And a woman was there who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
Imagine the hardship of being bent and incapable of standing erect. When we feel like this for a day or two we call a chiropractor. But this woman was unable to find healing from her infirmity for eighteen years. It would have been difficult to maintain a sense of positivity when her body language was saying something else. It must have been emotionally and spiritually oppressive to the woman in addition to the physical difficulty.
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
We experience something analogous to this infirmity when we are in the power of sin. We find that we become closed in on ourselves and unable to live in the expansive freedom of the sons and daughters of God. We try to stand, but without the healing hand of Jesus we find that we are incapable. In healing this woman Jesus, it was as though he was healing Eve herself, and implied his desire to heal all persons bent over, crippled, and unable to fully live.
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
This woman stood immediately and and found her place in the chorus of praise to God, now able to fully live the purpose for which the sabbath had been given. She had probably succumbed to the belief that her infirmity told her who she was. But now she learned who she truly was. Before, she had believed that the illness was the entirety of her story. Now she learned that the story to which she belonged was better than she could have imagined.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
What motivates us to condemn others for the good they do? This synagogue leader seemed to be more concerned for rules than the spirit behind those rules. He was all the more ready to weaponize those rules against those who did not belong to his in-group, against one like Jesus whose own popularity was likely the cause of jealousy among this leader as he was among so many. Jesus, simply by being who he was, relativized the importance everyone else, especially religious leaders. And many were not content to see themselves made apparently irrelevant by the coming of Jesus. They were so invested in their own story that they were unable to conceive of one which was different and better. They were content to remain police for the rules while suffering and affliction continued. They would welcome no change to that status quo even if it meant freedom and life.
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?
We too need the healing touch of Jesus. Yet we too are at risk of insisting on our own story with ourselves as the heroes, stories with no room for Jesus. We make up all sorts of "empty arguments" in support of these stories. But these stories, if we insist on them indefinitely, lead ultimately to "the wrath of God". But we should know better. We have been healed by Jesus just as the woman was. Jesus has in himself reshaped humanity into a new person, able to stand erect and join with choirs of the angels in heaven to glorify the Lord.
For you were once darkness,
but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.
We don't need to learn an entirely new story. But we do need to recognize more and more that the story that Jesus tells about our lives is the true one, and to relinquish, as grace enables, all the false roles and masks that our own poorly plotted stories imply.
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