In Luke 13:10 Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath day and healed a woman. A synagogue during the time of Jesus was a place of worship, torah reading, prayer and community life. These houses of worship were not the Temple where sacrifices were made instead they were like houses which people gathered on the sabbath much like a church today. Each synagogue had a leader or official. Jesus taught in these places particularly on the sabbath when Jewish people didn’t have to work and were able to gather in larger crowds. When Jesus healed this woman, the synagogue official responded with indignation rather than joy and gratefulness. In doing so, he revealed a hard-hearted “servant of God” who neither knew the God he claimed to serve nor represented the heart of God. Instead, he reflected the heart of man—evil, rigid, and unable to house the true kingdom of God. This hardness was evidence that he may have been in God’s house, but God’s house was not in him!
In the first century, a synagogue official was a pillar of the Jewish community. He oversaw religious life, Torah readings, teaching, shepherding, and much of the community’s social life. His role in leadership and administration could not be overstated. This was the man who reprimanded Jesus for healing a woman, likely one of his friends, neighbors or family members in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Why? Because while his position and title suggested service to God in building the “kingdom of God,” his heart was far removed from God.
Jesus makes this clear immediately following the incident when He teaches that the kingdom of God is not ruled by officials, administration, or confined to buildings and temples. Rather, the kingdom of God begins in the human heart. It is small like a seed or a peck of leaven and seemingly insignificant, without honor, yet it grows far beyond any temple with walls and doors.
These leaders were likely the wealthiest amoung the people, with the largest homes and the most “spiritual and religios” which is why they were ‘chosen’ to be officials, yet this official was hard-hearted in several ways and unqualified to lead God’s people.
First, he showed no amazement at the miracle that had just occurred. There was no wonder, no awe—only a flat, dry response, as if healing were an everyday inconvenience. To him, healing was “work,” and the Sabbath was simply outside business hours.
Second, he had no compassion for those who were bound, sick, and desperate for healing. A woman who had suffered for eighteen years could not have been freed a moment too soon, yet he showed no urgency, empathy, or concern. He treated the synagogue like a closed business and the woman as an object without feelings, less valuable than even a donkey. His devotion was not to a suffering person made in God’s image, but to a rigid schedule of rules.
Third, he had no joy for the woman who was healed. Scripture says the entire multitude rejoiced at what Jesus had done, yet the official remained unmoved. Her freedom brought him no happiness at all.
Finally, the clearest evidence of his hardened and inflexible heart is that he was indignant over her healing, he was actually angry that Jesus had freed this woman! Healing, in his view, was a violation rather than an act of God’s mercy. Scripture says to “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you.,Hosea 10:12 ” yet his heart remained unbroken and unyielding.
In the end, this man was publicly humiliated by Jesus’ response. Jesus not only called him a hypocrite but exposed his distorted values. Here was a supposed shepherd and leader of God’s people who valued animals more than a suffering daughter of Abraham. Who would want a leader like that? This official did not understand the things of God, the heart of God, or the kingdom of God—and worse, he did not reflect or represent the God he claimed to serve.
This likely prompted the question that follows in verse 23: “Lord, are there only a few who are being saved?” It is a powerful question. Jesus had just dismantled the assumption that religious leaders were automatically saved. The criteria that people relied on had been overturned. Jesus explains that the way is narrow and only those whom the Lord truly knows will enter. Clearly, this official—despite his position—was unknown to God and had no living relationship with Him.
Jesus is revisiting his teaching of the image of the kingdom as a seed planted in different types of soil. Only good soil receives the word and bears fruit. The hard soil of this official’s heart produced indignation, pride, and a careless disregard for the people he was meant to love and serve.
So the question becomes: How did he get this way? And even more importantly, how do I avoid becoming this way?Is my heart soft and receptive to the seed of God’s kingdom, able to reflect the heart of Jesus in love and compassion for others? Or is it hard, like this official’s—resisting what God is doing in and around me in order to preserve my own rules, rules that have little to do with God’s true order and purpose?
Created and written by Kim blenkhorn
Edited with the use of ChatGBT
My Faith Place 