Luke 13:10-17: Nitpicking A Miracle To Death

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. - Luke 13:10-17

When God does something wonderful for someone, suddenly the spotlight is no longer on me and I sometimes feel jealous. I mean God has done wonderful things in my life and what happened to this someone is no more incredible than what happened to me. So I nitpick and find something that they aren't doing just right so that their "wonderful" moment wasn't quite as wonderful. By knocking them down, I am putting the spotlight back on myself. And that is sin.

The most incredible day in the life of this woman was the day when she met Jesus. He struck down the spirit that was crippling her, letting her experience--for the first time in "eighteen long years"--walking upright and probably without pain. But when Jesus did that, the spotlight was taken from the "synagogue leader" who probably felt himself the most upright in the whole town. So that leader looked for something that would make the woman look less impressive. "Oh, healed. Well, she was healed on the Sabbath and all good Jews know that God himself rested on the Sabbath and therefore no miracles from God occurred on the Sabbath." Bam! Put that woman--and Jesus--in their place. But Jesus revealed his comments for what they were--a thin veneer of righteous over a heart full of selfishness. 

I am guilty like this. Minimizing the work of God (and the credit he should rightfully get from it) by trying to make it smaller than it was (it was a miracle) by nitpicking all the flaws so that it appears less miraculous. But the lie is not in the miracle, it is in the nitpicking. "Oh yeah, but you didn't do X or Y or Z. How could you do that?" Instead of giving God full credit and letting him deal with the question of details. I'm probably the guy in the New Jerusalem complaining about the environmental impact reports that weren't filed before it was installed on planet Earth. But God is great. And God does good work. And any attempt by me to distract from that is wrong.

Luke 13:1-9: Am I Especially Good?

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

“‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’” - Luke 13:1-9

It is interesting to me that those who asked Jesus about the mixing of Galilean blood seem to be asking Jesus if the Galileans were particularly sinful. If it was me, I would have been asking Jesus to pronounce judgement on the Romans, not the Galileans. Then Jesus uses another example: residents of Jerusalem who died when a tower collapsed. Did they die because they were especially bad?

It is easy to find reasons why victims of a tragedy are victims. We always are trying to find reasons for why things are the way things are. We are trying to find a reason because we are trying to defend God's choices about who dies and who lives--as if he needed defending. 

But searching for the sins of a the victims in a tragedy is asking the wrong question. Rather than asking why they suffered, we should be asking why we aren't suffering. I am so full of mixed motives sometimes that I'm sure that it would be simpler for God to just remove me from the scene so he would have fewer moving pieces to worry about. But he doesn't. By his mercy, I'm still around. 

The next verses about the fruitless fig tree give us a clue: the man tending the fig trees asks for just one more year to let the fig have time to finally bear fruit. Figs typically bear fruit within 3-5 years. So if the tree in Jesus' story isn't bearing fruit after 3, it isn't because it is a waste of soil and sunlight. The tree just needs a little time to reach the potential that was there in that tree when it was planted.

God looks at us and while some might think: what a waste of food and oxygen, He can see the full potential that he put within us when he created us and then saved us. He has a plan and he does not cut short that plan when we are inconvenient to him. Rather he lets us live until the potential he sees in us comes to fruition. Or he cuts us short when his plan has run its cource.

Not because we were better or worse than other people, but because he has a race for us to run.