This daughter of Abraham, ought she not to have been set free on the Sabbath day? Jesus was, without any doubt, a God-fearing Jew who respected the tradition of his people. He definitely knew what the law said about the Sabbath. He was also in the know of what the law said about the temple/synagogue and its precincts, about what kind of activity that was allowed in the temple/synagogue and its environs, as well as what was not allowed. But unlike the synagogue leader (and others like him) who became indignant at his healing of a woman who was very much in need of God’s intervention, Jesus understood what the synagogue represented, and what it stood for. 
Jesus understood the temple/synagogue to be the place where men and women came to meet God and to have their “rest” (Sabbath). It was in the temple/synagogue that men and women came, on the Sabbath, to listen to the history of their salvation read to them even as they reflected on their relationship with God. It was in the temple/synagogue that men and women got to be reminded of how God had walked with their ancestors, how God did fight on their behalf, how God has always been present for God’s people, and how God has always taken care of the poor and vulnerable. 
The woman healed by Jesus understood that the God of healing resided inside the temple/synagogue. For eighteen years, she frequented the temple/synagogue, and although she had never been cured, she never gave up hope. She was given hope and courage by the many Scriptural stories of individuals like her who were raised from their beds of pain by God. As a daughter of Abraham, the model of faith, the woman believed that the God of her ancestors was a God of wonders and mighty deeds, a God who never failed to come to visit with his children while bearing goodies. Her determination was finally rewarded when she met this God of hers in the person of Jesus Christ. How fitting it was that the temple/synagogue became the place where all the desires of her heart were met. And how fitting it was that it took place on the Sabbath, the day that God had hallowed as he celebrated the beauty of what he had created. She could not have wished for a better memory of the temple/synagogue and of the holy day of Sabbath than what God did to her through Jesus Christ. Jesus was not going to take away such a sweet moment from her, and how he wished that the synagogue leader and others like him would do the same. 
May we, like Jesus, honor the Sabbath by making it a day when we celebrate the life that God has given us. May we, unlike the synagogue leader who questioned Jesus’ motives, come to honor our belonging to the house of God by releasing from our midst all those whom we have bound by fetters of injustice and oppression. May we, like Jesus, come to see our places of worship as sanctuaries of life, places where men and women come so that they can be rejuvenated and given a new lease of life.