Today’s Gospel story is one of those events to which we can easily relate, you and I. In our own lives we have, each of us, been in this woman’s position at one time or another. Imagine, if you can, that you were this woman. Not even in your wildest dreams did you think that today would be the day when an eighteen-year-old debility would suddenly vanish and you would be healed and whole once again.

You had come to the synagogue to pray. Did you pray for healing? Probably, but one would have to assume that that prayer was more rote than real. You always prayed to be healed, but after eighteen years those words of prayer came from your mouth automatically and without any real hope of being answered.

Did you pray for understanding? Probably, for even after all these years you could not understand any of it. You had probed your mind, your heart, your life and could not discover anything there that deserved a fate like yours. You had not committed any sin that would even remotely deserve this kind of punishment. And so you prayed for understanding, even if you knew you never would or could.

And you prayed for patience, patience to go on, patience not to get angry with God or angry with whomever you might have thought to be the reason for your infirmity. You had lost your patience many, many times in the past. You screamed at your kids knowing they had done nothing to deserve your anger. You were sour with your spouse when your spouse lovingly did for you what you could not do for yourself, yelling at your spouse, "What? Do you think I am a cripple?" when you knew you were.

You were much more patient and understanding after all these years, but you knew you could lose it again at any time if life and your disability got the best of you especially when you least expected it. So you also had to be open-minded. Your faith told you that perhaps God had something in mind for you, that maybe there was a reason for all this suffering all these years. Perhaps.

And so you prayed some more. Then all of a sudden your prayers are interrupted by the gentle touch of a man you had never seen before. After all those years and after all those thousands of words addressed to God, your prayers were answered. Who would have thought it? Certainly not you!

The lesson in all this is obvious, is it not? Perhaps none of us has ever prayed for eighteen years for something to happen, some miracle. But we have all prayed long and hard about something. We were often tempted to give up and perhaps even did, only to start again because we knew only God could do what we wanted to be done. Our minds and hearts were open, open to God’s will and God’s way, open-minded and openhearted. Our faith was tested, constantly, but we never gave up or gave in.

Then, like the woman in this story, our prayers were suddenly answered. They may not have been answered in the manner in which we requested them to be, but they were answered – in God’s own time and in God’s own way, which is the way it always is, isn’t it? That is why we know we are to pray without ceasing, especially during those times when we not only get discouraged but even get angry with God. We know God will answer our prayers as will be best for us, when it will be best for us. In the meantime, like this woman, we never lose hope.

Now imagine you are the leader of the synagogue. There is the Law, the Commandments, and there is the Law of Love. They should be one and the same even though we often do not believe that to be true. Yet, the truth is, they are. The reason why laws are made in the first place, why the Law had to be given to the Hebrew people by God to Moses, was and is and always will be that we can be so unloving at times that a law has to be made to try to prevent us from doing what we know we should not be doing.

We do not need any law to tell us that we should not lie or cheat or steal or commit murder, that we must obey proper authority or refrain from so desiring what another has that we become enraged with jealousy. We know all that. That law, if you will, is already written in our hearts and is on our lips. But because we do not follow that innate Law of Love, society and even religion make laws to keep us on the straight and narrow. And then to try to insure that we do, society and religion attach specific punishments to those laws in case we break them. The punishments attached are based on the severity of our misdeeds, our sins, our lack of love.

As the leader of the synagogue you know all that. It is nothing new to you and certainly not rocket science. When someone is ill and you have within us the ability to heal that illness, that is what you are to do. That is the Law of Love. Your pets, your farm animals, need to be fed and given water seven days a week, the Sabbath included. It does not matter what day of the week it is. It is simply the day for healing. It does not matter what is the moral state of the person who is suffering. No one, no animal even, is exempt from being healed or cared for simply because he or she or it has broken the Law of Love or because it is a certain day of the week.

Is it any wonder that Jesus became so angry with you because of your hard heartedness and that of those who tried to remove love from the Law? Were any one of us in that same situation, we, too, would have been outraged at the lack of compassion and love on the part of the religious leaders of the people. We would know better and so should they.

Yes, sometimes, too often, really, punishment is necessary in order both for the message to get across and for the wrongdoer to come to his or her senses. We cannot complain if we are punished for doing what we knew we should not. But to be punished for doing good or to be prevented from doing so because it makes someone else jealous or angry is simply wrong, as Jesus attests in this passage.

As people, not just as Christians we need to be open-minded. Yes, it is easier to close our minds and not think. It is easier to close our hearts so as to make our lives easier, or so we would like to think. It is even easier to cite the law than it is to admit that the law was made for us and not the other way around.

Jesus constantly challenged those who questioned his love and care and concern to examine their own hearts and minds as to why they were so upset. They never did have a good answer. They simply had their hearts and minds closed to the truth, for whatever reason they so did.