“For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.””
Romans 9:15 ESV
Jesus challenges the people that He was dining with to have compassion on someone who was sick. This seems like it would be an obvious decision yet the practise was not to work on the sabbath, including healing some one. Jesus doesn’t just go ahead and heal the man, He asks the Pharisee and his guests whether they would help their own son or even one of their animals if they had fallen in a well. The imagery of separation and loneliness is apt because essentially this is what is happening to the man who is sick. He would have been looked down upon and possibly austrazized. Healing would not have just helped His physical health but also his relational, psychological, and spiritual health.
The healing would not just have challenged the healthy people, it would have also challenged the person who was sick because it would have demonstrated God’s healing love for Him even though everyone else had told him God did love him or the idea of him being of any significance to God could very well have been absent from him. Yet when we look at the larger picture that is being painted by Jesus in Luke 14:1-24, it ends with those who were too good to heal on the sabbath, also being to busy to listen to God’s invitation. The parable and the incidents each have their individual messages but when we see them as part of a larger message we hear the warning that Jesus has for His listeners, “You are loved and called by God but if you don’t listen to God’s calling God will call others to take your place.”