One of the reasons that Luke is my favourite Gospel is that he allows women to play a prominent part. Luke alone writes about Mary, the courageous servant of God, whose “Yes” made the incarnation possible and ensured that all future generations would call her blessed. Luke gives us Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, whose own immediate faith and recognition of God’s work in Mary is contrasted with the questioning doubt of the priestly husband Zechariah. We heard from Luke a few Sundays ago the story of Mary and Martha, with its unavoidable implication that the best place for women is not in the kitchen but doing theology! Then there is the parable of the importunate widow – Jesus holds her up as a model of constant prayer, nagging and battering the ears of the Judge until he bestirs himself to do something. She is commended precisely for NOT being submissive, but rather for challenging the legal and religious status for women and asserting her right to be heard. Luke, to my mind, is determined to record Jesus’ startlingly new and rather shockingly liberating attitude to women.
Today’s Gospel is part of the same pattern. At one level, the healing of the woman who was unable to stand up straight is about showing that compassion is more important to Jesus than a strict observance of the Sabbath rules. But there are a number of details in the story that point to aspects of the social and religious liberation that accompany the healing. Jesus calls the woman out from the margins of the synagogue and makes her stand in the middle – demonstrating that she was of equal standing with the men, who could claim a right to be there. He touches her, thereby overturning the rules of social propriety. Then he addresses her as a “daughter of Abraham” (a title which seems peculiar to Luke) implying an equality with the “sons of Abraham”. Finally, she is able to stand up straight and hold her head high. She is no longer burdened by the weight of cultural and spiritual oppression.
The theologian Walter Wink says that “for this woman to stand erect in a male religious space represents more than a cure. It reveals the dawning of a whole new world order.”
Fr Neil G.
