Luke 13:10-17, from Proper 16 (21)
Jesus often talked completely over the heads of the people around him, and often, it seems, completely on purpose.
But at times he said things that hit people right between the eyes, or perhaps right in the heart. This week’s Gospel reading recounts one of those times.
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue one Sabbath when he spotted a woman who, “crippled by a spirit,” had spent the past 18 years bent over and unable to stand up straight. He called her up front, told her she had been set free from her infirmity, and put his hands on her. Immediately, she straightened up and began praising God for her deliverance.
But the ruckus apparently violated the sensibilities of the synagogue’s leader. Citing Exodus 20:9-11, or possibly Deuteronomy 5:13-14, the leader told the people to pick a day other than the Sabbath to come be healed, because healing was work, and the Sabbath was supposed to be a day of rest.
As the people’s joy vanished in the dread of having violated sacred law, Jesus decided to school this fussbudget on the hazards of suggesting that God in the flesh doesn’t know right from wrong.
Jesus pointed out that, without a second thought, any one of the legalistic blowhards in the room would free an ox or donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it to a watering trough. If they would do that for a mere animal on the Sabbath, how could they possibly object to spending a moment of the Sabbath freeing a fellow human being, a daughter of Abraham, from 18 years’ worth of suffering and oppression imposed on her by Satan?
Stung by Jesus’ reply, the synagogue leader and all who had agreed with him stand aside, humiliated, as delight comes rushing back to the people over the healing they have witnessed.
Jesus straightened more than the woman’s bent-up back that Sabbath day. He straightened a bent-up sense of what God wants and put right some wrong-headed thinking that probably had been killing joy at that synagogue for years.
What strikes me about the story is how quickly everyone saw the truth once Jesus had pointed it out. It’s as if Jesus had said, “There’s an elephant over there in the corner,” and as if everyone had turned to notice, for the first time, the massive gray body, the flapping ears, the curling trunk and the undeniable presence of the behemoth that had been standing there all along. The idea that kindness and healing would be welcome in God’s house at any time on any day should have been just as obvious. But it hadn’t been until Jesus pointed it out.
We all have elephant-sized blind spots in our visions of God and what God wants of us. And prophets capable of reliably pointing them out to us are easy to avoid. Or silence.
It’s worth taking a look around your personal synagogue now and then to assess the chances that the books and news outlets you have chosen, the social media “friend” circles you have programmed, the list of people you speak to and listen to will admit anyone smart enough and brave enough to point out to you something you can’t see, or don’t want to see.
It’s also worth considering whether you remain humble enough to glance in the directions such people might point your attention. Squelching the voices of prophets might make your life more comfortable. But you might comfortably become the sort of hypocrite who would mindlessly carry a bucket of cold water past a brother or sister who is dying of thirst so that some nameless donkey in the barn can have a drink.
