How should we think about the life purpose of Jesus? This question is reflected in the Friday conversation, where I asked what Jesus’ life had to do with his death.
The question is particularly pointed if we begin with the traditional evangelical answer about the gospel: Jesus died on the cross so that my sins might be forgiven. If that’s what the death is about, how is it connected to a ministry of healing and exorcism? In fact, if that’s why we need the cross, then how is it that Jesus can proclaim and effect forgiveness of sins before he dies?
My “Cross in the New Testament” course pushes me and my students to reimagine how the death of Jesus works. Much to their surprise, I think, many of my students walk away thinking that Christus Victor comes closer to holding the NT together than other ways of thinking about Jesus’ life and death.
Related to these musings, if indirectly, is the striking language with which Luke tells the story of the bent woman whom Jesus heals on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17).
This is one of those stories where the writing blows me away. Jesus is teaching. “And behold! There was a woman having a spirit of infirmity for 18 years, and she was bent over and not able to stand up straight.” Luke uses the visual metaphor (look! behold!) to focus our “eyes” on this one woman in the synagogue. What we are to see is not merely that her body is bent, but that this is the work of an opposing, sickening spirit.
Then, “Jesus, beholding (same Greek root) her, called her forward.” We’re called to see her; Jesus sees her–and he calls her forward. In light of the response of the synagogue leader later on, I think it’s important that she does not call out for help, but Jesus calls her forward to be restored. Jesus initiates.
When he heals her, Jesus speaks these words, “Woman, be released from your sickness.”
The language isn’t just of healing, it’s of freedom. This is the work of him who came to proclaim freedom to the captives. And yet, the very definition of “freedom” is a surprise, not to mention the means by which it is actualized in the lives of particular people.
And then, the woman is healed, immediately stands up straight and praises God. I have no doubt that she raised her voice, in echo of William Wallace, and cried, “Freedom!” at the top of her lungs. In praise of God.
But now this “healing story” turns into a conflict story as the synagogue official is all hot and bothered about a healing on the Sabbath.
Passages like this make me nervous. These are the ones that cut against the grain of how I assess the world. Here’s the woman stand there, recipient of some apparent spiritual blessing, and there’s the guy who can tell you why this can’t possibly be something that glorifies God because it’s happening in contradiction to scripture.
Seriously. The synagogue leader is the stand in for the bible-believing Christian in this story: the person who checks everything to see if it’s in line with the word of God, and telling the people not to upset the biblical norm for their own convenience or exceptional spiritual experience.
But Jesus calls him on it.
You loose things on the Sabbath every day. You untie an ox to give it a drink of water.
Now, about this daughter of Abraham–she had been bound by Satan–Behold!–these eighteen years! (Can’t you see her?)
The synagogue leader had said, “It’s necessary to work six days a week, don’t come for healing now.” But Jesus has a different view of the necessary: “Was it not, then, necessary, to to loose her from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”
And, we’re told, this put Jesus’ opposition to shame.
The standard of “what is necessary” is being reshaped by Jesus here. He measures necessity in terms of the year of the Lord’s favor that he is anointed to both proclaim and inaugurate. And, where we too often measure even this divine favor in terms of law, obedience, and sin, Jesus claims a different sort of measure altogether.
There are prisoners he has come to set free. And this woman is one of them. She was not merely a sick person needing to be worked on by a doctor. She was a daughter of Abraham bound by Satan to sickness. And so, for the one who comes to set people free, it was necessary to bring freedom.
And the people rejoiced while the theologians brooded.
I appreciate this post, Daniel. Especially how you’ve shown that the pharisees, while trying to be faithful to the scriptures, actually go against the purposes of God. What is especially challenging, as you point out, is that we – the Christians – are often times going against the purposes of God while trying to be faithful to the scriptures. We definitely need to re-imagine some things.
Daniel,
It would be possible to read your post as pitting the attempt to be faithful to Scripture against acts of compassion. The real opposition is between being subject to the Bible in the power of the Holy Spirit, versus subjecting the Scriptures to cultural goals or convenience. When we look at the OT, does it really appear that the Pharisees interpreted it correctly, or that Jesus disregards it?
You and I both know theologians who, losing their systems in the face of the Scriptures, are swept away by the wind of God and find such love and truth that systems can’t contain. I think you and I aspire to be such.
John, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of OT, Biblical grounds in and of the OT itself, for saying the Pharisees got it wrong. We only see it as wrong in light of the changed parameters Jesus brings to the table–most notably, himself as the one who gets to decide what’s lawful on Sabbath.
Dr. Kirk,
Good stuff on freedom from sin and sickness. One question though, was the synagogue leader really “the person who checks everything to see if it’s in line with the word of God, and telling the people not to upset the biblical norm for their own convenience or exceptional spiritual experience.” I cannot think of a OT text that disallows healing on the Sabbath or describes healing as work that should be avoided on the Sabbath. To me it seems that the synagogue leader’s problem was not that he wanted to check everything by Scripture, but that he was not correctly interpreting Scripture.
Any thoughts?