Episode Details

A Conflict on the Sabbath DayOur Gospel reading begins with a conflict between Jesus and the ruler of the synagogue on a particular Sabbath Day. Jesus had called a woman with a disabling spirit to himself. He had laid his hands on her and healed her. The ruler of the synagogue had taken exception to this, arguing that this counted as work and that it could have waited till one of the other days of the week.Before we look at Jesus’ response, we need to provide a little bit of background to understand what is going on here. After all, it might seem strange to us that a religious ruler would forbid supernatural healing on the grounds that it wasn’t the right day of the week to invoke it. Surely, if the healing had come from God that was reason enough to endorse it? So let’s see what is behind this objection.The Story of the SabbathThe Old TestamentWe have to go right back to the beginning of creation and remember that the Sabbath Day was instituted by God himself after he had created the world. The first six days were days of creation – days of work – and on the seventh day God rested. And he blessed the Sabbath Day and made it holy because it was a day of rest (Gen. 2:1-3).We go from there to the giving of the Ten Commandments. The people of God are told to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy, to labour on only the other six days of the week and not to do any work. Not only members of the family or the tribe should rest but even the livestock, even the male and female servants, even the sojourner who was within their gates. And the logic given is as follows:“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath Day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).In other words, God did free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt so that they could continue their life of slavery in another location. The Sabbath Day helps them remember that they are divinely liberated from this oppression.The Intertestamental PeriodIf that all seems quite clear, think again. Human nature being what it is, the people of God began to try and work out what exactly was meant by this commandment and how it should be put into practice. In order to safeguard against breaking the Sabbath commandment, various rules were put into place by the religious leaders of the time. In the period after the writing of the Old Testament, which began about four-hundred years before the coming of Christ, the religious authorities began to place a greater emphasis upon the minutiae of the Sabbath observance. The rules were eventually written down and compiled in a work called the Mishnah. But, at the time of Jesus, they were kept by oral tradition. They were human interpretations of divine commands.So, for example, certain types of carrying were considered to violate the Sabbath commandment. In order to work out what types of carrying were acceptable, four domains were defined: private, public, semi-public, and exempt areas. It was prohibited to carry an object from a private to a public domain or to carry an object four cubits (about a metre and a half) in a public domain. So handing an object from the inside of a public house to the outside was prohibited because it constituted passing something from a private to a public domain. In addition to domains, the quantity of a carried object was significant: enough food for a family meal or an amount of ink sufficient to write two letters was prohibited.Carrying is just one example. All types of work such as sowing, ploughing, reaping, kneading, baking, writing, building, kindling fire, were prohibited. Items such as tools, expensive dishes, writing implements, stray stones and many others were not allowed to even be touched. Other activities such as doing deals, climbing trees, and shaking fruit from trees were also banned.I’m sure you get the point. There were a lot of don’ts associated with