(Luke 13:10-17)  - Why did he do it?

10 One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, 11 he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” 13 Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! 14 But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” 15 But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? 16 This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” 17 This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did.

This woman did not ask to be healed. She had neither approached Jesus nor forced his hand and demanded that he heal her. He could have finished his teaching and gone home and no one would have given a thought to the woman, but Jesus paused and called her over to him. He took the initiative and made an issue of her condition in front of everyone else. He did this in full view of the Pharisees, in the Temple and on the Sabbath. We do not know what she thought about the miracle; the people were dlighted at what Jesus did but her voice is lost in the telling of the story. We never even learn her name.

There are two immediate and apparent motives for Jesus’ actions. The first reason is that the woman was in a miserable condition and it was act of pure love and compassion. Luke was a doctor and this comes through in the relish with which he describes the woman’s condition. The disease had been progressing in the lady for 18 years. What began with lower back pain had ended with a horrible, permanent deformity. Whereas once she used to be able to straighten up with effort, now she no longer can. She is bound with invisible chains, chains of calcium now hardened in her spine. She is described as being so physically bent over she could not raise herself to look up. Looking at the ground was the only view that she had of what was going on around her. 

The second reason for the healing is that Jesus delberately wants to challenge the Temple authorities. Jesus heals her in a sacred space (a synagogue, mentioned twice) and within sacred time, namely on a Sabbath (noted no fewer than five times), and he is criticized for this breach of the law. Jesus is on the offensive here. He has something he wants to say. He wants to say something about the Sabbath day and what it means to keep it holy: the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27-28). Jesus has something he wants to say about the hypocrisy of the synagogue leaders who water their oxen on the Sabbath but get annoyed at Jesus' healing. He has something he wants to say about women and men. Jesus insists that the synagogue and the Sabbath are not the only things that are holy -- so also is this woman’s life. She is a daughter of the promise (And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29)). She is a deformed cripple and maybe people had shouted insults to her as such but Jesus called her "daughter." She was God’s child. 

Are we like Jesus wanting to take the initiative in a situation? We are taught culturally not to get involved and to keep ourselves to ourselves. Some times people who ask for our opinion really do want our help and we are doing them a disservice f we stand back and refuse to get involved. The sins of ‘omission’ (not doing what we should) can be just as serious as sins of ‘commission’ (doing the wrong thing).

Are we like the woman bent out of shape and deformed? Do we feel that the weight of the world is on our shoulders: worry and anxiety can make us feel like this. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, carrying around dark secrets, shame can leave us bent over. Heartache, pain, frustration, poverty, can leave us bent over. Being unemployed, facing financial worries, being the object of gossip, dealing with grief and loss, dealing with despair. Being trapped in sin makes us bent over."

Are we like the leaders in the Temple furious at having our world cut across? As far as they are concerned, Jesus could have waited until after the Sabbath had finished before healing the woman. An animal might need to be given water on the Sabbath because without it it might die. However, she had been in this condition for 18 years and there is no reason why she should not wait another day. Jesus ignores their logic and heals her publicly and in front of everyone else. They lose face and feel humiliated.

The answer is that we might feel like all of these or none of these. The Bible is not an instruction manual where you simply do what you are told. I can give you the background material to a passage to help you to put the story into context. I can give you suggestions as to what the implications of the passage might be. The nature of Christian truth is that the task of application is ours together, but ultimately yours alone. Jesus tells a parable comparing God's kingdom to ten young virgins who took oil lamps and went out to greet the bridegroom. Five had taken enough oil to keep their lamps alight and five had not. The silly five asked to borrow some oil from the others but were refused. They rushed off to buy some more oil and missed the bridegroom (Matt 25). In the same way that the virgins were responsible for their own oil each of us are responsible for our own salvation

Ideas taken from
www.jesuswalk.com
www.soundofgrace.com
www.sermonlinks.com
www.religion-online.org
www.micahchallenge.org