Luke 14
Luke 14:2-5:
And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” 4But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. 5And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” |
As Luke 14 opens, Jesus was dining at the house of a leader of the Pharisees (verse 1). The Pharisees were watching His every move.
Jesus saw a man with dropsy (verse 2), which is edema. The word dropsy comes from the Greek hydrops, the prefix hydro meaning ‘water’. People with certain heart or liver ailments sometimes contract it. Today, they can be treated with diuretics and other medication. In Jesus’s time, there were no such remedies, so the person had to suffer in pain with a swollen body. Matthew Henry’s commentary posits that the man was too ill and immobile to live on his own: probably he was some relation of the Pharisee’s, that now lodged in his house, which is more likely than that he should be an invited guest at the table. Thinking of this man, Jesus asked His host and fellow guests if healing on the Sabbath was allowed (verse 3). Recall that in Luke 13, synagogue leaders censured Him for healing a bent over woman on that day, when all ‘work’ was forbidden. Yet, as He pointed out, the Jews could feed and water their animals. The Pharisees didn’t respond to Jesus’s question (verse 4). Our Lord turned His attention towards the man with edema. The verse says that He ‘took him’. Henry explains (emphasis in the original): He took him, that is, he laid hands on him, to cure him epilabomenos, complexus–he embraced him, took him in his arms, big and unwieldy as he was (for so dropsical people generally are), and reduced him to shape. The cure of a dropsy, as much as any disease, one would think, should be gradual yet Christ cured even that disease, perfectly cured it, in a moment. MacArthur agrees: Verse 4, “He took hold of him and healed him and sent him away.” That verb took hold of him really strong, very, very strong verb. Epilombano, it’s used in Acts, I think it’s Chapter 19 or Chapter 16, verse 19 and in that particular passage it says “They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to jail.” Very strong word. It’s used in the gospels of Jesus taking hold of a child and setting them in the midst. He literally wrapped this man up, this bloated man with sick organs manifest in this edemic condition. Why did He did that? He did it without hesitation. He did it forcefully. He did it unmistakably. He did it defiantly. Instead of keeping His distance in the healing the man out of compassion in such a way as it might not be clear what had happened, He just grabs the man, seizes him, crushes him in His arms as if to squeeze the fluid out and gives him a new heart, a new liver, and a new anything else he needed, and creates in the man a whole new set of internal organs. Astute readers might wonder why Jesus sent the man away afterward. Henry surmised that He was protecting the man from possible verbal attacks from the Pharisees. MacArthur thinks that Jesus sensed the man was so thrilled by being healed that he wanted to go home and tell everyone what happened. In any event, as Henry’s commentary states, the man was unlikely to have been a guest at table. Our Lord then turned His attention to the Pharisees with a second question, again about healing on the Sabbath (verse 5). Who wouldn’t have the mercy and compassion to rescue his son or animal from falling in the well on the Sabbath? But they couldn’t answer Him (verse 6). They were spiritually dead, focussed on their interpretation and additions to the law, making it nearly impossible for the people to observe them. Yet, the Pharisees had opt-outs for themselves; which is why they had religious lawyers. The lawyers studied the law and came up with loopholes. However, only the religious leaders knew what these were. They had one easy set of laws for themselves and an onerous set for everyone else. Then they lorded themselves over everyone else. Not only were they religious legalists they were elitists. -Churchmouse |
There’s the line in The Death of a Salesman where Willy Loman’s wife Linda says, “Life is a casting off.”
I love that line. Life means casting off and leaving everything behind, not clinging to everything. That stands things on their head– yes? We do the opposite we cling to our children, cling to our spouses, cling to our houses, cling to our status, cling to our possessions, cling to our security, cling to our friends, cling to all these things. But life is a casting off. It is also a casting off as in casting off from the shore. Casting off from the dock. We’re on the long voyage home, across the Western Seas until we meet the dawn and wade in the warm shallows to the real Narnia. Do you have to cast off even from your family? ‘Fraid so. I remember talking to my dying father who said, “I have tried to show how to live for Christ. Now I want to show how to die in Christ.” He was casting off. What about families here and now? I sometimes think this verse has a bearing on the difficult decisions we face when family members and friends depart from the way of following Christ. What do you do when a family member divorces, remarries, goes down the path of an addiction or in some other way behaves in a way that is intolerable? If they are repentant and want to return they are always welcome, but if they persist in a life that is contrary to the gospel and their choices threaten your own walk with Christ and the example and witness and purity of your family then to be Christ’s disciple you may have to “hate your father and mother, brothers and sisters, wife and children” to be his disciple. It’s a tough one, but sometimes you have to simply walk away–not because you condemn anyone, but because you are simply walking on a different path to a different destination. It’s not so much that you hate them, but that you love Christ more. This choice has been made countless times by countless disciples down through the ages. It was made by any young man or woman entering the religious life. It was made by countless missionaries who went abroad never to be seen again by their families. It was made by many who sought to follow Christ when they converted to the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church. It’s there in the True Grit version of the gospel. If we ignore it our expectations will be skewed and when the separation is demanded we will be resentful and perhaps disobedient. If we realize that demand is there we may face such separations with a bit more fortitude, faith and resilience. My friend asked that I pray that she not break down and cry uncontrollably when the baby sister went inside to become a bigger sister. I advised that she cry her eyes out, for that was the healthy response, and after that to dry her tears and thank God for the great graces that will be unfolded as her sister’s life is yielded to that Divine Mercy which is at once tender and severe. |