Unity That Unbinds

True Community and the Liberation of the Bent: A Reflection on Ephesians 4:1-6 and Luke 13:10-17

Paul’s call to unity is simple: Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love. Unity requires patience. It requires bearing with one another—which means enduring the irritations, accommodating the differences, making space for those who aren’t like you. This is unity as hard work, not as comfortable homogeneity.

Meanwhile, Christ encounters a woman who has been bent over for eighteen years. The text is precise: she could in no way raise herself up. Eighteen years of staring at the ground, unable to see faces, unable to stand upright, locked in a posture of perpetual submission. When Christ sees her, He simply says: Woman, you are freed from your infirmity. Immediately she was made straight and glorified God.

The synagogue ruler’s response reveals everything: There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. He cares more about religious correctness than he does about a human being standing upright for the first time in eighteen years.

What Binds You

Here’s the inner work: What rigid systems have you internalized that keep you—or others—bent over? And what would it cost you to admit that those systems serve your comfort more than they serve actual people?

The woman’s condition wasn’t just physical. Christ says explicitly: This woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound. She was bound—locked in a posture that prevented her from fully participating in community, from seeing faces, from standing as an equal. And the religious authorities had apparently been content with this arrangement for eighteen years. She was still allowed in the synagogue. She could still observe from her bent position. Why make a fuss?

But Christ sees what they don’t: this woman is a daughter of Abraham. Not “a woman with an infirmity.” Not “someone who needs to wait until tomorrow.” A daughter of Abraham—which means she’s heir to the covenant, participant in the promise, fully human and fully dignified. And if she’s a daughter of Abraham, then leaving her bent over while you observe Sabbath regulations isn’t piety—it’s cruelty dressed as devotion.

The ruler’s hypocrisy becomes obvious: Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it? You’ll untie your animals to meet their needs, but you won’t untie a human being to restore her dignity. You’ve created a religious system where animals receive more compassion than humans.

Unity Requires Liberation

This connects directly to Paul’s call for unity. He doesn’t say “maintain doctrinal conformity” or “enforce proper boundaries.” He says: eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Unity of the Spirit—not uniformity of practice, not homogeneity of background. Unity means diverse persons participating together in the one divine life that flows through all.

Paul lists seven “ones”: One body and one Spirit… one hope… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. Notice what’s emphasized—shared participation in God, not shared compliance with rules. One Father in all—which means divine presence permeates every person, making each one sacred, making each one’s dignity inviolable. You cannot have genuine unity while keeping some people bent over by systems that serve your convenience.

The woman couldn’t participate fully while bent over. She couldn’t see faces. She couldn’t engage as an equal. And the religious authorities were fine with this. She was technically present—what more did she need? But Christ sees differently. Being physically present while structurally excluded isn’t participation—it’s tokenism. Unity requires more than allowing people into the space; it requires loosing whatever binds them so they can stand upright.

This reveals reality’s cosmic structure: the universe is moving toward full participation of all people in divine life. Every healing participates in this movement. When Christ makes the woman straight, He’s manifesting what creation is meant to become—matter united to divine life, bondage broken, the kingdom arriving in concrete, physical form.

Sabbath Restored

The synagogue ruler thinks he’s defending holiness. But Christ reframes completely: Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound… be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? The Sabbath isn’t diminished by healing; it’s fulfilled by it. The Sabbath was always about rest, restoration, freedom from bondage. It commemorated exodus from Egypt—release from slavery. How could it possibly violate Sabbath to release someone from eighteen years of bondage?

This connects to the ancient pattern. From the beginning, the seventh day was about participating in divine rest—entering the rhythm of creation, recognizing that God’s abundance is gift rather than wage. The First Temple preserved this: Sabbath was when heaven and earth united most fully, when liberation was celebrated.

But by Christ’s time, Sabbath had twisted into burden. The day meant to liberate had become another form of bondage—a maze of regulations that kept people anxious and controlled. Christ restores the original: Sabbath is when you loose bonds, not when you tighten them.

This reveals God’s nature: divine power works through liberation, not control. God doesn’t coerce or manipulate—He invites, He loosens bonds, He makes participation possible. The synagogue ruler’s system reflected human power (control through rules), not divine power (liberation through love).

The Cost of True Unity

Paul’s language reveals what this requires from you: forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit. “Forbearing” means enduring, putting up with, making space for what irritates you. Unity isn’t natural—it requires deliberate effort, ongoing choice, willingness to be inconvenienced.

This is the opposite of what the synagogue ruler was doing. He wasn’t bearing with the woman’s affliction; he was requiring her to bear with the system’s rigidity. But genuine unity—the kind Paul describes—means lowliness, meekness, patience. It means recognizing that your comfort isn’t the highest value. And when maintaining your system requires someone else to remain bent over, then your system needs to change.

This is why Christ calls the ruler a hypocrite. He’s inverted the entire purpose of religious practice. Religion is supposed to serve human flourishing, facilitate encounter with God, liberate people from what binds them. But the ruler has made religion into an end in itself—a system to be protected even when protecting it means people suffer.

Paul’s climactic statement holds everything together: One God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. God isn’t just transcendent but immanent. Divine presence permeates every person, which means every person bears divine image, which means no one can be treated as disposable or acceptable collateral damage for your system’s smooth operation.

When Christ says the woman is a daughter of Abraham, He’s making the same point. She’s not defined by her infirmity. She’s defined by her participation in the covenant, her status as God’s image-bearer. The fact that she’s been bent over for eighteen years doesn’t diminish her dignity; it amplifies the injustice of leaving her that way.

The woman, once straightened, glorified God. This is the natural response to being loosed. When you participate in loosing others from what binds them, you facilitate their capacity to glorify God. When you keep them bent over to maintain your system, you suppress their glorification.

Unity requires this work. Not the easy unity of everyone who already agrees with you, but the difficult unity of bearing with one another, making space for differences, loosing whatever binds people so they can stand upright and participate fully. This is lowliness—recognizing that your way isn’t the only way. This is meekness—handling others’ differences with care. This is patience—enduring the discomfort of true diversity.

The multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Not just this one healing, but all of them—every instance where Christ saw someone bent over and said: You are loosed. This is what divine love looks like: seeing dignity where others see only affliction, seeing daughter of Abraham where others see only woman with infirmity, seeing person who needs to stand upright where others see inconvenient complication.

The unity Paul calls for is impossible without this willingness to loose. You cannot maintain the unity of the Spirit while maintaining bonds that serve your comfort. You cannot participate in the one body while excluding those who make you uncomfortable. You cannot claim one Father in all while treating some people as less fully human. Unity isn’t achieved by everyone conforming to your standards; it’s achieved by everyone participating together in the divine life that flows through all, which requires loosing whatever prevents that participation.