Luke 13:10 Yeshua was teaching in one of the synagogues on Shabbat. 11 A woman came up who had a spirit which had crippled her for eighteen years; she was bent double and unable to stand erect at all. 12 On seeing her, Yeshua called her and said to her, “Lady, you have been set free from your weakness!” 13 He put his hands on her, and at once she stood upright and began to glorify God.
14 But the president of the synagogue, indignant that Yeshua had healed on Shabbat, spoke up and said to the congregation, “There are six days in the week for working; so come during those days to be healed, not on Shabbat!” 15 However, the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Each one of you on Shabbat — don’t you unloose your ox or your donkey from the stall and lead him off to drink? 16 This woman is a daughter of Avraham, and the Adversary kept her tied up for eighteen years! Shouldn’t she be freed from this bondage on Shabbat?” 17 By these words, Yeshua put to shame the people who opposed him; but the rest of the crowd were happy about all the wonderful things that were taking place through him.
18 years living at half your height. Imagine this were you and you had been bent over for 3 days. What would be going through your mind? You’d be kind of panicking, huh? I know I would. Now go to 30 days, 6 months, a year.
At this point, this is your life until you die. Nothing is getting better and so you start to adapt to your new normal.
2 more years go by. 5 years more. Then another 10.
It’s at this point in your journey that you hear of a Man that has the ability to heal people like you. What do you do? How do you find this guy? You can’t seem to find that concert tour poster anywhere so there’s no chance of knowing where He’d be. Even if you did find out where He was going to be, how do you get there? Take the bus?
Then you show up to church and here He is! Teaching in front of everybody. YES! Now’s your chance.
Picture the scene. Yeshua obviously delivered an incredibly powerful teaching and the people must have been in awe. I’ll bet you could have heard a pin drop. Instead, this hunched over woman, bent completely in half, begins her walk to the front. What does she think she’s doing?
All eyes are on her and before she can say a word, Yeshua speaks:
“Lady, you have been set free from your weakness!”
Wait. She didn’t even have to ask? What about quizzing her on her trust? Why not ask her if she wanted to be healed? Come on now…she had to do something.
She did. She made the walk -- a walk that would have been embarrassing to her just a few short months into the onset of her crippledness. But now she’s over all of that. There is no price too high.
This “embarrassing” walk is evidence of her trust -- and she gets healed in front of everyone.
It’s at this point the weather takes a drastic turn.
Yeshua is teaching -- in the synagogue. How did He get this gig?
He’s been pushing these guys at every turn, so why would they grant Him permission to teach? If I had to guess, He had some sort of a good rapport with the president (or someone higher up) in this synagogue. Or they were taking advantage of His growing fame in order to get a bunch of people to come to service. You know how churches are.
Of course, this was blown out of the water pretty quick.
A guest speaker makes a controversial move and the “leaders” step up to make corrections -- in front of everybody. Do people really do that? Yes.
I was at an event once where a guest speaker was talking and he said something the host didn’t quite agree with. The host stood up and corrected the speaker in front of everyone. It was embarrassing for nearly everyone there (well, at least for me). The speaker was speechless and the entire message that was delivered has since been lost on me. I only remember that “leadership” moment. To be fair, I learned a great deal that day.
Getting back to our story, we see that instead of keeping quiet, Yeshua speaks. The exact same situation I witnessed many years ago happens here to Yeshua. Instead of staying quiet and “respectful”, He turns the tables on the leaders and makes no qualms about setting the record straight.
Why do this?
He’s slowly but surely giving the people hope. For so long, their relationship with Abba has been weighty and full of fear. All of a sudden, there is this Guy that has no trouble calling the broken leadership out and even stating they are hypocrites -- IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY!
Now wait a minute. Shouldn't He have addressed the president in private before embarrassing him and the others openly? Didn’t He read Matthew 18? Clearly, He wasn’t behaving like a good Christian.
How does this make any sense within our Biblical framework of submission to leaders? Even David submitted to Saul…as Saul was trying to kill him! But Saul was selected by God and David knew it. These religious leaders were selected by men. Maybe that matters?
It seems we are most certainly required to submit -- to a point. How on earth can you possibly know where that line is?
Yeshua had clearly submitted to these leaders because He’s standing in their synagogue. If He were belligerent and rebellious there is no chance they’d give Him that type of platform. But being in a state of submission is not the same as being beneath them. This is where we struggle with understanding.
We love hierarchies. A clear path to the top makes sure that the word given at one level is always above those in the ranks below. Always.
The trouble with hierarchies is that you need to keep those above you happy so that you can someday move up the ranks yourself. A retired Navy admiral once said the Navy is like a tree full of monkeys. The view from the top looking down sees a bunch of smiling faces but the view from below is, well…
In a hierarchy, you smile to those above you and exercise less than stellar leadership to those below (even if you mean well). We do this because we want to get to the next rung. The people above you need to like you and those below you need to do their job so those above you see that you’re competent. You know, a good team player, good leadership.
What’s amazing to us is the allure of what goes on up there in the big offices. There is something mysterious about the higher levels, huh? They get to do secret things that you can only dream about. Making money, possessing power, playing golf at the country club -- living the dream, right?
This sounds a little bit like a secret club (see: freemasonry). Those at the bottom have to pay their dues in order to get promoted to the next level up. Scrub toilets so you can get promoted to cleaning sinks. Then mopping, then being the overseer of the whole bathroom. It’s a perverted model of stewardship. You have to do crappy jobs to show you’re worthy of the real work that happens by the hands of those with so much more that you have. But is that really true?
It sounds to me like a structure designed to keep the masses at bay while the upper levels pick and choose what is right. There's nothing wrong with a dictatorship as long as you are the dictator, right?
For those in charge, this is a self-cleaning system that ensures the structure stays intact and no individual can bring it down.
Until you get that one Guy that doesn’t care.
“Leroooyyyy….Jen-kins!!!”
Lying to employees and lower-ranking members of your club is one thing. Lying to God’s people is another.
When people that are supposed to be representing God start to speak lies on God’s behalf, Yeshua brings correction. Jeremiah gives us the grounds upon which Yeshua is able to speak and to speak in boldness -- because He knows what the Father has said:
Jeremiah 23:1 “Oh no! The shepherds are destroying and scattering the sheep in my pasture!” says YHVH. 2 Therefore this is what YHVH, the God of Isra’el, says against the shepherds who shepherd my people: “You have scattered my flock, driven them away and not taken care of them. So I will ‘take care of’ you because of your evil deeds,” says YHVH. 3 “I myself will gather what remains of my flock from all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their homes, and they will be fruitful and increase their numbers. 4 I will appoint shepherds over them who will shepherd them; then they will no longer be afraid or disgraced; and none will be missing,” says YHVH.
5 “The days are coming,” says YHVH
when I will raise a righteous Branch for David.
He will reign as king and succeed,
he will do what is just and right in the land.
6 In his days Y’hudah will be saved,
Isra’el will live in safety,
and the name given to him will be
YHVH Tzidkenu [YHVH our righteousness].
7 “Therefore,” says YHVH, “the day will come when people no longer swear, ‘As YHVH lives, who brought the people of Isra’el out of the land of Egypt,’ 8 but, ‘As YHVH lives, who brought the descendants of the house of Isra’el up from the land to the north’ and from all the countries where I drove them. Then they will live in their own land.”
It is by this word that Yeshua can speak. He knows what the so-called “shepherds” have done to the flock, and He is here to gather them all in. It is His voice that will call them home and what better way to have them hear than to hear.
(I should issue a warning here. Be careful in assuming you know what Abba is saying and trying to bring correction to a leader because you don’t like them. Hurt people create church splits like this all of the time. Also, go back and read verses 7 and 8 again. An Exodus yet to come…)
Back to Matthew 18. The issue we have here is that the president started this interaction and he went public immediately. That guy set the rules and now he had to play by them.
He put lies in the ears of the people and those lies had to be canceled so they grow no roots.
If he had pulled Yeshua aside and asked that He not heal on the Sabbath, Yeshua could have privately said exactly what He said here. A teaching moment instead of a humiliating event.
The lesson for us here is that once you decide to try and humiliate someone openly, you best be prepared to get addressed publicly. If there is no one that can confidently stand against your “correction”, get ready to be humiliated by God Himself.
You can kiss your seat at the country club goodbye.