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 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. Luke 13:13  

I threw out my back for the first time when I was thirty years old.  I wish I could tell you that I was doing something really cool, courageous or daring when it happened … but that wasn’t the case.  I went to sit down on a chair, and I must have twisted funny.   

It was one of the most debilitating injuries I’ve ever had, and this is coming from someone who has broken their femur before.  For a couple days, I couldn’t really walk, I couldn’t move and completing the slightest task was a major chore.  The tiniest movement in the wrong direction could cause a flareup.  

Backpain is awful, but compared to the woman in our Gospel lesson this morning, a couple of days was nothing.  She had a back condition that caused her to be bent over for eighteen years.   

Despite it being the Sabbath, Jesus doesn’t wait a single second to heal this “daughter of Abraham.”  He declares to her “Woman, you are set free from your ailment!” and just like that, eighteen years of pain and struggle were no more.  She stood up straight and began praising God on the spot, to the consternation of the leader of the synagogue.   

The leader used the Sabbath as a pretense, but the real cause of their indignation was probably more about power.  Jesus posed a threat to the power structures of his day and so they sought to trap him in the legalese of their religion.   

But Jesus rightly declared that this poor woman with the bad back had suffered long enough.  Why should she wait for healing?  How cruel to even suggest it!  Jesus calls them hypocrites, because in doing so, they fail the measure of the greatest commandment: to love their neighbor as themselves.