which was so crowded that we had people in the fellowship hall listening through a speaker, and memorial gifts began to flow in, Hubert’s wife, Margaret, came to talk to me about what she wanted to do with all that money. She felt that what was needed was to redo the sanctuary: paint it, replace the curtains beside the organ and piano, remove the carpet from the choir loft, and a number of other renovations. This work was approved by the Trustees; Hubert had been the chair of the board until his death, and they wanted to honor the wishes of his widow. And the work took place. And another member shared with me that Margaret had merely restored the church to the way it used to look before the previous renovations had been done about 10 years prior to this.
I couldn’t help thinking at the time about how much good all that money could have done in the church and in the community. It seemed like a waste to spend it on the building, which really didn’t need renovating, when there were so many needs around us. We had a large group of youth who were in 5th to 7th grade, and we could have paid for them to go to camp or on a mission trip. We had a lot of seniors in the church and in the town who frequently needed assistance paying for medications or for rides to appointments. I could have pointed out a number of families who had trouble just keeping food on the table. But instead, all that money got spent prettying up a sanctuary that only about 30 people saw on a regular basis. It just seemed to me that our priorities were not where they should have been.
That was the case in this story from Luke’s gospel, the only one of the gospels to record this particular incident. The priorities of the leader of the synagogue were not what they should have been. But Jesus helped to sort them out.
It seems that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue one Sabbath day. This was something that he did on a fairly regular basis. And it happened that there was a woman in attendance that day who had suffered from a crippling disease for 18 years. Maybe it was severe arthritis; I have known people who were bent over from having so much arthritis in their backs. But whatever the reason, this woman could not straighten up at all. The woman was not someone that anyone paid much attention to. We aren’t even told her name. But her disability made her different. Sally Smith Holt, a professor at Belmont University College of Theology, writes, “Because of her physical condition, the bent-over woman could not have a face-to-face conversation with others in her community; we can imagine how this condition would have led to some marginalization and isolation. Her experience of such conditions had lasted eighteen long years. Thus, we suspect that she may not have been fully included in her community for quite some time.” But Jesus changed all that. He not only noticed this woman; he called her to come forward to stand with him.
When Jesus drew the woman close to him, he was doing more than removing the physical space between them. He was crossing all sorts of boundaries. For one thing, he was probably standing in an area of the synagogue that was restricted to men only. Yet here he was, inviting a woman to stand there. She was a person with a disability, someone bound by Satan. Jesus put his hands on her; this would have made him ritually unclean. But Jesus didn’t think about any of that. Instead, he was focused on setting this woman free from the disease that had held her in bondage for 18 long years. And as soon as he touched her, she stood up straight and began praising God.
Lynn Japinga, a professor at Hope College in Michigan, writes, “Jesus’s actions were radical and rule breaking in so many ways. The woman did not ask to be healed or express faith that Jesus could heal her. Jesus … touched her – despite the unclean-ness that would be associated with her illness and her gender – and restored her identity as a ‘daughter of Abraham.’ He brought her from the margins back into the center of the community, but he did it on the Sabbath. His gracious actions made the leader indignant. Rules had been broken.”
Sabbath law was very clear about not working. Healing was considered work and was only permissible if someone’s life was in danger. Clearly, this woman was not in mortal danger. Professor Emeritus Ronald P. Byers of Union Theological Seminary points out that if the woman had been in that condition for 18 years, she could have waited another day. But Jesus did not want this woman to be in that condition for even one more day. And so he healed her, an act of grace, not of labor. But the leader of the synagogue did not see it that way. Instead, he was offended, indignant even. He quickly pointed out that there were six days for doing work and that anyone seeking healing should come only on those days, and not on the Sabbath. The law had been broken, and the leader of the synagogue did not appreciate it.
It may be hard for us to understand why the leader of the synagogue was so uptight about working on the Sabbath. But just think about how we used to treat Sundays. I can remember my Grandmother Smith describing what Sundays were like when she was a little girl. (She was born in 1900.) She and her sister had to stay in their Sunday dresses all day, because there were both morning and evening church services. They were not allowed to play or even to read, except for their Bibles or Sunday School lessons for the next week. They were to sit quietly and patiently and not make a fuss about it. I can remember when there were still blue laws in place which restricted commercial activity on Sundays; there were no stores open for business, except maybe a pharmacy. You didn’t go to the movies or to the mall, because they were closed. The thing that changed all that was when Walmart came to town and remained open seven days a week, challenging the blue laws in our town. And eventually, everything began to open up. I’ve never been sure that that was a good thing. Wouldn’t it be nice to just enjoy one day a week where we rested from all the things that we are busy with during the rest of the week?
I can almost have a little sympathy for the synagogue leader. After all, he was just trying to set a good example and let people know what was expected. Ronald Byers writes, “Those in leadership positions in any time and place are supposed to care about the rules! To be in a position of leadership requires bearing the responsibility for understanding the rules in depth and interpreting them as persuasively as possible … It takes a lot of fine-tuning to distinguish between upholding the rules and allowing for really exceptional cases … The safest course, usually, is to insist on the rule.”
But Jesus calls out the man as a hypocrite. And he gives an example. He points out an interpretation of the law taken from the Mishnah, the commentary on the law, which allowed for leading livestock to water on the Sabbath, even though it was technically work, out of mercy for the animal. This was allowed as long as the cattle carried no burdens. Jesus wanted the synagogue leader to understand that the mercy shown to the bent-over woman was every bit as legitimate on the Sabbath as leading livestock to water.
When Jesus finished speaking, the synagogue leader and Jesus’s opponents were humiliated. They must have been more than a little ashamed when they were confronted with a truth that they could not deny. Why should this woman have to wait even one more day to be set free from her suffering, just because the day that she met Jesus happened to be on the Sabbath? What purpose was there in healing tomorrow just because today was a day of rest? Would that honor God more than making this woman’s life more bearable? What was the real priority at work here? Clearly, an act of mercy and compassion was called for, even if it was on Saturday.
People come to our churches all the time looking for help. Abigail W. Kocher, a United Methodist pastor in Richmond, Virginia, writes, “Of course, people show up all the time at our places of worship on Sundays looking for, hoping for, or praying for healing of one kind or another. They come precisely because it is Sunday, or because they hope God will come near if they dare to go inside a sanctuary, or because they do not know where else to turn. So often, such people arrive with the feeling that their life is defined by some aspect of their own brokenness, fragility, or ailment.” We have it in our power to heal people in one way or another. We can show compassion for everyone who comes through our door, whatever their condition or need, without judging them in any way. And we can do whatever we can to make their life better.
I remember when I was serving a church in Columbia, South Carolina. There was a man named Willy who sometimes came to church, usually when he was looking for some financial assistance. The former pastor had told me about Willy. Willy lived with another man in a house that was packed to the gills with stuff. Willy and his friend were hoarders. There was literally just a path that they could walk through in their house to get to the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathroom. And their yard was also full of junk. They lived on disability income, which often did not stretch far enough to cover their bills. So sometimes Willy came looking for help.
One Sunday, sure enough, Willy came to church. Now, you have to understand, that Willy rarely bathed or wore clean clothes. So when we came into the sanctuary, people noticed the smell right away. Willy sat down on the second pew on my right, just in front of the church secretary, her husband, and two daughters. The next thing I know, the four of them got up and moved to a seat farther away from Willy. So did two older women sitting behind Willy. I was mortified. Didn’t they realize how much that insulted Willy? Didn’t they have any concern for his pride? They probably hurt him deeply. They had their priorities all mixed up. They didn’t mind helping Willy when he came during the week; but they didn’t want to be caught within six feet of him if he showed up for service on Sunday. They came to church to worship God and to be inspired to follow Jesus; but they were willing to hurt someone’s feelings because they were offended by his odor and appearance. In my imagination, I could picture what I thought Jesus would do with Willy on a Sunday morning. He would take up a collection to cover Willy’s overdue bills and then offer him a ride home. And Jesus would do nothing to insult Willy’s dignity.
We may not have a Willy who comes to our church. But we will have people who come who are different in some way, who have a need that we can’t understand, or who break some rule, written or unwritten, about what is appropriate or expected. How we treat them is much more important than whether all the hymns and prayers get sung and prayed, or whether we follow the order of service, or even if we do anything that is on the agenda. We can make or break someone with a word, a look, an attitude. Will we choose to welcome those who are unlovely and unlovable, those who are broken and battered, those who are lost and afraid, those who are crippled physically or emotionally or psychologically? Will we include those who feel on the outside, those who feel rejected or overlooked or judged? That is what is really important. Taking care of the needs of people should always be our priority, if we are going to follow Jesus.
