This play about Jesus getting in trouble for performing a healing on the Sabbath arose from my feeling that the synagogue leader’s complaint – that the woman could have been healed any other day of the week, just not on that one special day – was not all that unreasonable, and that Jesus’ counter – that the people were hypocrites because they would do some work to water their animals on the Sabbath while not wanting the woman to be healed on the Sabbath – didn’t entirely hold water.
Given that premise, I had to ask myself why Jesus reacted so strongly, and from there, I constructed this play that presents a possible explanation for what was really happening behind the scenes.
You might accuse me of breaking my own rule here: rather than simply presenting or even sharpening the oddity in the story, I’m trying to explain it away, to smooth it over.
To which I can only reply: guilty as charged!