We wish the story here would have ended another way. Yes, it was the sabbath (always meant to be a beautiful day for God's people!). And even on the sabbath people become sick or continue to be sick. Jesus notices a woman, all hunched over, obviously one who had been ill for a long time. He is a merciful Lord, so he takes the initiative to call her over and lay his hands on her. In these gracious acts, the woman is healed on the spot. Her body is straightened again, and she praises God for God's goodness.

From here on, I say, we wish the story would have ended another way. Wouldn't it have been nice if all the people standing around witnessing this touching scene could have joined the woman in praising God for God's goodness? Indeed, the whole idea of worshiping a loving God on the sabbath could have been thus reinforced in a powerful way.

But that is not what happened. As soon as Jesus finishes his lovely deed, the keepers of the sabbath, the religious leaders, become indignant. The ruler of the synagogue reminds everyone that there are six other days in the week when such deeds of healing could be done; even such a kind deed as healing was not allowable on the seventh day. Healing was considered work, and, as every good Jew knew (how could they forget it?), the sabbath means no work.

Jesus, of course, is stirred up by this heartless interpretation. He reminds the religious leaders of their double standard in this matter: how they regularly go about caring for their own animals on the sabbath by giving them water, but are seemingly unable to accept a similar propriety of caring for sick human beings on the sabbath. In the eyes of the crowd taking this all in, Jesus put the religious leaders to shame and gained the crowd's admiration for what he had done and said. A perfectly beautiful situation ends up in unpleasant tension. How sad.

All of this occurred because the religious leaders thought Jesus was somehow sabotaging the sabbath. And, in a way, Jesus was accusing them also of sabotaging the sabbath in an equally serious way. Let's see what we can learn from these conflicting viewpoints.

We can begin by pointing out that the ruler of the synagogue here should be encouraged for wanting to guard the sabbath. God gave the sabbath for salutary reasons. The rhythm of our lives and bodies calls for predictable periods of rest. We need a sabbath for the welfare of our own bodies and spirits. In addition, the sabbath affords a reasonable time for families to be together. God realizes that families need time for nurturing. The sabbath can also serve as a discipline that ensures an ongoing corporate worship among God's people. This religious leader saw the necessity of all these good things happening, so he rightly wanted to guard the sabbath from intrusions that might threaten its observance.

Good for him! Would that we in America, for instance, had a more clear-cut vision and practice concerning Sundays! We have not been able to successfully maintain Sunday as a sabbath in our country. Most commercial ventures are open for business, and one thing has led to another. Sundays are no longer sacred. The decline of Sunday worship in America seems to take place in direct correspondence to the increase of secular activities on Sundays. We might further inquire whether there isn't a relationship between the decline of family values and the decline of Sunday worship. We might even inquire whether our loss of well-being (health?) is caused by our refusal to give the body its deserved sabbath rest. So, you see, we cannot fully dock the ruler of the synagogue in this story for trying to guard the observance of the sabbath day. He had good intentions.

What happened here is that good intentions were carried too far. In fact, they were carried so far that something altogether good and lovely became an ugly occasion. We can desire to guard a good thing so much that we suffocate the goodness of it in the process. So the religious leaders took God's masterful idea of the sabbath and pushed it too far. They pushed it so far that, believe it or not, it became acceptable to pass by the needs of another human being if it meant maintaining the authenticity of a certain day of the week.

How many times you and I end up doing something just as ridiculous! We carry our good intentions too far! We want our children to turn out "nice," so we over-discipline them to the extent that we sometimes profoundly injure their inner spirits and fill them with fear and distrust. We want our children to be "good students," but we burden them with so much study and homework that they never quite have time also to learn how to relate pleasingly to their peers; after all, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." There are so many occasions in life when we want things "to turn out well." The trick is to refrain from forcing the issue to the extent that we end up with negative results.

There once was a loving couple who had the wife's elderly mother living with them. Their concern was for her security while both of them went away to work each day. They finally seemed satisfied after they had devised a system of twelve different locks and bolts for the front and back doors of the house! The only problem was that they overlooked the old woman's technical ability to operate all these devices. When a friend would want to call on her during the day, or when she would want to go out and enjoy the backyard, she had to turn down such opportunities because she didn't know how to get all the locks and bolts open! She ended up being a daytime prisoner, all in the name of feeling "secure." One doesn't even want to think of what might have happened if there had ever been a fire in the house. Her children had good intentions but carried them too far. The sabbath, too, needs to be guarded, but the religious leaders of Jesus' day carried things too far.

Then, secondly, we can notice in this story how a deed that is beautiful and good in itself can cause contention. Isn't it amazing that anyone would have complained about the helpful, graceful act Jesus did here? Think of it, this woman in the story had borne her infirmity for eighteen years. To have someone come along and relieve such a burden would have to be considered the most exquisite of human deeds.

But in this case, a perfectly good deed caused contention. In our own lives, we can have such an experience. There is, for instance, the proverbial mother of the bride, who takes a wonderfully fine day, such as her daughter's wedding, and turns it into a tension-filled day preceded by months of laborious planning and followed by months of regret and fatigue for everyone else in the family. Thank God that such Victorian concepts of executing everything "just right" have faded somewhat, so that most social occasions these days turn out to be what they were intended for -- a good time of relaxation, fun, and pleasant conversation.

When you think of it, just about everything in life is supposed to be pleasant and enjoyable, and can be! But it seems like so much that was meant to be pleasant and enjoyable is marred by contention: our childhood, our school days, marriage, family life, our jobs and careers, and on and on. Likewise here, an act of kindness on the Lord's day ends in an uproar.

Things ended up the way they did (and do in our lives), because of someone's selfish spirit, in this case the spirit of jealousy. It is fairly obvious that this ruler of the synagogue had a concern beyond guarding the sabbath day from abuse. It is clear that he was jealous of Jesus. As the keeper of the synagogue, he felt that his own role as an enforcer of sabbath rules was being deliberately challenged or made light of. But surely Jesus was doing no more here than showing the typical human concern for which he was known. He wanted this woman to be relieved of her long burden -- that was his only motive. But it was jealousy that turned his good deed into something questionable.

The synagogue ruler tried to camouflage his jealousy, as we all do. He purported to have the highest and holiest of motives: guarding the sanctity of God's sacred day. He probably even thought at first that no one would notice his real motives. He thought the crowd would support him. But jealousy is something difficult to hide. It usually sticks out everywhere; people notice our true motives more than we are ready to admit (and more than they are ready to admit, as well). People don't like to embarrass us; but they know.

The end doesn't always justify the means. Even if the ruler of the synagogue had the high motive of guarding the sabbath day from abuse, there was no excuse to pass by human need when it faced him. All of this is similar to the situation we find in the famous parable of Jesus called "The Good Samaritan." In that parable you recall how two other representatives of true religion passed by the bleeding victim lying in the ditch. It took a man who was not considered religious to bring aid finally in that case of obvious human need.

So Jesus was not about to allow love to be superseded by a religious demand that in itself was largely instructive. It was always love that informed Jesus; he was faithful to every call involving human need. Jesus would overthrow the strict demands of the law if it meant saving a lost soul.

This is the dynamic behind the whole story of our salvation, isn't it? Strictly speaking God was under no obligation to save you and me. In fact, the demands of God's law indicated that you and I should be condemned. But God did not come around reminding us, "You made your bed; now sleep in it." Maybe you have been in a gift shop or a pottery store where all kinds of fragile vases and plates were for sale. Perhaps you noticed a warning sign on the shelf in such places. It read, "You break it; you pay for it."

That was not God's attitude toward you and me, was it? Our sins stretch from A to Z. You and I have run the gamut of God's holy law, and we have broken it. Our sins from birth to the grave make us ten times more ill than the poor old woman in the story, whose back was hunched for eighteen years. As pride-filled sinners, we have gone around breaking God's holy law at will, and a lot of times we haven't even felt sorry about it.

What did God do in light of our sins? God didn't come back at us with the indictment, "You broke it; you pay for it." No, even though we didn't accidentally break the treasured gift of life but willfully dashed it to pieces, God has not thrown the book at us, demanding payment. God did not appeal to the fact that God's holy law is always and forever in effect. No, God allowed grace to hold sway; God allowed love to fulfill the law. God provided a way out.

The Bible tells us that "when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law ..." (Galatians 4:4-5). Christ bore the law for us. God's love saw our human need, and love led the way --all the way to his bitter death on the cross.

This story ends on a positive note: "... all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him" (v. 17). Christ did a glorious deed here when he responded to human need by healing this woman, no matter what day of the week it was. Christ did an even more glorious deed when he mounted the cross to pay the price for our misdeeds. We will now gratefully gather on every sabbath to bring our thanksgiving in the Eucharist. And when we leave, we will feel nurtured and empowered to serve every human need around us! As we so serve one another, we will not be sabotaging the sabbath; we will be fulfilling it! "