It had been a long week.
The house needed cleaning. The kids were being kids. And I was reminded of a scheduled Zoom meeting minutes before it was to begin. I didn’t want to go. I always feel uncomfortable on screen and my head was not in the space to chit chat and talk about writing.
I reluctantly signed on (late), said my hello (while double-checking my video, making sure I was semi-presentable), and tried to pay attention as the time ticked on.
I was in a mood.
The facilitator let us know we would have some free time to pray and write with a few Scripture passages she’d curated on various topics and we turned off our videos to skim through the provided document.
My bad mood was still present, casting a shadow over my thoughts as I read through the options. Nothing spoke to me. Our limited time was racing by. I read through the choices again. Still nothing. Still running out of time. I needed to pick something. Anything. So I chose at random a theme I could at least fake my way through if I was asked to share when we returned to the group.
I Googled the Scripture passage to quickly skim through. I knew it was a miracle healing, but which one?
Luke 13:10-7. “Cure of a Cripled Woman on the Sabbath.” Perfect. I’d share my usual reflection about failing to recognize when I am the religious leader, the one so obsessed with the rules that I fail to love others and recognize Jesus in my presence. Good to go. But just to be safe, I decided to read it through once more and make sure I didn’t have the passages mixed up.
The story opens with Jesus teaching at the synagogue on the sabbath. He notices a woman “crippled by a spirit,” unable to stand erect, and heals her on the spot. His healing is, of course, met with resistance by the leaders of the synagogue who were “indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath”. Jesus responds with the example of taking care of their ox and ass1 on the sabbath not being work and thus asks how setting this woman free from her ailment could be seen as such.
You are not work.
A strong, gentle voice spoke those words in my heart as I finished reading this story that I had heard so many times before. Each time prior, I’d understood the lesson to be that rules can be broken in extenuating circumstances. A sort of spirit of the law vs letter of the law demonstration. It was ok to lead livestock to water on the sabbath just as it was to cure this woman because lives were at stake.
But, as I am continuing to learn about the revelatory nature of Scripture, that wasn’t all the passage had to share.
What if Jesus’ curing of this woman on the sabbath was right not because it was noble work, but because it wasn’t work at all?
You are not work.
Loving you is not work.
Pursuing your heart is not work.
Flooded with a wave of emotion from that short time of prayer before resuming the Zoom call, I rejoined the group. (Yes, I was crying. I’m also learning that my tears are not work.)
Maybe two minutes of reading Scripture had allowed for a deeper prayer experience than I had felt in ages. It’s been months, and I am still processing it. Day after day, this simple truth that God placed on my heart has been on repeat, playing over and over in my mind:
I am not work. Loving me is not work.
And the same is true for you.
I only noticed that the ox and the ass were in this story as I was making final edits for clarity and word choice. Not surprising though. They are everywhere!