It is unexpected and agonizing. You reach over to pick up a package, bend down to tie your shoe, or put out your arms to scoop an “arms-up” child . . . and suddenly, something goes terribly wrong. You know it in an instant. A wrench. A tweak. A tear. A back muscle, or disk, or nerve…something has gone completely “off-line.” In the twitch of a muscle, but no twinkle of an eye, moving becomes misery.
Even if you’ve never studied anatomy ever, you are immediately an expert in just how intimately connected your back is to your arms and legs, neck and shoulders, hands and feet. Everything anywhere near your back, hurts. When there is a “wreck” around the spinal cord, the “super highway” of our nervous and pain receptors, all of the other roadways in our body, all the muscles and nerves, all suffer together.
In this week’s gospel text Jesus deals head-on with a debilitating back issue. The woman Jesus sees in the synagogue, the woman he calls forward without her ever seeking him out, is “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.” Luke’s text doesn’t tell us anything else about this woman. We do not know if she was rich or poor, a paragon or a pariah, someone who was honored or ostracized. All we know is that she was perceived as one who had endured “a spirit” that had crippled her, bent her in half, for the past eighteen years. We also know that despite that affliction, she still attended worship in the synagogue during the weekly Sabbath ceremonies.
Jesus goes into action. He heals this woman, but not because of any expressions of faith on her part. She does respond to her healing by “praising God.” But prior to Jesus laying hands on her, we hear nothing about her faithfulness or piety. Jesus’ response to this woman’s “bent over” condition appears to be a spontaneous moment of overwhelming compassion. Something about this woman and her body warped into a question mark struck Jesus so strongly that he reacted without hesitation to bring a new sense of wholeness to someone who had been at “half-staff” for eighteen years.
No matter how many calcium supplements, weight workouts, or bone-strengthening injections we get as we age, gravity wins. We shrink. We bend. We break. We shrivel. It is a part of the human condition.
But there is another inevitable part of the human condition that bends us down and bows us over. It is the weight of life. The weight of sin and failure. The weight of “what if” and “why did I?” The weight of loss and longing. The weight of all that we have messed up and all that we have missed out on. It is a weight that brings us down and brings us low. It is a weight that bends us down long before our skeletal structure succumbs to gravity.
We start to feel the weight of the world on our shoulders — no matter what our age. We all know there is something “better” we could be, and when we don’t’ measure up, our backs bend down — our spirits lock up — little by little.
What is weighing you down today?
Is it physical pain?
Is it crippling financial debt?
Is it the depth-charge of depression?
Is it a chronic disease that makes every day both a merciful blessing and a painful burden?
Maybe it’s a family in crisis?
Maybe it’s a family far and away and unknowing?
Maybe it’s challenging school demands?
Maybe it’s worry over your children’s welfare?
We are all bent people. Life bends us all. In fact, life can provide an endless supply of weights to place upon our backs. Those weights bend our body and they bend our souls.
Jesus delivered the woman who was bent in two from the weight of life by offering her identity. Jesus did not define her in terms of her weights. Jesus did not define her in terms of her illness. Jesus refused to define her in terms of her weakness and bentness. Jesus referred to her by her true identity: “a daughter of Abraham.”
Do you get it?
So you have diabetes? You are not a diabetic. You are a child of God with diabetes.
So you suffer from depression, or manic-depression. You are not bipolar. You are a child of God with bipolar disorder.
So you have osteoporosis? You are not an osteoporitic. You are a child of the King with osteoporosis.
So you have arthritis? You are not an arthritic. You are a son or daughter of Abraham with arthritis.
Your weights and burdens, your diseases and disorders, need not define you. God defines you as “a child of the King.” In the words of that 1877 song by Harriett Buell,
I’m a child of the King,
A child of the King:
With Jesus my Savior,
I’m a child of the King.
When this woman was touched by the living Lord, he identified her as a “daughter of Abraham.” And in that glorious identity as a child of God, she was re-charged and re-born. To be touched by God is to be named as a child of God.
The medical gift of a longer life is not always an obvious “gift.” For those who know or care for an Alzheimer’s patient, which means now most of us, the challenge is to find the continuing humanity within the mind and body that have been “bent in half” by the disease of dementia.
No other disease so shows our human strengths and weaknesses, our irrepressible spirit and our brokenness, as Alzheimer’s. Disease brings down the curtain on the brain. But the individual remains. Even as the brain loses its ability to process information, to use language, to express itself, individuality finds a way. The person with Alzheimer’s is locked up inside. But the personal still finds a way out. The spirit remains even when communication with others becomes almost impossible.
Yet there is always the possibility for healing moments. For reaching out and straightening out the bent and broken parts of our existence.
Relational therapist Naomi Feil reaches out to those who have been bent in half by Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. She believes that there is always the possibility for healing moments, for reaching out and straightening out the bent and broken parts of our existence. Naomi Feil connects with these comrades by using gentle, child-like touches, recalling a “mother’s touch,” and bathes the soul in familiar, heart-felt music. Naomi reaches out to the most severely bent and broken, like the woman in our gospel lesson this morning. She treats them, not as doddering seniles, but as a child of God with senility.
Watch this video of a daughter of Abraham named Gladys Wilson who is treated with real eye contact and gentle words, with familiar songs and a soothing touch. Notice how even the most bent and broken can stand up straight and reconnect in relationship with another person who cares about them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrZXz10FcVM
[This five minute YouTube video will not leave a dry eye in the congregation. If you have to move heaven and earth to show it, it’s worth every bit of your added effort. You can tell the story with words, but the images of their souls dancing is unforgettable. I have provided the link above, or you can Google “Naomi Feil and Gladys Wilson,” and it will take you there.]
We are all locked up. It’s not just Gladys Wilson who is locked up inside. We are all locked up, and some of us are seized up. But in treating each other as Jesus treats this woman, as a son or daughter of Abraham, as a child of the King, we are released from our prisons. We are free.
Jesus loves the locked up to life. Jesus loves us to life.
Will you love a person to life this week? Will you let Jesus love YOU to life this week?
COMMENTARY
In the “back-to-school” shopping ritual, one of the most important, and expensive, family purchases is a new backpack. Does it seem to you too that every year the load our kids schlep between school and home on their backs becomes heavier and heavier?
In fact, there is real concern among medical professionals about the long-term effects of this “weightiness” on the nerves, bones and muscles of young children. There are long-term studies underway to follow up the muscular-skeletal effects that may result from years of hauling around pounds and pounds of books, sports gear, computers, and all the other portable “necessities” our kids carry on their back ten months out of the year. In later life, the back-packer may develop the newly named syndrome of “backpackilepsy.”
Being bent over by the burdens of life is the focus of this week’s gospel text. As we age, gravity shrinks and bows our frames. But the malady that affects the woman in this week’s text is diagnosed as coming from “a spirit,” not a physical ailment. In 13:4 Jesus referred to the “eighteen Galileans” crushed when the tower of Siloame fell on them. Now it is an eighteen-year bone-crushing burden, that has bent over this woman in the synagogue.
The incident reported in this week’s text is unique to Luke. It is the last time this gospel writer specifically locates Jesus in a synagogue. As in an earlier episode (6:9) where Jesus heals on the Sabbath, it raises the ire of the religious establishment. Jesus is “teaching” in the synagogue, so obviously he had been recognized as a qualified leader and scholar of the Torah.
Yet the moment this woman appears in the synagogue, “bent over” and “quite unable to stand up,” he focuses on her and her disability — not on any legal or liturgical details. It is unclear just how separated men and women were in first century synagogue services. The extreme isolation of women, through curtains or walled partitions, did not develop until after the destruction of the temple. It was apparently not as strict earlier in the century, especially in smaller synagogues. Still, for Jesus to single out and call forward a woman to the center of the synagogue during the Sabbath, was highly unusual.
Jesus not only called a woman forward. He called an obviously diseased woman into his presence. In an era when disease was still viewed as a sign of divine displeasure, this woman’s condition was seen as both pitiable and as justified punishment. Her physical malady suggested a spiritual shortcoming.
In his relationship with her, Jesus demonstrates both divine authority and unique compassion. He saw a woman in need, and he took immediate, miraculous action to meet that need. The woman herself makes no appeal or expression of faith towards Jesus before he calls her forward and declares, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” It is only after Jesus lays his hands upon her, and she suddenly straightens up and stands tall, that this woman begins “praising God.” She immediately affirms that the “spirit” that had bent her over and doubled her up for so many years was banished by the power of God. But what she thought of Jesus himself we do not hear.
This dramatic healing doesn’t sit well with everyone. Jesus was a “guest speaker” at this synagogue. Anyone who has ever been in a similar situation knows the awkwardness of offending one’s host. The host was the “leader of the synagogue,” and he took extreme exception to both Jesus’ actions and to his authoritative stance. Not only does this local religious leader cite Torah law to disparage Jesus’ actions. He doesn’t, as would have been expected, confront Jesus face-to-face with this accused legal infraction. Instead of making this a scholarly debate, the synagogue leader directly addresses “the crowd” — apparently trying to whip up an anti-Jesus sentiment within that synagogue.
The synagogue leader cited the legalities of Sabbath practices spelled out briefly in Deuteronomy 5:13 and Exodus 20:9. But Jesus responded by following the extrapolation of that basic Sabbath law as it was given in Deuteronomy 22:1-4. Sabbath exceptions for creatures were remarkably compassionate. Of course, animals were great investments. But animals were also routinely sacrificed for religious ceremonies. Hence it is still surprising to find all of the “take care” exceptions woven throughout Torah law. Although “work” was excluded on the Sabbath, activities that provided for the welfare of creatures were “special circumstances.” A tethered animal could be untied (technically a “work”) and walked to water and back again to its enclosure. An animal in distress — fallen into a ditch is the biblical example, but extrapolations are many was to be rescued, taken care of, healed.
It is these compassionate exceptions that Jesus declares to his piqued host. Jesus’ logic is an example of the classic Jewish “qal wehomer” (less to more) argument: if you would rescue an ox or donkey on the Sabbath “how much more” would you rescue “a daughter of Abraham.”
Jesus’ argument is further strengthened because the plight of this “daughter” was not caused by any accidental tumble into a pit, but was the direct result of demoniac actions. She had been “bound by Satan for eighteen long years.”
The synagogue crowd opts for miracle over micro-management. Jesus’ argument convinces those in attendance both of his authority and of the legitimacy and legality of his actions. They rejoice over the healing, the “wonderful things” he had accomplished, and those who opposed Jesus’ works and words were “put to shame.”