- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Luke 13:10-17

Perhaps you have known someone like the woman in our text today. She was a bent woman, a woman stooped so much that she couldn't look up. My first assumption would be that this woman had some disease that deteriorated the spine, maybe osteoporosis or scoliosis. This poor woman had been crippled for 18 years. Can you imagine?

A leader once asked a gathering of women at a retreat this question: "What in your own experience might cause a woman to be bent over for eighteen years?" The women immediately came up with a number of reasons which had nothing to do with medical science.

A woman in the crowd quickly replied, "Her children! Eighteen years is the minimum sentence parenthood brings."

Another woman spoke up and said: "Don't forget her husband. She was probably permanently bent over from picking up his dirty socks for thirty years."

Still another woman said: "Maybe she was tired of working like a slave for minimum wage or even tired of working like a slave at home for no wages at all."

"Maybe she had a doctorate in economics," suggested another woman, "and found that nobody listened when she talked about global finance and tax structures and national deficits, but instead paid attention to some pompous man, even if he had not read a serious book on the subject for years."

"Or, perhaps, every time she held her head up and tried to be somebody, the people around her--both male and female--did all they could to deflate and diminish her again." (Quoted by Bruce MacKenzie, First Congregational Church, Boulder, CO, http://www.firstcong.net/resources/sermons/mackenzie/mck19.htm)

I like these suggestions because they open up our minds to new ways of identifying with this woman. All of us are bent or broken people in one way or another, at one time or another. And this passage marks good news for bent people like us.

Back in the sixties, there was a lot of talk about body language. The idea was that your body accurately reflects what's going on inside of you. If you are angry, you show it on your face. If you are afraid, your body telegraphs that message. Even a dog can sense from your body language when you are afraid.

Perhaps the bentness of this woman's body came from the oppression in her family. Maybe her body was demonstrating the status of women in a culture where women were little more than cattle. As a physically disabled woman she resorted to lurking at the edges of the synagogue worship while the men pondered the nature of God's love.

Jesus' diagnosis was that Satan had bound her for eighteen long years. I don't pretend to know exactly what that means. It may simply be a way of attributing a debilitating disease to the powers of evil in order to make clear that disease doesn't come from God. Or it may be a way of implying that her physical appearance was a result of a spiritual condition.

12-13) When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers, suggests that Jesus' action represented a revolution happening in seven short verses. In this short story, Jesus tries to wake people up to the kind of life God wants for them. He often talks about the Kingdom of God where people have equal worth and all of life has dignity. But in the latter part of his ministry, he begins to act this out. In the midst of a highly patriarchal culture Jesus breaks at least six strict cultural rules:

1. Jesus speaks to the woman. In civilized society, Jewish men did not speak to women. Remember the story in John 4 where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. She was shocked because a Jew would speak to a Samaritan. But when the disciples returned, the Scripture records, "They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman…" In speaking to her, Jesus defies the male restraints on women's freedom.

2. He calls her to the center of the synagogue. By placing her in the geographic middle of the synagogue, he is proclaiming her right to access. The men thought they had a male monopoly on access to knowledge about God, but Jesus brings a woman to the center of God's place.

3. He touches her. In doing so, he revokes the holiness code. That is the code which protected men from a woman's uncleanness. Jesus men prayed every day, "O God, I thank thee that I am not a woman." Our Disciple Bible Study group has just finished Proverbs, where we find that women are responsible for seducing young men. But Jesus was not afraid to touch this woman in need.

4. He calls her "daughter of Abraham." This is a term not found in any of the prior Jewish literature. This is revolutionary because it was believed that women were saved through their men. To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God.

5. He heals on the Sabbath. In doing this he demonstrates God's compassion for people over ceremony, and reclaims the Sabbath for the celebration of God's liberal goodness.

6. Lastly, he says God did not cause the illness. He challenges the ancient belief that her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. He asserts that she is ill, not because God willed it, but because there is evil in the world. (In other words, bad things happen to good people.) And Jesus did all this in a few seconds.

(Quoted in Suzanne Luper's sermon, Can Jesus Be Redeemed?, September 17, 2000, North Raleigh United Church, http://www.northraleighunited.org/Sermons/CanJesusBeRedeemed.htm

The breaking of these six cultural rules did not go unnoticed by the Jewish leaders:

14) But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day."

The leader of the synagogue was shocked by Jesus' behavior. He did not find a healing service listed in the order of worship that Sabbath, and he didn't like the change.

He was like the usher in a church where a man under the influence staggered into the service and sat on the front row. As the preacher started his sermon, the gentleman shouted "Amen" or "Praise the Lord" or "Hallelujah" after almost every sentence. The entire congregation was becoming agitated about this unusual behavior so the usher made his way to the front to escort the gentleman out. When the usher informed him that he was making too much noise, he replied, "Well, brother, I've just got the Holy Spirit!" To which the usher replied, "Well, you didn't get it here so you gotta leave!"

By the power of God, Jesus healed the bent woman and the synagogue leader's response was, "Well, you didn't get the power of God here! Not on the Sabbath!"

15) But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?

Jesus reacted with strong language because the leader of the synagogue just didn't get it. Jesus rightly points out that his rules allowed him to treat animals better than people. I wonder sometimes if our contemporary "rules" don't treat animals better than people.

16) And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?"

The Jewish leader pictured religion as revolving around the rule-maker, the rule-breakers and the rule-keepers. God was the rule-maker, sinners are rule-breakers, and the upright are rule-keepers. Being "religious" was about obeying the commandments. For him, God's rules had become ends in themselves. The rules were first, the needs of people were unimportant. It's a view that is still with us today.

He had no concept of Jesus' radical understanding of the nature of God. Jesus saw God's will as focused on people, not on so many rules. The rules are there to help people, not to break them. In Mark 2:27 Jesus says, "The Sabbath was made for people; not people for the Sabbath."

While this model is well-represented in much of the Bible, Jesus presents a profoundly different view of God, sin, and righteousness. And 2,000 years later we still can't get rule-breaking out of our heads.

For Jesus, God's chief concern was not about being obeyed, but about loving and caring for people. God was not a rule-maker but a life-giver. When we understand Jesus' view of God, suddenly the focus moves from God's commands to God's love for people and the world. Commandments, rules, guidelines, traditions, laws, scriptures are subordinate to God's love.

And that's where the Gospel is good news for all of us, for we are bent people too. Life sometimes has a way of beating you down, zapping your enthusiasm, crushing your plans. Little by little we find ourselves bent over from the failures, disappointments, and guilt. We are like the bent woman lurking at the edges of the sanctuary wondering where we can go.

Jesus comes with good news for bent and broken people like us. This is the place where we can find healing.

Back in the seventies, Ken Medema wrote a wonderful song that expresses just this kind of sentiment:

If this is not a place, where tears are understood, where can I go to cry?

And if this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I go to fly?

If this is not a place where my questions can be asked, where shall I go to seek?

And if this is not a place where my heart cries can be heard, where shall I go to speak?

If this is not a place where tears are understood, where shall I go, where shall I go, to fly?"

(If This is Not a Place by Ken Medema, 1977, quoted by Robert E. Albritton, Millbrook Baptist Church, Raleigh, North Carolina, http://www.millbrook-baptist.org/2K0702.htm)

Jesus' actions in our text today say to one and all, "This is the place! This is the place where bent and broken people can be made straight again! This is the place!"