Luke's gospel was written around the year 90 C.E. or a little later, by a Gentile writer we identify as a physician. Tradition has it that Luke separately interviewed Saint Peter and our Blessed Mother and included their recollections in his gospel which also contains material from Matthew, Mark and the Q Source. 90 was the year when, more or less officially, mainstream Judaism and the Jesus Movement permanently parted ways. So one of the Luke's grand agendae is to show Christianity as the perfect successor to traditional Judaism in a seamless transition, and with moral superiority to contemporary Judaism as then practised.
In today's pericope (Lk 13: 10-17) we encounter Jesus, the observant Jew, in synagogue on shabbat, preaching and then healing a woman who had been "disabled by a spirit" for eighteen years. In this gospel's pre-scientific outlook, every disorder of mind or body, every physical disability and illness, whatever stood in the way of wholeness, was the work of little demons. So, of course, healings are described in terms of shooing away the evil spirits. To that end, Jesus lays on his hands for healing (just another element of his ministry later passed on to the Church,and which we do in the sacrament of unction). The woman is literally "straightened up" by God and restored to abundant life.
No good deed goes unpunished, of course, and the synagogue president objects to the healing on sabbath. This is untoward, for two reasons. First, the response is passive-aggressive. Instead of facing Jesus, the president harangues the crowd. Second, the response is hypocritical because the notion of what constitutes "work" was fluid at that time, and there was general recognition that, on sabbath, God does work, at least as to giving life (people are born), saving life (living beings are rescued), and ending of life (people die). Jesus' lifegiving action in healing the woman is certainly within that parameter and should not have been criticized. This "daughter of Abraham" had been liberated.
Liberation, in fact is what sabbath is all about. On the seventh day, God rested; so each seventh day his People rest from work and all of the day-to-day hassles that beset; even slaves and animals got rest on the sabbath. Every seventh year, the land lay fallow to recuperate. Every seventh cycle of seven years (Jubilee), all debts forgiven, land was redistributed, and all slaves were to be freed. It was only the objections of the Jerusalem Chamber Commerce that caused Jubilee to be dropped. . (On another occasion, when Jesus proposed to revive Jubilee, the local businessmen tried to throw him off a hill!) Some things never change.
From time to time we are all in need of turning to God for healing, for liberation from our demons, from the many false values that keep us bound, that prevent us from becoming the people we can become, people of kindness, compassion, and justice. Let us ask ourselves this week: What in my life now needs healing? What kind of liberation do I need?
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