There was a woman who had not been able to stand up straight for eighteen years.
Luke tells her story in chapter 13 of his gospel. It comes right after Jesus tells about a fig tree that had given no fruit for three years, and just before he says God's kingdom starts as small as a mustard seed.
She could walk. She could get to the synagogue, the meeting house where people gathered on the rest day to hear the old books read. But she was bent over, and she could not lift herself up. Eighteen years is long enough for a baby to be born, grow up, and leave home. For all of that time, she had been looking at the ground.
And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. (Luke 13:11)
He picked the day
It was the sabbath. The sabbath was the rest day, the seventh day of the week. The books of Moses, the oldest part of the Bible, said nobody was allowed to work on it. The men who ran the synagogues counted healing as work.
Jesus knew all of that, and so did everyone around him. In a small town there was not much else to do on the rest day. Nobody worked. There were no books at home, no screens, no private rooms to go hide in. People spent the day together, and the place they gathered was the synagogue. Luke says the man in charge turned and spoke to "the people" there, and that at the end "all the people" were glad. This happened in front of the town.
He could have waited one day. She had been bent for eighteen years. One more night would not have killed her. He could have found her on Sunday morning, away from the crowd, and nobody would have said a word.
He did not wait. He saw her, he called her to the front, and he healed her right there, in front of everybody, on the one day the law said not to.
And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. (Luke 13:12-13)
She stood up straight. For the first time in eighteen years she looked people in the face, and the first thing she did was thank God.
Luke never writes the words "Jesus broke the sabbath." He did not have to. Everyone in that room watched him do it.
The man who saw it and cared about the day
The synagogue had a man in charge, the ruler of the synagogue. He ran the building and the service.
He had just watched a miracle with his own eyes. A woman bent over for eighteen years stood up straight in front of him.
He was angry. Not about the eighteen years. About the day.
He would not even speak to Jesus. He turned to the crowd and told them off instead.
And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. (Luke 13:14)
He told a room full of people to come and be healed on a weekday. In his mind, a miracle was one more job that belonged on Friday, not Saturday. He saw God's power set a woman free, and in his mind it was a scheduling mistake. That is what a man-made rule does to a person. It makes him blind to what is right in front of him.
Jesus called him a hypocrite
Jesus did not answer gently. The first word out of his mouth was an insult, and he said it to the man's face, in front of the whole room.
The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? (Luke 13:15-16)
A hypocrite is a person who says one thing and does another. Then Jesus proved it, using their own lives.
Every man in that room had animals. On the rest day, every one of them went out to the stall, untied his ox or his donkey, and walked it to water. Untying a rope is work. Walking an animal to a well is work. They all did it anyway, every single week, because an animal left without water suffers. Nobody called that breaking the sabbath.
So here is what Jesus told them. Your rule lets you untie an animal so it can drink. But it will not let you untie a woman who has been tied up for eighteen years.
He used their own words against them
Jesus was very smart, and the words he chose show it. The Gospel of Luke is written in Greek, and in Greek the same word keeps coming back.
When he healed her, he told her ἀπολέλυσαι (apolelysai), which means "you have been set free."
When he talked about the ox, he said every man λύει (lyei) his animal, which means "unties."
When he talked about the woman, he said Satan ἔδησεν (edēsen), "tied her up." She had to be λυθῆναι (lythēnai), "untied," from her δεσμοῦ (desmou), which means "rope" or "chain."
The untying words all come from λύω (lyō), "to untie, to set free." The tying words, ἔδησεν and δεσμοῦ, come from its opposite, δέω (deō), "to tie." An ox gets untied every week. A woman gets untied once, after eighteen years, and the man in charge is furious.
And the insult was not only for him. In the oldest Greek copies of Luke, Jesus says Ὑποκριταί (Hypokritai), "hypocrites," to more than one person. The King James Bible has "thou hypocrite," to one. He was talking to every man in that room who untied his ox on the rest day and wanted her to wait.
Then Jesus called her a daughter of Abraham. Abraham was the father of their whole people. Every man in that room called himself a son of Abraham and was proud of it.
Jesus was not praising a family tree. He was turning their pride against them. You say you are Abraham's family. She is Abraham's family too. She is one of yours. You would untie your ox, but you would leave your own family tied up, because of a day on the calendar.
That is how foolish the rule was, and Jesus made sure everyone in the room could see it.
He did the same thing later with Zacchaeus, a tax collector the whole town hated for working for Rome. The crowd was sure that man was outside of God's family. Jesus went to his house anyway, and said this in front of them.
And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. (Luke 19:9)
Every time Jesus used those words, he was aiming them at the people who used them to shut others out.
Why the story sounds softer than it was
The men who wrote the gospels lived among people who still kept these laws. They had to be careful. If they wrote too plainly that Jesus came to break the old laws, many people would stop listening. So they told what happened and left some of it unsaid.
Luke does not write "he broke the sabbath." He does not write "the rule was foolish." He shows you a healing on the forbidden day, an angry man, and an insult, and he leaves the rest for you to see.
Our job is to say it plainly. Jesus broke the sabbath on purpose, in public, in a full room. He called the man who defended the rule a hypocrite. He showed everyone that the rule was foolish.
What this shows about God
The law of Moses said to keep the rest day. Jesus never said that law was true. He broke it in front of everyone, and he did it to free a suffering woman.
That tells us whose rule it was. If the rule came from God, then God in human flesh would not have broken it. He broke it because it was not God's rule. People made it, and people said it was God's.
The God Jesus showed does not care about the day on the calendar. He cares about his children. He saw a woman bent over in a crowded room, and he would not let her wait one more day. This is the question he left that room with.
And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? (Luke 13:16)
If you were ever told that God would be angry if you helped someone on the wrong day, in the wrong way, or without the right ritual, you can put that fear down. Jesus broke that kind of rule in public so that you would never have to be afraid of it.
So here is something for today. If someone near you needs help, help them now. You do not need to wait for the right day. He didn't.