Gospel Reading for today: October 27, 2008

Luke 13: 10-17

10 Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. 11 And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” 13 He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath, said to the crowd in reply, “There are six days when work should be done. Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.” 15 The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering? 16 This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?” 17 When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated; and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.

I think the synagogue official must have sounded pretty ridiculous in the way he chastised Jesus for healing a woman who had an infirmity for the last 18 years on the Sabbath. It is plain to anyone with even a modicum of common sense that the Sabbath Law does not apply to such a situation. Let us not become beholden to the letter of the law when that is clearly not the issue at stake. Let us seek to live lives of love and mercy as we live according to the Law.

From: Companion

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