Scab

Have you been told to put your greatest concern aside for the good of the movement?

Luke 13:14

But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.”

The synagogue leader isn’t mad Jesus healed someone. He’s mad that he did it now. And for good reason.

In Jesus’ time, the relationship between the Roman Empire and its Jewish denizens is fraught. There’s a dispensation for Jews to rest on the Sabbath but only because they’ve successfully argued that it is strictly necessary. People have died showing their faithfulness to the collective bargaining agreement they’ve negotiated.

So this isn’t a fight between good guys and bad guys (liberal saviors vs. religious prescriptivists). It’s between good guys and other good guys. It is a perennial fight that plagues prosocial political movements: the one between disability rights and organized labor.

By healing this woman - publicly, in a house of Jewish study - Jesus will cross a picket line and risk the Empire overturning workers protections for the entire community.

He heals her anyway.

Have you been told to put your greatest concern aside for the good of the movement? To wait to have your disability accommodated until some incremental milestone is reached? Jesus sees you. Show up. Take up space. You are not meant to silently suffer to free others because until you are free, no one is.

—Kate Davoli