Some things I've read this week that have helped me think in different ways about this gospel passage:
At Paul Neuchterlein's Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary:
"This Gospel story is a splendid one that shows Jesus unbinding someone through his work, which is portrayed not as a proper resting but as a proper sabbath work. Sabbath work is precisely work that frees us to finally do the work that we are created to do, that all of creation is created to do: praise God. This woman is able to be unbound from the burden of Satanic work so that she is immediately able to do her proper work as a beloved creature of God. She is freed to praise her Creator. Jesus seemingly gives us an example not of sabbath rest but of the sabbath work of re-orienting our work in a way that liberates it."At Preaching Peace, by Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz:
"Illness, by it’s very nature, is an arbitrary distinction. Is illness the presence of germs? No. We all carry them all the time. Mental illness is even more arbitrary. It is basically a way of perceiving reality that doesn’t conform that of the majority. In Soviet Russia, it’s the place dissidents were sent. “You don’t understand the wisdom of Marxism? You must be crazy!” (Michael and I have been called crazy by angry readers from time to time.) Healing is not restoration to “sameness.” It is being freed from the association between certain states and being “afflicted.” (That is, in some sense, cursed, or having some kind of moral deficit.) Preaching Good News then means preaching healing in this new way."At Mary Hinkle's Pilgrim Preaching:
"We and the people to whom we preach have much more in common with the bent-over woman than with the one who heals her. Read alongside that woman this week. Figure out what power holds you with her "captive to restricted movement, to the inability to meet another person face-to-face, and to a world defined by the piece of ground around [your] own toes or looked at always on a slant" (Ringe, 187). It is that power which Jesus defeats when he unbinds the woman and all those likewise bound."From Brian Stoffregen's Exegetical Notes at Mark Vitalis Hoffman's CrossMarks site are particularly interesting read with the link from Tikkun, below. From Stoffregen:
"It is the synagogue leader who calls Jesus' actions "healing" (therapeuo in v. 14 twice) -- and thus a "work". He doesn't see it as the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy of releasing from bondage -- or a re-enactment of the Exodus journey from slavery to freedom."I'm hearing this week's gospel text as a proclamation of freedom from all sorts of bondages. It's fairly easy for us to look at how others have made liberation into bondage, freedom into more "rules", set up unhelpful (and even evil) systems, etc. Our own liberation from these things is one thing, and an encouraging message! At the same time, how do we, in our OWN "correctness" set up these sorts of things - even in the name of our own faithfulness, or in the name of re-creating and assuring continuing relationship with God? How do our own "God-given" systems keep others captive? How do we keep ourselves captive by the very things we have set up to keep ourselves faithful? In what ways does God liberate us from ourselves? In what ways do we need to liberate ourselves from our selves? What are each of us - as individuals and as various communities - holding onto in order to be "safe" from relationship with God? How are we keeping ourselves and others "bent over"? And how do we integrate the equal truths inherent in opposition to these claims, questions, and thoughts - the truths that others see so well as occasional (or inevitable!) consequence to this kind of freedom? How do we live out paradoxes of responsibility and freedom - of ordering our lives faithfully and being called to live them with abandon - in our concrete lives? Exactly how deep IS the stasis from which we are called?