Encounters with Jesus - Pt 16

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him. (Luke 13:10-17 ESV).

Imagine a synagogue somewhere in Galilee or Judea. A woman is there, standing upright for the first time in eighteen years. Miraculously healed, she is praising God for this wonderful deliverance. Around her, relatives, friends and neighbors share her wonder, her thankfulness, and her joy. For eighteen years she had lived and worshipped among them, bent over, unable to straighten up. Now their tears and smiles mingle as they witness her newfound freedom from pain and disability. But a harsh, indignant voice cuts through the joy and jubilation, silencing the praise, silencing the joy, condemning the action of Jesus. It cuts off the hope, the possibility, that others also might be touched by his healing hand. They said, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” (v. 14). The leader of the synagogue, trapped in a mindset in which spirituality, or godliness, or righteousness was defined by the strict letter of the law, sees only that the Sabbath law has been broken. In his zeal for God's law, in his commitment to keep the Law of God in all the meticulous details into which it had been itemized by the teachers of the Law, this man failed in at least two ways: First, he failed by focusing on the Law instead of the imperative to love God and love his neighbor. And, second, he failed by making his religion something that he does instead of something that he is. Jesus' response humiliated his opponents and delighted the people. In identifying the hypocrisy of a religion absorbed in meticulous keeping of laws, Jesus exposed the weakness and error of this religion, and relieved the people of the impossible burden that this religion had imposed upon them. The Sabbath was never intended as a burden. Its purpose was to remind us of his grace, and to point us to Jesus Christ, the ultimate reality, the ultimate expression of God's grace, whom it symbolized and anticipated. What are your focusing on?