Earlier this year, less than two weeks after taking up the role of US President for a second time, an emboldened Donald Trump declared a war on ‘woke’. A series of executive orders and policy changes targeted DEI (that’s ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’) programmes, education curricula and political protests. Trump said his aim was to restore ‘merit-based’ systems.

You’ll have come across the word ‘woke’, which is evidently what used to be called ‘political correctness’ or ‘tokenism’. Such derogatory terms may be applied to anyone who tries to provide better opportunities for under-represented groups. But surely diversity, in any area of life, is enriching for us all?

And if Trump had been around nearly 2000 years ago, would he have accused Saint Luke of tokenism, I wonder? Because in Luke’s Gospel (though not in the other Gospels) a story about a man is often – it seems intentionally – paired with a similar story about a woman. Here are some examples.

At the start of Luke’s Gospel God reveals his plans for the redemption of humankind, via an angel, to one man, Zechariah, and one woman, Mary; and both man and woman burst into song. When baby Jesus is 40 days old and is taken to the temple, he’s identified and worshipped by an elderly man, Simeon, and an elderly woman, Anna. When the adult Jesus wants to talk about faith heroes from the Old Testament he mentions one man, Naaman the Syrian, and one woman, the widow of Zarephath. In teaching about persistence in prayer Jesus describes a man frantically knocking his neighbour’s door at midnight, and a widow woman nagging a judge. To explain how much rejoicing there is in heaven when a sinner repents, Jesus cites a man losing a sheep and a woman losing a coin.

And today’s Gospel is one half of another such pairing. In chapter 14 a man will be healed of dropsy on the Sabbath, this will stir up a controversy, and Jesus will respond with a parable about an ox falling into a well. Meanwhile, here in chapter 13 a woman is cured of something (arthritis? a progressive spinal disease?) on the Sabbath, there’s a debate about it, and Jesus responds with a parable about an ox being led to water!

But note also the context: Luke 13 and 14 comprise one long whinge about the religious leaders of the day. In the parable immediately preceding today’s passage they’re compared to barren fig trees. Whatever else one might say about these leaders, the big issue is that their ministry doesn’t bear fruit.

Despite the brevity of today’s Gospel we can still miss things. First, Jesus isn’t attending this synagogue just to worship; we’re explicitly told he’s there to teach, which means he’s in the area of the synagogue reserved for healthy males. The crippled woman is excluded from this space on both grounds. And note that she doesn’t approach Jesus anyway; in her bent-over state I guess she can hardly see Jesus. But Jesus spots her, and his instinctive compassionate reaction leads him to break three rules at once! First he calls the woman forward, into the area reserved for healthy males: a transgression the synagogue leader daren’t ignore. Secondly, Jesus puts his hands on the woman – rendering himself ritually ‘impure’. Thirdly, he cures her on the Sabbath.

This leads to a conversation which morphs into a debate between two groups of Christians at the time Luke’s writing his Gospel. One group claims Jewish regulations like food laws, ritual purity and Sabbath observance still apply; the other says not. And interestingly Jesus isn’t depicted as a compromiser, championing the ‘creative tension’ between equal and opposite views. No; he comes down firmly on the side of the liberals over and against the orthodox.

The Sabbath, intended as a weekly remembrance of the Israelites being set free from slavery in Egypt, was now being used to bind people. Jesus doesn’t only straighten up a woman who was bent over double; he also sets the record ‘straight’, as it were, for religious and political leaders of his day – and subsequent days including ours – who’ve sought to bind the very people they should have been liberating. God in Christ doesn’t offer a free-for-all, but neither does he tie us to petty regulations. Let us celebrate the diversity, inclusiveness and freedom that Christ champions!