March 22, 2000
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April 9 Lesson
Jesus' healings place relationships before ritual
___Luke 13:10-17
___10 On a sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
___14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, "There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath."
___15 The Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the sabbath day from what bound her?"
___17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Several months ago while attending a conference in Houston, I met a woman of another Christian denomination. As we talked, she found out I live in Dallas, and she expressed her fondness for the city.
___"Dallas is a wonderful place," she said, "but it's going to be even better when Benny Hinn moves his headquarters there. I may just have to move to Dallas."
___As we talked for a few moments, I quickly ascertained that this woman had more faith in Benny Hinn, a prominent TV faith healer, than she apparently had in God.
___Even before the arrival of Benny Hinn in Dallas, Texans have had a front-row seat to witness other stars in the modern TV-driven phenomenon of faith healing. Robert Tilton also gained national fame from a Texas headquarters, and others like him have held forth from various parts of the state through the years.
___We have watched faith healers come and go, and we Baptists generally have scratched our heads and wondered what it all means. We've seen the appeals for money; we've watched people mail in their prayer requests; we've seen the prayer cloths that allegedly contain healing power offered in exchange for monetary donations. And then we've gone about our own business.
___These experiences have shaped the way we see the world and the way we understand God's work in the world. We have reacted against the perceived excesses and outlandish behavior of these preachers who seemingly come from another world.
___So when we come to a Scripture passage like Luke 13:10-17, we carry some baggage that has the potential to lead us astray. We might even miss the point of the story.
___On one level, this is a story about healing. But that's probably not the main point, not the primary reason this story was placed in Scripture by divine inspiration.
___Healing and
___confrontation
___The Gospels record numerous accounts of Jesus healing people of all kinds of infirmities. Some accounts are given in detail, while at other times the Gospel writers simply summarize by saying Jesus "healed many others." It is undeniable that the power to heal was a major visible manifestation of Jesus' ministry.
___Luke tells us earlier (5:17) of another time when Jesus healed the sick, and he prefaces the account by saying "the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick."
___This event, the healing of a paralytic, is another of the occasions when we read about Jesus coming into conflict with the Jewish leaders over his healing ministry. Among the dozens of healing accounts related in the Gospels, there are only a few where Jesus' power is contested by the religious authorities of the day. But these conflicts are recorded more than once.
___In fact, Mark places one of Jesus' first healings in a synagogue immediately after the calling of the disciples. We know from this and other accounts that the conflict arising in Luke 13 is not the first time the religious leaders have seen Jesus do a miracle in a synagogue or on the sabbath.
___The Gospels also record numerous times when Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees came into conflict over issues other than healing and in settings other than synagogues. Jesus is criticized for working on the sabbath when his disciples pluck grain from a field. He is criticized for claiming to be the Son of God and for claiming to have the power to forgive sins.
___What makes the Luke 13 encounter so important is that it brings several of these streams together in one incident. Jesus is working on the sabbath. Jesus is healing someone with miraculous power. Jesus is claiming religious authority. And Jesus is doing all this in a synagogue on the sabbath.
___This all combines to be too much for the ruler of the local synagogue to handle, and he becomes "indignant" with Jesus.
___The woman's problem
___Luke tells us the woman Jesus encountered this sabbath had been "crippled by a Spirit" for 18 years. "She was bent over and could not straighten up at all."
___There's a lot for us to unpack in that one verse, beginning with our understanding of the cause of illness. As sophisticated, modern people, we don't want to acknowledge the sort of demonic possession implied in this Scripture. This is troublesome territory for Baptists, because it puts us too close to the Robert Tiltons, Benny Hinns and Oral Robertses of our society. It causes us to explain away the unexplainable.
___We must not read Gospel accounts such as these as suggesting all illness is caused by active demonic oppression, just as we must not assert all illness is caused by sin. We live in a fallen world, and sickness and affliction are simply part of the environment. Not every problem can be traced to a specific cause-and-effect relationship. Some-times, bad things just happen.
___On the other hand, we are blessed with modern research that is more clearly documenting a link between mental and physical health. We know the choices we make have implications for other areas of our lives.
___The Greek word used to describe the woman's condition may be literally translated "bent together," which gives a graphic word picture of her painful condition. It also serves as an image of the handicap we all suffer when weighed down with the burden of sin or oppression.
___Jesus' healing
___In some cases, Jesus asked for a statement of faith before healing a person; in other cases he did not. It's impossible for us to know exactly why, although we may suspect that Jesus approached each person knowing their individual need for faith. This, however, is one of the times when Jesus didn't even ask the woman whether she wanted to be healed; he simply acted to heal her when he saw her.
___We might assume, though, that were we to encounter such a bent-over person we would not need to ask whether they desired to be healed or not. What person wouldn't want to be freed from such a disablement?
___"Woman, you are set free from your infirmity," Jesus said. This command may also be translated "loosed from your infirmity," a beautiful picture of being set free from bondage.
___As with so many other stories in the Gospels, this account encapsulates the essence of the gospel story--the power of Jesus to set straight the crooked, to make whole the weak, to save us from ourselves.
___This account gives us the very meaning of the phrase "healing touch," for Jesus put his hands on her and she immediately straightened up. Furthermore, she immediately praised God.
___Jesus teaches us here and elsewhere that this is the end of all good deeds, to bring praise to God. The goal is not to glorify a place or a person or a set of circumstances but to bring glory to God for his power and love.
___The leader's opposition
___Have you ever done a good deed, only to be criticized for one small aspect of your work someone doesn't like? That's a rough equivalent of what Jesus encounters. "No good deed goes unpunished," we might say of his healing miracle.
___Although all the issues of Jesus being a threat to the religious establishment are no doubt lurking beneath the surface, the ruler of the synagogue becomes indignant because Jesus healed on the sabbath.
___Sabbath observance was an important matter in this culture. The Jewish leaders had refined a thorough set of interpretations and rules on this matter that made God's original one-sentence command to Moses wither by comparison. Legalism had taken root and, like kudzu on a Georgia hillside, had overgrown everything around it.
___The sabbath (which for Jews was and is on Saturday rather than Sunday) is a provision established by God. Its roots, as the synagogue leader implies, go all the way back to creation. God created in six days and rested on the seventh, and we are instructed to do likewise. In Exodus 20, God commands Moses and the Hebrew people to "remember the sabbath day by keeping it holy." This is the fourth of the 10 Commandments.
___During the recent 50th anniversary conference of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, theology professor Molly Marshall gave an excellent message on the importance of the sabbath in our modern world. (See Baptist Standard, March 8.)
___She called on Texas Baptists to rediscover the blessings of a sabbath day of rest, emphasizing sabbath as a natural pattern God has embedded into his creation.
___Modern Christians "are not used to celebrating God's rest," she said. And it is true.
___It hasn't always been so. Marshall referred to the culture we knew as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, when most Sunday work was considered illegal under so-called "blue laws."
___But even then, we didn't get it right, she said. "These prohibitive approaches safeguarded a day but they also inculcated a legalism which we are still trying to exorcise. We must see sabbath as grace and not law."
___Many of us can understand the synagogue leader's position because we have been there and experienced that. We may even have been guilty of enforcing the letter of the sabbath law to the exclusion of the spirit of God's purpose.
___Yet today, we individually and collectively have swung so far as to be guilty of the opposite. Perhaps it's time for us to seek a healthy middle ground on sabbath observance, avoiding both the extremes of legalism and freedom run amok.
___The sting of legalism
___We have something else in common with the synagogue leader, though, despite our different stance on sabbath observance. Substitute any number of other religious rules as the point of criticism, and the story may point a sharp finger at us.
___The synagogue leader was so concerned about enforcing sabbath observance that he made keeping that one rule more important than the health and well-being of a person. This woman had been suffering for 18 years, and he was concerned about whether it was a proper day for her to receive healing! We read this story and easily become angry with the synagogue leader for his narrow-mindedness, his blindness, his lack of compassion.
___But how about us? What religious rules do we enforce legalistically to the point of disregarding compassion for others? Just because you can quote Scripture doesn't mean you understand the grace of God.
___Jesus' reply
___Jesus offers a harsh rebuke to the synagogue leader and his cohorts. He drew attention to the hypocrisy of their rules, explaining that they allowed animals to be loosed from their bondage on the sabbath but not people.
___The people got the point, even if the religious leaders didn't. But do we?
___Let us be loosed and set free from legalism, just as God through Jesus has loosed us from the power of sin.
For thought and discussion
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