Meditations On The Gospel Of Luke For The FamilySample

"MEDITATION 13: Three Sick People are Cured on a Sabbath"

There is dangerous mixture in the Gospels. If in the same story we find Jesus, the sabbath, and the Pharisees or the teachers of the Law, we know for sure there will be a conflict. It is obvious that the newness of the Good News announces and realizes a new wine that requires new wineskins. Jesus’ understanding of the Law goes beyond the rigid routine of the old tradition. We must recall the long section in Mathew’s Gospel (chapters 5, 6 and 7) in which Jesus interprets the basic commandments of the Law and brings to light their deepest meaning, in total fidelity to their spirit.
In the three passages we see in this meditation, the conflict arises when Jesus confronts the Pharisees’ legalistic interpretation of the sabbath with the “working” of a miracle to deliver three different people from the slavery of disease. On these three occasions, they manifest the same attitude: they are “enraged,” become “indignant,” or accuse Jesus of transgressing the Law of the Sabbath. Of course, he could have cured the sick on some other day of the week (13:14), but only this “scandal” could unmask one basic issue: the underlying hypocrisy of those who criticize Jesus’ saving actions. According to their interpretation of the Law, Jesus was breaking the observance of the sabbath when he “set free,” “untied” a crippled woman, a “daughter of Abraham,” who had been subjected to the dominion of Satan. Curiously, they see no transgression of the sabbath in the same action of “untying” their own oxen, or pulling their son or their ox out of a cistern if they fell there. (It is important to note that Luke uses the same verb, “untie,” for the deliverance of the crippled woman and the ox.)
The three healings show also another dimension of the discussion with those who supposedly know, understand and interpret the Law that others should observe. Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” (6:9) The answer marks a clear difference between two conceptions of the Law: a negative vision, which emphasizes taboos and prohibitions, whose only scope would seem to build barriers and walls; and a positive approach to the possibility of creating a context of effective justice and mercy. We should recall the only “law” Jesus gives to his disciples during the Last Supper, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34).
Rev. Fr. Mariano Perrón, Roman Catholic priest, Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain