One Sabbath day, Jesus was teaching in a synagogue. A woman was there who was severely disabled. Her body was all bent over so bent over that her head was nearly even with her waist. Dr. Luke tells us she could not straighten up at all. That strikes me as an unbelievably sad situation. Forgetting the pain and the inconvenience of not being able to straighten one’s body, imagine what that would do to your self image. Imagine not just the physical pain, but the emotional pain of this kind of obvious deformity of the entire body.
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson suggests that this woman’s problem was probably what physician’s today would call Ankylosing Spondylitis, or Marie-Strümpell Disease, a disease that causes bones in the spine to fuse together. It is a disease that usually affects young men, though women are susceptible too. It begins with inflammation and stiffness. “Early in the course of the disease, sufferers often find that the pain is relieved somewhat when they lean forward. So they often go through the day leaning slightly forward, and gradually their spine begins to fuse. The more they lean in order to relieve the pain, the greater the angle, until a patient might be bent almost double, as the lady in our story.” Treatment focuses on relieving back and joint pain, and preventing or correcting spinal deformities. Even today, notes Dr. Wilson, we don’t have any medicines that can actually cure this condition. (1)
If you have any compassion at all or any ability to empathize with another human being, you can’t help but hurt for this woman. She was so terribly disabled. But you also have to admire her. She did not allow her physical condition to keep her from worshipping God.
Notice how our story begins, “One Sabbath day, Jesus was teaching in a synagogue. A woman was there who was severely disabled. Her body was all bent over.” Even with her pronounced deformity she was in the synagogue on the Sabbath. I admire her. I wonder if I would have that kind of courage to be in public with that kind of condition.
Even more important she had not allowed her physical condition to impair her relationship with God. She had been this way for eighteen years all bent over and unable to rise up. The pain was sometimes severe. Yet, her habit was to be in worship to praise her Maker. Friends, that’s faith. That’s devotion.
I know people who will miss church if they have a slight headache. Or if there is a threat of a little rain or the threat of sunshine for that matter for there are so many other things you can do when the weather is nice. But here was this woman where she was supposed to be on this particular Sabbath: in worship. And because she was there, she received a very special blessing from God.
Now I know I’m preaching to the choir about being in worship. You believe in worship or you wouldn’t be here today. And nobody forced you to be here. Well, maybe a spouse or a parent . . . However, I’m glad we don’t live in earlier times when missing worship was a punishable offense.
You may be familiar with Jamestown, VA, the first permanent settlement in the new world. Some of their religious practices were rather interesting. For instance, they had two hour church services every day, and for five hours on Sunday, and everybody had to attend. Missing church was considered a sin and was dealt with severely.
The penalty for missing a service was the loss of food rations for a whole day. A second absence resulted in a public whipping. And the penalty for missing three times was to be placed in the stocks daily for six months! Historians tell us that research has not revealed anyone in Jamestown Colony ever missing church three times. (2)
Well, I imagine not. I believe we could improve our attendance if we instituted such a system. Obviously we would never do that even if we could. But missing worship really is serious business. Attendance in worship is a witness to our faith in Christ. Attendance in worship encourages others. Nothing is more discouraging to a first-time visitor than a half-empty church. But just as importantly, God is waiting in this place to bless you, to heal you, to strengthen you. This woman would have missed the healing touch of Jesus if she had not been in worship that day.
The Psalmist understood such devotion. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever,” he wrote in the beloved 23rd Psalm (23:6). And again, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD” (122:1). And in another place the Psalmist writes, “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand [elsewhere]. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (84:10). This sorely afflicted woman was in the synagogue on the Sabbath. This is where she was supposed to be, and because she was there, Jesus healed her.
From Luke’s description we have to wonder whether the disease that crippled this woman could have been psychological in origin. Notice how Luke describes her condition: “On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years . . .” [emphasis added] What does that mean, crippled by a spirit?
In pre-scientific times, of course, it was quite common for people to attribute all disease to the presence of demons. This may be the simple explanation for this wording. Demon possession is certainly a recognized condition in the scriptures.
Or, in modern terms, maybe Luke is saying to us that this woman’s problem was caused by something that was troubling her mentally or spiritually.
One of the Psalms attributed to David is very interesting. David writes, “I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart” (Psalm 38:6-8).
If you read the rest of the Psalm, it is clear that David attributes at least part of the fact that he is bowed down to his own guilt. He writes, “Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear” (38:3-4). Of course David had a lot to feel guilty about.
I would not be at all surprised if there were someone in this room today who has spent time in bed because of an aching back. And the cause of that aching back the doctor told you was stress. What did she give you for the aching back? Muscle relaxers. To have a healthy back is sometimes to have a healthy mind. Psychological problems can cause us to feel bowed down. We see someone who is deeply troubled and we say, “He seems to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders . . .” Before long we even start to see it in his posture. Not as badly as this woman, of course, but we see the shoulders slump and the back bend.
Low self-esteem can cause a person to shrink into himself or herself. We tell our children, “Throw your shoulders back and stand proud . . .” But some children seem incapable of doing that and so a kind of life-long deformity of slumping shoulders and, even more tragically, a slumping spirit begins forming.
All kinds of things in life can cause souls as well as backs to be bent or bowed down: humiliation and shame, lack of education, loss of a loved one through divorce or death, accident, disease, a problem with our appearance or personality.
We don’t know if any of these applied to this poor woman. Maybe her problem was genetic. Or perhaps it was bacterial. All we know is that she was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
It is a powerful thought: Jesus can heal those who are bowed down, whatever the reason is for their condition.
There is a verse, again in the Psalms, that speaks to this. In the King James Version it reads like this: “The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down . . .” (Psalm 146:8).
This woman, whatever the origin of her spirit of infirmity was in worship on the Sabbath; when Jesus told her to step forward, she obeyed, and this terrible burden was lifted from her body and her soul. Says Dr. Luke, “Immediately she straightened up and praised God.”
Jesus can do that for you, my friend. If there is some burden that is weighing you down, give it to Jesus. Some secret sin, some sense of inferiority, some smothering anxiety, some lingering illness give it to Jesus whatever it may be. You don’t have to carry it alone. Jesus is here to heal and make whole.
Unfortunately this wonderful story of the healing of this woman doesn’t stop here. For there is another character in the story, a man with a different kind of spirit, a spirit of legalism and condemnation.
Immediately after reading that this woman straightened up and praised God, Luke tells us about this second character. Listen to these words: “Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, ‘There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.’”
Oh, man, where do people like this come from? They throw cold water on every good event. And for some reason they seem to be drawn to the church and synagogue.
Pastor Lee Strobel is fond of quoting the reply Homer Simpson’s fundamentalist neighbors gave when Homer asked them where they’d been: “We went away to a Christian camp,” they said, “We were learning how to be more judgmental.” (3)
This man who criticized Jesus must have attended one of those camps. He was the leader of the synagogue. God had done a great work in his presence. Wouldn’t you think that he would be jumping up and down, giving God praise? But all he can do is criticize.
Someone has noted that this was the last time it is recorded that Jesus was ever in a synagogue. For one thing, from this point on he was such a controversial figure that no synagogue would allow him in the pulpit. But you have to wonder if the legalism of this synagogue leader drove him away. If so, he wouldn’t be the first or the last person to have been driven away from a religious assembly by a legalistic spirit.
It reminds me of the time-honored story of a knight who returned to the castle at twilight. He was a mess. His armor was dented, his helmet skewed, his face was bloody, his horse was limping, he was listing to one side in the saddle. The lord of the castle saw him coming and went out to meet him, asking, “What hath befallen you, Sir Knight?”
Straightening himself up as best he could, the bedraggled knight replied, “Oh, Sire, I have been laboring in your service, robbing and burning and pillaging your enemies to the west.”
“You’ve been WHAT?” cried the startled nobleman, “but I haven’t any enemies to the west!”
“Oh!” said the knight. “Well, I think you do now.”
I am convinced that many blessed saints with the spirit of legalism and condemnation have created enemies for God where previously there had not been any. Maybe you can understand why such people are that way. I do not.
This man was a leader of the synagogue. This is a good warning to me as a pastor. I remember a bulletin blooper I saw years ago, “Please welcome Pastor Don, a caring individual who loves hurting people.”
Well, of course, you can read that two ways. He loves people who are hurting, or he himself enjoys hurting people. I’ve known pastors of both persuasions.
But lay people also can be of both persuasions.
In a sermon on the Internet, pastor David C. Fisher tells about a time when he was in graduate school doing doctoral work and serving as minister of a small, rural congregation in southern Indiana. This was a church in which no pastor in its one hundred ten year history had stayed longer than two and half years. They regarded ministers as outsiders to be mistrusted and kept at arm’s length.
To make matters worse the congregation had suffered a recent and ugly split. The previous pastor and half the congregation walked out during a congregational meeting to start a rival church. “The memory of those who remained,” says Fisher, “was the sound of the door slamming behind the dissidents. [Those left behind] were hurt, angry, and nursing old wounds.”
Pastor Fisher, young and brimming with confidence figured he’d come in, do his thing, and things would turn around. Surprise. He got no response from this group of people nothing. No matter what he tried, the people were determined not to accept him. In his words, this congregation raised passive-aggression to an all-time record high! They kept him and his wife at a distance and treated them with veiled hostility.
He says he learned a lot in the time he was pastor there. One lesson he learned is that in public life you receive a lot of other people’s mail. What he means is this: much of the reaction to ministers of the past and especially his predecessor who split the church was unjustly visited on him. He received their mail. He writes, “It was horrible. At school I was trying to earn some acceptance and respect. At work [in that small church] I seemed a failure. It was so bad, one Sunday after church Gloria and I stood in our house looking out the window at a field and we held each other and cried. ‘Is God here or not?’ That was our question. ‘Is God here or not?’” (4)
We can understand it if it is true that Jesus never taught in a synagogue again after his encounter with this particular synagogue leader. And we can understand why some people who have been hurt by the church never darken its doors again. That’s not what church is about.
But it is sad. This is a place where people still come today for healing and acceptance. This a place where people still come today to find help for their hurting hearts. This is a place where persons with a disability can find His ability to heal. Imagine someone coming in the doors of our church who is bent over either figuratively or literally like this poor woman in today’s story. Is she going to encounter the spirit of Jesus or is she going to encounter the spirit of this synagogue leader? The answer to that question is up to each of us—every one of us. Will they discover here a spirit that heals or one that hurts? Let’s make certain that we are a church family that always seeks to heal a church family that surrounds people with the love and grace of Jesus Christ.
1. www.jesuswalk.com.
2. http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/father-forgive-them-melvin-newland-sermon-on-easter-resurrection-33337.asp.
3. John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).
4. http://www.plymouthchurch.org/news/PCsermon051808.pdf.