“Released from Bondage”

I accidently read the Monday readings on Sunday during my morning ritual. Monday’s reading was about healing the woman doubled over in pain on the Sabbath. I was stopped at the moment when Jesus is chastising the Pharisees for taking him to task for healing on the Sabbath.

His response, “ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?”

Below is the reading.

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.

And a woman was there who for eighteen years

had been crippled by a spirit;

she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.

When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,

“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”

He laid his hands on her,

and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.

But the leader of the synagogue,

indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,

said to the crowd in reply,

“There are six days when work should be done.

Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”

The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!

Does not each one of you on the sabbath

untie his ox or his ass from the manger

and lead it out for watering?

This daughter of Abraham,

whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,

ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day

from this bondage?”

When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;

and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.

Luke 13: 10-17

“This bondage.“

Since Sunday, this phrase has stuck with me. As some readers may know, my dear uncle suffered a stroke and a heart attack in August. His girlfriend of seventeen years, who I know saved his life, died after getting him to the hospital. So in 48 hours, my sweet Unkie had his entire life turned upside down. Having never been in the hospital, (even when he was born since my Grandmother birthed all of her children at home), and having never lived outside of the rural community he was born into, this adjustment to the new way of being and depending on others has felt like he was in some sort of bondage. It has been difficult on all of those who love and care for him to witness as he is one of the sweetest and gentlest people you could meet.

As he has worked to regain his independence he has been in various rehab settings. The one most recently was not a good fit at all and he ended up back in the ICU. This was providential though because it enabled my mother to get her little brother into the facility he wanted and he will be able to visit with friends and family even through the difficult Tug Hill winters. I was there with my mother when she told him and he was was so overjoyed and relieved that he quite literally cried. The relief, the hope, and the burden of having to pretend you are okay with everything as it was was all lifted.

Released from bondage…on the Sabbath day.

To me, that felt like an obvious interpretation of the line that stuck with me. But there are other forms of bondage that we all may experience. Whether it be addiction, illness (mental or physical), poverty, overwork, bigotry, or being surrounded by duplicitous people, we can feel completely bound in and by the situation.

For some of these situations it’s easier to “release” ourselves than in others. Obviously, addiction, illness and poverty are far more challenging to be released from and requires the advocacy of others. However, choosing ones’ relationships, (ie. no bigots, no racists, no liars) can be a little easier since you can simply decide to not tolerate any of that in any meaningful relationship. This is something you can do on your own.

I see bondage in many people. Those who feel bound to conspiracy, bound to financial fear when all of their needs are already more than met, bound to old ways of thinking and doing. So I ask myself, “What makes me feel like I am in bondage?” It is a hard question but it has to be looked at in order for God to heal it and to release me. It requires me to identify if it is bondage I am tolerating or even encouraging, or if it is a bondage that requires the advocacy of others. Either way, like the woman who showed up consistently for eighteen years, it requires faith and determination to get to a heart space where I am in the presence of my savior, where he will see my suffering, and regardless of the impropriety of it, will heal me.