You are Set Free

This morning’s passage follows directly after the parable of the fig tree, and it centers around the idea of Sabbath, of building intentional rest into our lives, just as God did at the beginning of time when after working for six days to create our good world, God simply stopped. God took time to just be and appreciate the beauty of life - what delicious freedom. How amazing that we are invited into that freedom as well!

As you read the passage, notice how the anxiety the religious leaders have grown to feel around the freedom of Sabbath - how they have tried to make it manageable by systematizing it and taming it with rules. Notice how they try to control Jesus’ work, insisting that the people conform to their rules and trying to shape where and how God’s healing power will flow.

The freedom to rest, be, be restored, be grateful… does that ever make you nervous? Have you experienced in yourself or in others that desire to make Jesus a little more tame and predictable, a little more manageable? Talk with Jesus about these things this morning - ask Jesus to help you live more deeply into the freedom he offers, for your own sake and others.

Luke 13:10-17 (NIV):

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.