Who can tell me how many times the list of the Ten Commandments appears in the Bible? Two, that’s right! We know about the version in Exodus Chapter 20; there’s a second version in the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 5. They’re mostly the same, but what’s interesting is how they are not.
Take Commandment #4. In Exodus it says to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy because in 6 days God made heaven and earth and rested the 7th day. In the other version, it says to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. Then it says, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (5:12, 15).
The Sabbath is tied to the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. It is a remembrance of them leaving their long seasons of bondage, of being tethered literally and physically to Egyptian overlords. The Sabbath is linked to God’s gift of freedom.
Now let’s go to our Luke story –– where, guess what, it’s a story that happens on the Sabbath! “Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years . . . When Jesus saw her, he called her over.” In that era, if you were afflicted, it was possible that you were an outcast, because there was a presumption that sickness was the result of sin. This being bent over so badly for so long may be God’s judgment on her. It was hard to look at her, so I imagine that many people routinely looked away, further isolating her.
Also, women were second class citizens, to the point that they were not, at this point in time, allowed to come into the sanctuary part of a synagogue. Nevertheless, she drew near, and Jesus saw her. To call her over where she was not supposed to come, He may have also gone out to her and ushered her in. Jesus was saying No to these unwelcoming, judgmental aspects of his own community.
It was time for her to be delivered. On the Sabbath day when no cures or works of healing were allowed except when needed to save a life, Jesus “called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
She was released from her bondage. Jesus released her partially by seeing her, welcoming her, bringing her into the synagogue, speaking to her (as rabbis would not normally do in public) and laying his hands on her; he fully released her by this miracle cure from the power of God within Him.
But He broke the commandment, didn’t He? He said No to some societal norms, but Jesus also said No to the current interpretation of that Commandment; He might say that rather, He fulfilled it! He did not cooperate with the status quo.
The synagogue leader was beside himself. He may have been secretly overjoyed that she was cured, but he was mad that Jesus pulled this on a Sabbath, when no work, including no healing, was to be done! So we heard Xan read his words, admonishing those present not to get any ideas, but to follow the law and only come on the other 6 days for healing. The final verse lets us know that there were others in the gathering who opposed what Jesus did, even as crowds rejoiced.
Jesus was not finished, however. He calls those opponents “hypocrites,” or two-faced, by pointing out that they were fine with undoing the rope on their donkey or ox and leading it to water, but were not fine with untethering, with setting free or ‘loosing’ that Daughter of Abraham from her own bondage of 18 years! Appropriately, on this day when she was set free from her ailment, Jesus reminded them this was done on a sabbath day – the day they remembered Israel’s deliverance from slavery – the best day in fact to be freed of anything that binds! How could there be a prohibition against that?!
Now we do live in a time when elites want one law for themselves and another for folks like you and me. Send out ICE to round up brown-skinned persons almost indiscriminately, skip due process, hold them or ship them abroad as prisoners to places like the Sudan or CIPOC, but break more laws and move convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison.
We acknowledge such hypocrisy lives on, but in this case the pronouncement by Jesus did shame them; they got the point. What this indicates to me is that untying your animal to lead them to water does NOT break the 4th Commandment – Jesus refers to it twice elsewhere without judging it, so why on earth should it be a violation to untie a long-suffering woman from her affliction also on a Sabbath!
Jesus himself really did no work; he laid his hands on her is what He physically did. All the same a cure was considered work. It was listed as a prohibited kind of labor not in the 4th Commandment itself, but in rabbinical commentaries called Midrash, found within the Mishnah of Judaism. Those commentaries, interpretations of the Torah, took on the power of the Torah itself. Jesus did not technically break the Law; he said No to a prized interpretation of the Law by curing someone – on the best day you could cure someone! Jesus knew that interpretation; however, he said No. He did not cooperate but acted to bring mercy and justice for her. It was risky for him, no doubt. Dangerous, in fact.
The first result of Christ’s risky non-cooperation was grace. Oh, deeds of non-compliance like this followed Jesus all the way to Jerusalem where He was nailed to a Cross, and I believe He knew that was coming. Yet here was grace shining, and people with eyes to see rejoicing in His non-cooperation with yokes and burdens, de-humanizing and idolizing traditions.
In part, Jesus’ mission was driven by this demonstrative expansion of God’s mercy and grace because of saying No. George Caird in his commentary wrote that “It was necessary that this woman be loosed on the Sabbath . . . The word for ‘necessary’ (or “ought to be” healed, as Jesus said) ‘dei,’ is the same that was used to express the divine necessity of the Cross.” Professor Caird points us to Luke 9:22 where it says, “The Son of Man, or the Human One, must undergo great suffering . . . and on the third day be raised.”
Indeed, the Greek verb there for Jesus “must” go on toward the Passion is the same verb we hear in today’s lesson as “ought not to be.” Jesus saw it necessary to go forward to Jerusalem, and in Luke 13, necessary to heal this woman – using the same word (dei) gives it the same power of necessity, the drive Jesus had to fulfill his mission.
One way to describe Jesus’ mission is to demonstrate the radical self-giving nature and expanse of God’s grace in Jesus, who did not cooperate with the agents of anti-grace. The mission lives on:
Grace can break in due to non-cooperation with injustice. That grace can be and often is transformative. Rosa Parks refused to cooperate with the Birmingham bus law that directed people of color to give up their front seats to a white. In South Africa, noncooperation by Christian clergy played a key role in resisting apartheid in the 1970s and 80s. In the U.S., faith institutions divested from corporations benefiting from apartheid South Africa. In Poland, where the far-right Law and Justice party (PiS) used Christian rhetoric and symbolism to legitimize its policy agenda, faith leaders played a key role in the country’s democratic turn-around. Many bishops leveraged their position and religious rhetoric to oppose the PiS’ more overtly anti-democratic efforts. A prime example of non-compliance occurred during Poland’s Independence Day rallies in 2017, when the Episcopal Conference refused to celebrate Mass. The ‘must’ still moves some people of faith.
And us? As Christ’s people, we, too, can find healing when we refuse to cooperate with those who have one law for themselves and another for you and me. We can reveal God’s loving power when you or I confront injustice or forces against mercy with a No. Will you and I be used to let freedom ring, to let deliverance emerge, to encourage, when we say No? When we decide not to cooperate with traditions or deeds that would keep yokes on some and bend others down? We know about redemptive suffering. It may not happen on a Sabbath.
But a consecrated No can open the door for God’s Yes of justice and grace. AMEN