Luke 13:10-17
At that time, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God.
But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days on 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 this, all his adversaries were put to shame; and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We hear today of our Lord’s miraculous healing of a woman on the Sabbath. There is an interesting detail in this account by Saint Luke that is easy to miss. This is that he tells us what is causing this woman’s suffering.
Now, we know that Saint Luke was a medical doctor. Saint Paul calls him his ‘beloved physician’. So, we might have expected that he would give some kind of scientific explanation for what is causing this woman’s body to be bent forward and not allow her to straighten up. The Fathers tell us that the curvature of her spine was so extreme that she couldn’t look up and was forced to spend most of her time looking at the ground.
But Saint Luke does not use the medical jargon of his age to describe this woman’s affliction. Instead, he goes to the fundamental cause of not only her illness, but of all the evil that afflicts all of God’s children from the dawn of time down unto the present age. And that cause is Satan. The woman has suffered from a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. And our Lord tells us that the woman has been bound by Satan for those eighteen years.
What does Jesus mean by this? The Fathers refer us back to our first parents, the Fall of Adam and Eve, when they ate the fruit of the tree which had been forbidden them when tempted by the devil to disobey God, introducing sin into the world, and creating as an inheritance for us, their descendants, a tendency towards sin. That Fall, as the Fathers tell us and you all know, damaged not only God’s image in man but also affected all of His creation. Evil became a part of our world, not only by way of the sins we commit through our wilful disobedience to God’s laws but also by way of the evils that this world may afflict us with, such as natural disasters and disease.
Let us turn our attention now to how the woman is responding to the disease that has afflicted her for so many years. You have all encountered, I am sure, either directly or indirectly, those who look at suffering caused by such evils and respond by either rejecting God or declaring that they cannot believe in God because such suffering exists. Their behaviour reminds me of Job’s wife. She, you will recall, looked upon all the evil that Job had suffered and advised him to curse God and die.
But Job, as you will also recall, rejects this advice, saying that just as we accept the good things in life, so too must we accept the evil. We may have little doubt that this woman is following the path laid out by Job. For where does Jesus encounter this woman who has suffered pain and disfigurement for so long a time? In the synagogue, worshipping God. She endures her affliction with holy patience.
Such holy patience, as the Fathers and saints of the Church tell us again and again, builds holy people. Enduring suffering, accepting it as readily as we accept all the blessings of this world, can help turn us from sinful men and women into saints. Indeed, think of all the saints who thanked God for the suffering with which they were afflicted. Why? Because they saw it as a test of their faith; and they knew that if they endured, they would be blessed, if not in this world, then the next.
And notice how she responds to the presence of Jesus in the synagogue. Does she interrupt her prayer or the prayers of others by rushing over the one who makes the lame to walk, the blind to see, heals lepers of their loathsome disease, and even raises the dead, pleading that she also be healed? She does not. She continues patiently in her prayers, and it is Jesus Himself Who see her, and calls her, and frees her of her infirmity.
Having been touched by Jesus, she is at once able to straighter her body. For the first time in eighteen years, she can stand upright. And her response to that healing is one that we should pay particular attention to, for at once she praises God. You may think to yourself, that of course she praised God after being freed from her great suffering. But I would respond by reminding you of how many in the world today who do not think to thanks God when they receive even greater blessings than this.
Her response serves as a reminder to us to give thanks to God for every blessing we receive. When we wake in the morning, we must thank Him for bringing us safely through the night. When we sit down at every meal, we must thank Him for providing us with the food to satisfy our hunger and the strength to do our work. At the end of every journey, we must thank Him for watching over us and bringing us safely to our destination. For every little blessing we receive, we must give Him glory, for everything we receive, we receive from Him.
If we do not, we become like the ruler of the synagogue, who not only did not give thanks for the miracle he had witnessed but condemned it. Why? He says because it should not have taken place on the Sabbath. But Jesus points out his hypocrisy. The ruler and all present would relieve the thirst of their animals, even though by doing so they would technically be in breach of the laws of the Sabbath; how must more did this woman, a daughter of Abraham, deserve to be relieved from the affliction that she had endured for so long.
And the Fathers point to another reason. When Jesus healed this woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath, it meant that there were many witnesses to the miracle, many who would see and know that He was truly a man sent by God. The ruler did not believe in Jesus and did not want others to believe in Him either. And so, he condemned the miracle, pretending that he did so out of zeal for the Sabbath. And he could not bring himself to give glory to God for the great miracle that had taken place before his eyes.
He is no example for us. He is a man that can not praise God, a man who let’s Satan’s evil tricks guide him, rather than God. This is why it is the woman that I pray that you will be like. That you may endure your sufferings with grace and patience. That you will pray and give glory to God, whatever it is that you may face in life. And that you will give thanks to God for all that he gives you, great and small, each and every day of your life. Amen.
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