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Today’s Gospel passage:

“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.”

***

Why must Jesus break the Law?

***

It was forbidden to do any work on the Sabbath. Even healing a woman bound by Satan for 18 years was considered “work.”

If she’d been hunched over for 18 years, then why couldn’t Jesus just wait a day?

***

His heart was moved with pity. Jesus understood the level of this woman’s suffering. Healing her was urgent.

Be he also wanted to shake up the religious authorities, who needed to learn a foundational lesson on faith.

Faith without works is dead.

We cannot praise – or please – God if we ignore those who suffer.

***

Think about how many in our country are hunched over like this woman.

Their backs are nearly breaking because of unemployment; bills piling up; loneliness; stress; isolation; fear of COVID, and so on.

Are our hearts stirred to action like Jesus?

***

Even a simple phone call; a kind word of encouragement; or a generous tip at dinner can lighten another’s burden.

Our love for God often expresses itself through our love for our neighbor.

How, then, will I put my faith into action today? 

***

Love your God. Love your neighbor.

The whole Law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments.

***

In Jesus’ time, there were two major schools of thought. 

Some Jews wanted to expand the Law as much as possible. They were meticulous and exceptionally detailed, so much so they created 613 rules to follow, involving everything from honoring one’s parents to the treatment of birds.

Others treated the Law like an accordion. They wanted to condense it down to its very essence.

Jesus takes this latter approach.

Collapsing the Law, he says the entirety of it – and by extension all of Christianity – can be summarized in a single word: love.

***

But what exactly is love?

***

It’s perhaps one of the most overused words in the English language, dulling its meaning over time.

We speak of loving the New York Jets or Giants; loving pizza parties or your friend’s new haircut.

Yet we use the same word to describe our commitment to another person in marriage, even God’s commitment to us.

So, what does Jesus mean when he says, “love”? Does God “love” us the way we love pizza?

***

Love’s a bit like humility. It’s abstract; hard to define. But you know love when you see it in action. You know it when feel it. And you know it when you don’t.

Throughout the centuries, poets like Dante have tried to define love with varying degrees of success. For example, in The Divine Comedy, Dante writes, “Love is what moves the sun and the other stars.” 

Nice, but a bit too abstract to me. 

Shakespeare, on the other hand, got it right.

***

In one of the most famous scenes from Romeo and Juliet, a young Juliet gazes down upon Romeo from her balcony and says to him:

“Romeo, the more I give to you, the more I seem to have.”

The happier Romeo was, the happier Juliet became. That’s the very essence of love: the more we give, the more we have. 

Love opens our eyes to a world of “we,” not just “me.”

***

Parents know this well. Think of how delighted you are when you see your children succeed. You’ll sacrifice almost anything to make their futures brighter.

Or the delight teachers experience when they teach their students how to read. Watching a child speak the story as they turn the pages of a book will warm any heart.

Or the sense of meaning we find when volunteering to help the most vulnerable among us. Knowing we made a difference in someone else’s day brightens our own.

***

If Juliet is right, the more we give to anyone, the happier we become. 

That’s why love fulfills the Law; it’s the force that moves the sun and the other stars. It motivates us to live in a world of “we,” not just “me.”

During this extended time of self-isolation, social distancing, and societal fragmentation, what an important reminder to all of us: the more give to others, the happier we become.

Reach out to friends online, pray for the needs of the world, thank those who serve on the front lines from medical personnel to those keeping our grocery shelves stocked. 

It’s a mysterious truth, but the more we give to other people, the happier we become.

***

So, what can I give this week? 

***

Even a smile, a wink, a word of encouragement may go a long way.

***

Love your God. Love your neighbor.

The more we give, the happier we become.

***

Technology is amazing. You can Google almost any question and find out the answer immediately.

For example, “Can dogs eat bananas?”

“Why do cats purr?”

Or, “How many gallons of water are in the Atlantic Ocean?”

***

I Googled that one.

There’s an approximate 82 billion billion gallons of water in the Atlantic Ocean!

Pretty impressive.

***

But there are other questions – deeper questions – that Google can’t answer. They’re questions, which even the people in Jesus’ time had to answer.

For example, what’s the meaning of my life? Why am I here? Who’s Jesus? Is he who he says he is – God? Or is he out of his mind?

***

Even the ancients knew how to interpret simple things like weather patterns. But not everyone made the effort to discern life’s deeper questions.

This is why Jesus’ calls them hypocrites.

God gives each of us a mind to think, a heart to feel, and a conscience to discern his will. But some in the crowds following Jesus were shallow; they ignored life’s bigger questions, and so missed the meaning of it all.

***

I’m sure our minds will be filled with dozens – if not hundreds – of questions today, like why cats purr.

But take the time to contemplate the deeper questions, too.

Perhaps some of the most important being: “Who is Jesus? How has he changed my life? What will it take to follow him today?”

***

Then act accordingly.