As I reflected on today’s Gospel reading, I was aware of a complex set of inter-connected meanings. It is as if each one is inside the other, like this set of Russian wooden dolls called matryoshka. When you first see it, you think the shape you see, is all there is. But it comes apart, and there is a smaller figure inside. And the smaller figure comes apart too. The healing of the crippled woman on the Sabbath seems to be a story about how the Sabbath rules can be set aside for a good and sufficient reason. That is only the first meaning, corresponding to the largest figure.

We are all aware of the 4th commandment, to remember the Sabbath and to keep it holy. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had developed many rules about keeping the Sabbath: there were 39 kinds of work prohibited on the Sabbath. There was a limitation on how far a person could walk on the Sabbath, lest walking a long distance become work. The Jews did not cook on the Sabbath, because that was work; they only ate food prepared before the Sabbath. Even the food for one’s animals was to be prepared in advance; although it was acceptable to lead one’s animals to water.

The issue in today’s story is whether healing is a kind of work that is not permitted on the Sabbath. Many of the oral laws observed at the time of Jesus, were written down about 150 years later, as the Mishnah. One of those laws from the Mishnah says, “On the Sabbath, one is not . . . to set a fracture. If one has dislocated his hand or foot, he may not pour cold water upon it, but he may wash it in his usual way. If he is healed, he is healed”. So it was not the fact of healing that is a problem; it is only whether a person is working to effect the healing.

In the Gospel of Luke, this matter of the Sabbath is very important; there are six events reported on the Sabbath, four of which are healings. So there seems to be a deliberate effort on the part of Jesus to challenge the Sabbath laws, for the sake of healing and compassion. Unlike many of the other healing stories, the crippled woman did not ask for healing; rather Jesus saw her and called her over to him. There is no suggestion that he had ever seen or met her before; he was visiting a synagogue on his journey to Jerusalem, and noticed her because she was bent over.

Without any preliminary dialogue, he healed her, and she responded with praise of God. The synagogue leader knew this was wrong; but it is interesting that he did not rebuke Jesus. Instead, he addressed the crowd, warning them not to come on the Sabbath expecting to be healed! So he was trying to enforce the rules; he was implicitly criticizing the woman for showing up at all; and he was certainly saying that Jesus had wrongly done the work of healing on the Sabbath.

Jesus responded with a classic argument from the lesser to the greater. “Does not each of you untie his ox or his donkey from its manger, and lead it away to give it water?” So the argument goes, if you give basic care to a domestic animal, how much more should this woman be given healing. Apparently, the majority of people in the crowd agreed with Jesus. Here, and at the other events on the Sabbath, when Jesus healed the man with the withered arm, and the man with dropsy, and plucked grain, Jesus was both saying, and demonstrating by his actions, that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath (Mk 2:27). All of this about the Sabbath belongs to the first layer of meaning, the outer figure.

What does it mean for us, who no longer worship on the Sabbath, which is Saturday? For many hundreds of years, Christians have treated Sunday as if it were the Sabbath, the day of rest; but in the 21st century, the practice of keeping Sunday as a day without work has vanished. Some of us are required to work, and the rest of us feel free to mow the lawn, clean the house, and pay the bills on Sunday. Some of us have no other day on which to do these tasks. Our lives are much busier than the lives of our grandparents, perhaps because we have more “labor-saving” equipment, and partly because we have more ways to communicate, and to be entertained. Is the observance of Sabbath (on any day) of value to us?

There are some guidelines we can find in the words and actions of Jesus. The first is, don’t be rigid about the Sabbath. Any work of rescue, healing or saving that you and I can do, ought to be done, regardless of the day. The second is, if we can’t have a day of rest on either Saturday or Sunday, we should choose another day. The day of rest seems to be designed by God for two purposes: first for physical rest and recuperation from work, and second to enhance our relationships with God, and with our family and friends. A third guideline arises from Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Mark: “the Sabbath is made for humanity”: it is to make our lives better, by giving us a time-out from work. I invite you to reflect on these purposes, and guidelines, and ask yourself whether you set aside time for rest, for your important relationships, and for enjoyment of life.

Now let us open the matryoshka, and look at the figure inside, which represents the actual healing of the crippled woman. St Luke makes it clear that he and Jesus believed the woman was bent over because of Satan’s influence. I think it is just at this point that I have a problem with this passage, and you may also. I am not willing to attribute the woman’s disability to Satan, and I just don’t know whether the straightening of a spinal deformity is something God does, ever. It might be helpful to know that the initial description is, literally, “a spirit of weakness”, which leaves open the possibility of an emotional cause. So it is possible t hat this was the lifting of a great spiritual or emotional burden, which had oppressed the woman very profoundly. Sometimes the feeling of guilt or shame can become an enormous weight upon us, making it difficult to meet others face to face. Sometimes a great loss, as of a child or a spouse, can hold us captive, and restrict our ability to move. At the same time, I am reluctant to say it was not a miraculous healing. Whatever the cause of her disability, we do hear of an immediate healing in response to Jesus’ words, and laying on of hands. One other possibility to consider, is that this woman was a symbolic figure, not a single individual: first, because he called her a “daughter of Abraham”, one of the chosen people, second because her ailment was, in the Greek, weakness, which is translated crippled in English, and third, because Jesus did not say he was healing her, but rather, “setting her free”. The clear implication is, that she has been in bondage and she has borne too heavy a load for 18 years. Now Jesus has come to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of “release to the prisoners and liberty to the captives” (Is 61:2). Even the fact that these words are addressed to a woman connects to the prophecies in Isaiah, many of which were spoken to Jerusalem as “captive daughter Zion”, who will “rise up from the dust” (Is 52:2).

So within the story about the violation of Sabbath rules, there is another story about being set free from bondage, and within that second story, there is yet a third story, for those who have eyes to see. Let me open the matryoshka once more. This third meaning is centered on Jesus: Who IS this that has the authority to heal? And how is he related to the Lord who created the Sabbath, and determined its limits? Isn’t Jesus, by these actions and these words, acting as if he were God? In chapter 5 of the Gospel of John, there is a similar healing, described in the same way. Jesus was in Jerusalem as the Pool of Bethzatha. Sometimes the water in the pool was stirred up, and the people believed it was an angel who did the stirring. So sick people gathered around, and the first person to go into the pool once the water moved, was often healed. A crippled man there beside the pool was healed by Jesus and some who witnessed that healing criticized him, because it was done on the Sabbath. Listen to the reply Jesus made to their criticism: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (John 5:17). In other words, God the Father is NOT resting on the Sabbath, and neither is God the Son; they are both doing the work of healing and salvation!! This means that the visible work of Jesus on the Sabbath, is a reflection of, and in coordination with, the invisible work of the Father. The fact that it is the Sabbath is now irrelevant; and the fact that it is Jesus who heals, means that the Father is with, or in Jesus, in a unique way.

So I am inclined to believe that there is one final figure underneath these three. It is not, after all, merely a story about Sabbath rules, and a crippled woman who lived 2000 years ago, whose name we don’t even know. Rather it is a demonstration with a real woman, who at the same time represents Daughter Zion, that God is still working, still creating. I think these healings on the Sabbath are intended to bring people face to face with the presence of God in our midst. God is not resting on a distant throne, or confined to a sanctuary; God is here, now! The focus of his work, is to set people free from all the things that weigh us down: physical illness, anxiety, grief, suppressed anger, guilt, rejection, addiction, debt, prejudice, despair, relationship problems, employment problems . . . In other words, our traditional sayings about Jesus saving us from our sins, may be far too narrow. Perhaps Jesus came to save us from, to free us from, all those burdens, including sin, but not limited to sin. Perhaps everything and every circumstance that diminishes, depresses, and constricts our lives, God intends to release us from, in order to give us an abundant life. What do you think? Could that be true?