The letter has been in the imperative since October 23. Today it gives the most audacious command in the New Testament and then, immediately, a list of things not to say.
What happens
"Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as Theos has forgiven you in Christ. So be imitators of Theos, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificialoffering to Theos for a fragrant aroma. Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place, but instead, thanksgiving… For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the master. Live as children of light."
What to notice
Eusplanchnoi — "good-gutted" — is built on splanchna, the inward organs, and is the adjective form of the verb that fired in the Samaritan on October 5. The instruction is not to feel warmly but to have the reflex.Charizomenoi heautois, "gracing one another," is built on charis, grace, and means to give freely, and by extension to forgive.The verb for pardon in Ephesians is the verb for making a present. Then Ephesians 5:1, which is one of a kind: ginesthe oun mimētai tou theou, "become therefore imitators of Theos."Mimētēs theou appears nowhere else in the Bible. Paul elsewhere tells people to imitate him, or Christ; this is the only place anyone is told to imitate Theos directly — and the qualifier makes it thinkable: hōs tekna agapēta, "as beloved children."Children imitate without being instructed to, and badly, and constantly. The command assumes the relationship and not the competence.Osmēn euōdias, "a fragrance of sweet smell," is not a poetic flourish but the fixed Septuagint formula for an accepted sacrifice, translating the Hebrew reach nichoach of Genesis 8:21 and Leviticus. Then the speech list, and one item is a deliberate collision with Greek ethics. Aischrotēs is obscenity; mōrologia is "moron-talk."And then eutrapelia. In Aristotle, eutrapelia is a virtue — Nicomachean Ethics IV.8 defines it as ready wit, the mean between the buffoon and the boor. Ephesians puts it in a list of things that are out of place.This is the mirror image of October 23, where a Greek term of contempt was promoted to a virtue. The word literally means "well-turning" — and the problem with a mind that can turn anything is that it can turn anything. And the replacement is unexpected: mallon de eucharistia, "but rather, thanksgiving."Pleonektēs, ho estin eidōlolatrēs — "a greedy person, that is, an idolater" — flat and unargued. And the last line is precise about grammar: "you were darkness, but now you are light."Not in darkness and in light. The nouns are predicates.
Psalm 1 returns from October 14 with exactly the same verses — the only responsorial repeated identically this month. So it is worth taking the first verse, which the previous reading passed over quickly.
The selected verses
Psalm 1:1–2."Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked, nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, but delights in the law of Yahweh and meditates on his law day and night." Psalm 1:3."He is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade." Psalm 1:4, 6."Not so the wicked; they are like chaff which the wind drives away. For Yahweh watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes."
What to notice
Psalm 1:1 is built as a descent and English usually loses the staircase. Three verbs, in order: halakh, he walked; amad, he stood; yashav, he sat down. And three companions, also escalating: atzat resha'im, the counsel of the wicked; derekh chatta'im, the way of sinners; moshav letzim, the seat of scoffers.You walk past something, then you stop and stand near it, then you pull up a chair.The psalm's picture of moral decline is not a fall but a series of small increases in comfort. And the third company matters today: letzim, scoffers, is a technical character type in Proverbs. The letz is not the wicked man or the fool; he is the one who cannot be taught because he laughs.Proverbs 9:8 says do not correct a letz or he will hate you; Proverbs 21:11 says he cannot be instructed. The scoffer's problem is not ignorance but a posture that makes learning impossible.Which is exactly what Ephesians is worried about this morning with eutrapelia.Psalm 1 says: do not take a seat there. And then the contrast today's Gospel is about to embody: the tree stands and the chaff does not.
The last time Luke shows Jesus teaching in a synagogue. After this, the story is on the road to Jerusalem and nothing like this scene happens again.
What happens
"Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, 'Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.' He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorifiedTheos. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath, said to the crowd in reply, 'There are six days when work should be done. Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.' The master said to him in reply, 'Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering? This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?' When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated; and the whole crowd rejoiced."
What to notice
The description is clinical: ēn synkyptousa kai mē dynamenē anakypsai eis to panteles, "she was bent together and unable to straighten up completely" — two compounds of kyptō, to bend, and eis to panteles meaning all the way.She could raise herself partly and not fully, which is more precise and more wretched than a general description. She has been like this for eighteen years. And Luke has used that number once already in this same chapter: the eighteen killed when the tower at Siloam fell (Luke 13:4), read on Saturday. She does not ask.Idōn de autēn ho Iēsous prosephōnēsen — he saw her and called her over — in a synagogue she has evidently been attending, bent double, for eighteen years without anyone doing anything.Apolelysai tēs astheneias sou, "you have been released," is perfect passive, and apolyō is a legal and social verb: to set free, to release from custody, to dismiss an assembly, to divorce.It is not a medical word. And what happens to her is anōrthōthē, "she was straightened up" — the same verb that appears in Acts 15:16, quoting Amos, for the rebuilding of the fallen tent of David. She is not cured so much as re-erected. The official's objection is legally respectable and aimed at the wrong person: elegen tō ochlō, he said it to the crowd — a rebuke of the woman rather than of the healer. And the reply is a rabbinic qal va-chomer turning on one verb used twice: "does he not untie his ox from the manger?" and "ought she not to be untied from this bond?"Lyō, both times.Everyone in that room unties an animal every sabbath, and nobody calls it work. And the title he gives her is used of no one else in the New Testament: daughter of Abraham — Luke calls Zacchaeus a son of Abraham in Luke 19:9, but this phrase occurs only here.
How They Fit Together
Which way a person is facing — and none of it a matter of effort
The whole day is about which way a person is facing, and none of the three readings treats that as a matter of effort.
Ephesians opens with the most extravagant instruction in the New Testament and defuses it in the same breath. Become imitators of Theos — a sentence no ancient moralist would have written, and it stands alone in the Bible — and then: as beloved children.That is what makes it sayable. A small child imitating a parent is not attempting a moral feat; they are doing the thing children do without being asked, badly, in the workshop, holding the tool the wrong way round.The command assumes the relationship and not the competence.
And what is to be imitated is given first, in the verse before: forgiving one another, as Theos in Christ forgave you.Charizomai.The word means to give as a gift, and it is the word for pardon — a piece of theology hidden inside a vocabulary item.
Then the speech list, whose most interesting entry would have made a Greek reader sit up. Eutrapelia is a virtue in Aristotle — the ready wit of the well-bred man — and Ephesians lists it among things that are out of place.Three days after promoting tapeinophrosynē, a Greek insult, into the head of a virtue list, the same letter demotes a Greek virtue.Eutrapelia is literally the well-turned, the nimble reversal — and the problem with a mind that can turn anything is that it can turn anything, including a person, into material. And the thing offered in its place is not gravity but eucharistia, thanks.
The psalm then supplies the anatomy of how a person ends up somewhere. Walked, stood, sat.Nothing in Psalm 1:1 is a decision to be wicked; it is a sequence of small settlings. And the seat is moshav letzim, the scoffers' bench — the company of people who have made themselves unteachable by laughing. Which is where eutrapelia leads if it becomes a place to sit rather than a passing remark.
And then the woman, who is the day's argument in a body. Eighteen years bent double. Luke's phrase is careful — unable to straighten up all the way — so she had some movement and not enough. She has been in that synagogue the whole time. Nobody in the room considered her an emergency.
She does not ask, and she is not said to have faith. He sees her, calls her over, says you have been released, and puts his hands on her — and anōrthōthē, she was straightened up, in a verb that elsewhere means to rebuild a fallen structure. The tree in Psalm 1 stands; the chaff does not; and this woman is put back upright.
And the argument that follows is unanswerable because it is made out of their own practice.Every one of you unties an ox on the sabbath.The same verb, lyō, for the ox's tether and for her eighteen-year bond.They have already decided that releasing something tied up is not work.The only question left is whether she counts as much as the animal — and he answers it by giving her a title nobody in the room had used about her: daughter of Abraham.
Ephesians said you were darkness and now you are light — predicate nouns, a change of what a person is rather than where they stand. Luke shows it happening in public, at the pace of one sentence, to somebody who had stopped expecting it. And it happens on the sabbath, which is not incidental: the day set aside to remember that Israel had been slaves and was let out.
A Question to Sit With
She was bent for eighteen years in a room full of people who prayed there every week, and the objection when she was finally straightened was about the timing. Nobody in that synagogue had thought her an emergency; they were not cruel, only used to her. The psalm says the way in is gradual — you walk past, you stop, you sit down. What have I walked past long enough that I have taken a seat beside it?