Hear the bellowing! Hear the cries! There is an animal in the ditch!

The men call out to their fellow farmers and they gather rope, and their oxen, and the men rush down to the steep incline where the animal is hung up in the deep hole, tangled in the brush.   This is a valuable work animal and helps feed the family.  Even though it is the Sabbath, this animal is hurting, and scared, and the men have compassion on the animal as they struggle to free him amid his cries.

A woman came on the Sabbath, ill and had been sick for a while.  Jesus healed her.

The same men who ran to rescue the animal from the ditch chastised Jesus.  “This is the Sabbath! You can’t do any work on the Sabbath!”

But didn’t you just go and get your animal out of the ditch when he was hurting?

That’s different!

Yes, Jesus says.  It is very different. You rescued an animal, but you are willing to allow a woman who is sick to remain sick another day.  Your law has become more precious to you than the woman who is sick.

Don’t you know that the Sabbath was given to you so you could rest your physical bodies, and so the animals could also rest their physical bodies?  If God was concerned about your physical body, don’t you think you should be concerned about the sickness in this physical body of this woman?

Your law is more important to you than this woman.

I would like to believe that the men hung their heads in shame as they realized what Jesus was saying to them.  But I doubt it.  I think they became more outraged.  Just as many pastors and congregations become outraged when women today are telling them that there is a sickness in the body of the church.  That sickness elevates men and decreases women.

Won’t you join me as we speak out for women’s equality?  Won’t you join me as we look to Jesus, and not to the interpretation of scriptures that go against how Jesus treated women? Won’t you join me as we understand all scripture in the light of how Jesus would treat others – both men and women.

Won’t you join me?