Monday, October 30, 2023

30 October 2023 - all the rest


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."

This healing performed by Jesus was disruptive to business as usual for the leader of the synagogue. This woman was no doubt a marginalized and unseemly character. Although she had been suffering for eighteen years the only thing that mattered to this leader was that she not make a scene. He wasn't even moved by the miraculous healing, but only offended by a perceived violation of rules. 

The Lord said to him in reply, "Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?

Those who complained about Jesus healing on the sabbath would have set free their ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering. Of course, such animals could provide benefit to them as opposed to this woman who had nothing to offer. But this nevertheless revealed that their supposed concern about work being done on the sabbath wasn't their real motivation. Work might be done, provided it benefited them. But the scope of their sympathy and compassion was too narrow to recognize the need of the woman or to celebrate with her when she was healed.

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?

By insisting that the woman stay bound the leader was implicitly casting his lot with Satan who was the one who ultimately held her. He was acting to prolong not only the eighteen years of her suffering but the fallen state of the world itself. He did not recognize that the sabbath was meant to be much more than a mere obedient act in which work was avoided. As the ox or ass was unbound to drink, even on the sabbath, how much more right and just was it that this woman be unbound to drink the living waters of the Spirit. This was actually even more fitting on the sabbath which was meant to crown the work of creation, and to be a day of fellowship between God and man. Jesus therefore addressed her as "Woman", a new Eve. Her healing was thus the first stage of the realization of a new creation which they could now celebrate in fellowship together, with or without the leader of the synagogue.

God's desire for the restoration of mankind is not merely something he fits in when his rules can accommodate it. He has ordered all of creation toward this renewal. The sabbath was placed it the end of the week not so much as an obligation, but as a promise.

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his (see Hebrews 4:9-10).

The woman who had been crippled for eighteen years was finally able to taste the true promise of sabbath rest together with Jesus. The synagogue leader was the one whose work of fastidiously enforcing the rules as he understood them was actually preventing him from experiencing the joy of this promise. May we, like this woman, find the healing we need in the merciful hands of Jesus, so that we too may enter his rest.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, "Abba, Father!"







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