In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
We
all know that there are two kinds of stories. There are stories, and then there
are stories that are more than stories. Stories such as me telling you about
what I did on vacation are simply stories – there is no larger point to them.
They might be informative, they might be entertaining, they might remind you of
a similar experience, but they’re just a series of details. But there is a
second kind of story, you might call it a fable, a myth, a legend, a parable.
In these sort of stories, the details are just the skeleton that holds up the
larger point or moral. Some stories are more than just a series of facts, but
they are symbols which carry a meaning larger than themselves. The Bible is
full of these second kind of stories, and today’s Gospel text is a story that
is much more than just a story.
This
healing story is unique to Luke’s gospel, and comes at a critical point in the narrative.
In these middle chapters of Luke, Jesus is on a journey towards the city of
Jerusalem; we all know why Jesus is moving towards Jerusalem and what will
happen there – he will be glorified and crucified in the Holy City. It’s not
just that Luke, when he wrote this gospel, remembered that there was some
incident about Jesus healing a woman while he was on this journey, but rather
that there was something really important about this story. It’s important to
remember that the gospel doesn’t give us a detailed itinerary of what Jesus did
every day. We don’t have a record of every conversation or every event, so
those that we do have recorded in Scripture are there for a reason. And to be
honest, as far as healing stories go, this one really isn’t as grand or
memorable as some of the others. But it is because this story is about more
than the details that it is was important enough for Luke to record and
important enough for us to consider today.
There
are three aspects of this story that we’ll explore this morning which are more
than simple details, but revelations into the very nature of God. The first is
that the text notes that “When Jesus saw her, he called her over.” It could be
easy to overlook this, but Jesus sees her. Luke tells us that this woman was
bent over and was unable to stand up straight, and she had been in this
condition for eighteen years. In that worldview, physical ailments were often
signs of a spiritual ailment, of some sin or transgression that the person had
committed. Furthermore, her physical condition would have very likely impacted
her social and economic situation, so she was likely very often poor and
ignored.
But Jesus saw her. This
whole story hinges on the fact that Jesus noticed someone who often went
unnoticed. It is a reminder to us that God sees us. When you are weak, when you
are depressed, when you feel alone, when you are in pain, when you think no one
in the world sees you or knows what you are going through, this story that is
more than a story shows us that God sees us. If you’ve ever been to an event
where you don’t know a single person and are lost and some kind soul makes eye
contact with you and speaks with you it can be quite a saving event. That is
how God is. The first way that Jesus heals and saves this woman is by noticing
her. Know that God sees you.
And when Jesus sees this
woman, notice that he takes all of the initiative. Her healing happened because
Jesus saw her and had pity on her. She didn’t call him over, she wasn’t a VIP
that people sought out, and as far as we know she wasn’t seeking Jesus out to
be healed by him. The action all comes from God. So often we convince ourselves
that we aren’t worthy of God’s love, of God’s healing, of God’s favor. We tell
ourselves that we haven’t done enough, that we haven’t prayed enough, that we
haven’t held our temper enough, that we aren’t kind enough, that we haven’t
accomplished anything that will ensure that future generations remember our
name. We diminish ourselves by saying “I’m just a salesperson, I’m just a
teacher, I’m just a priest, I’m not going to change the world.” That word
“just” should never be uttered by someone who is loved by God. You are not “just”
anything, you are fully loved by God, and there’s no “just” about it.
Though our world may be,
God’s kingdom is not a meritocracy. You don’t earn your seat at God’s table by
means of work, worth, or wealth. Jesus reaches out to this woman not in
response to her actions, but because of God’s love for her. In the same way,
know that God has already offered to you God’s love and salvation, you don’t
have to earn it.
So by knowing the power
of noticing someone and the salvation that simply being seen can bring, I
wonder who it is that we might offer the dignity of our attention? None of us
are Jesus, none of us will be able to miraculously tell someone who is ill to
get better, but all of us can notice those who go unnoticed and restore some of
their God-given dignity. Is it the person who cleans your home or office, the
person who cooks meals for your child at school, the person who cares for your
aging parents, the person who sleeps on a bench downtown, the new kid at
school? You can share the love of God by simply paying attention to those who
are often ignored.
The second aspect of this
story that is more than a story is the type of healing that Jesus does. It’s
not a simple coincidence that this woman is bent-over. What does it mean to be
bent-over? What does it mean to not be able to stand-up? Even in our language
today, we can see the way that this story functions as a metaphor. An
up-standing citizen is an involved one. When you seek justice and dignity, you
stand up for what is right. When you are accepted as part of the group, you are
known as a member in “good standing.” When someone is not in a good frame of
mind, we ask “why are you so bent out of shape?” When someone is corrupt, we
say they are crooked. This woman is more than a woman, she is a symbol for us.
Our
culture contorts us. Jesus famously said that “You cannot serve God and
wealth,” but our economic system is set up in such a way that we have to choose
between being complicit in a system that is broken or divesting from nearly
every aspect of our community. I don’t think I need to say much about our
political system these days, but while our faith demands the best in us, our
politics play to the lowest common denominator. So much of our society has
become binary and competitive, making our Christian vocation to live in peace
nearly impossible.
Genesis tells us that
when God created humanity, that we were made in the of God. But what we reflect
back to the world is more of fun-house mirror type of image than the one we
were created in. Sins of greed, of self-righteousness, of fear make us
malformed. When we attempt to fit into the mold that society gives us for what
success looks like, we have to contort our lives out of the image of God and
into the images of cultural idols. You can watch television or read the letters
to the editor in the newspaper and see this – it has become fashionable to
insult the intelligence of those you disagree with, yelling has become normal
discourse, showing deference to others has become a sign of weakness. So in
order to “fit in,” we twist ourselves into ungodly stances. We do and say
things that make us bent-over, with the result that we are unable or unwilling
to look other people in the face.
Just as Jesus heals this
bent-over woman, Jesus seeks to heal us. Notice, though, how Jesus heals the
woman: he liberates her. He doesn’t say “Stand up straight,” he doesn’t say
“Your spine is now properly aligned,” and he doesn’t say “I have restored you
to health,” but he says “You are set free.” Jesus unties her from the things
that here binding her. So what is it that we need to be loosened from? Our fear
that there isn’t enough, meaning that we see scarcity and not abundance?
Even our faith can bind
us. One historian has said “Tradition is the living faith of the dead;
traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” As wonderful as our faith and
tradition is, the Church is very fertile soil for traditionalism to grow.
Sometimes our insistence in keeping things “the way we’ve always done it,” can
make us bent-over, unable to see God’s grace that is standing right in front of
us. Whatever it is that binds us from investing fully in the Gospel, Jesus
comes to unbind us from it. But we have to be willing to stand up straight instead
of looking down at our feet, even if we’ve been doing it that way for the last
eighteen years.
The final aspect of this
story that is more than a story is the discussion that Jesus has about the
Sabbath with the leader of the synagogue, and it’s a great example of the ways
in which religion can get in the way of seeing God’s grace in front of us. He
says “It is necessary to not do work on the Sabbath day.” Jesus responds by
using the exact same word in Greek, saying “It is necessary that God heal this
woman.” They both use that word “ought,” which also means “what is necessary,”
but they approach it from different places. The leader wants to use the idea of
duty and what we ought to do in order to restrict God’s healing and salvation;
Jesus uses that word to say “God can’t not heal, as that is who God is.”
The leader saw the
Sabbath as set of obligations, something that had to be served. But Jesus
retorts that the Sabbath is intended to serve us. Many people assume that the
Sabbath is about a day to worship God, but that’s not the point. Every day is
the proper day to worship God, we don’t need a special day for that. As it is
recorded in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath commandment says “But the seventh day is a
Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work- you, or your son or
your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any
of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and
female slave may rest as well as you.” The Sabbath is about community. It’s a
day of radical equality where everyone can rest and take part in God’s joy and
salvation. On the Sabbath, slave and free, human and animal, adult and child,
male and female are all given freedom to be a part of the community.
The fact that Jesus heals
this woman on a Sabbath is symbolic because it shows that God’s desire is for
all people to be a part of the community of faith. It’s not just that this
healing happened on a Sabbath, but that the Sabbath day is the perfect day to
restore someone to the community, because the Sabbath itself is a symbol of
community and equality. While God may ultimately and fully redeem all of
Creation on the Last Day, God’s salvation is present and accessible today, just
as it was immediately available to that bent-over woman; she didn’t have to
wait until the next business day. The Sabbath saves us by giving us community.
This story about the
bent-over woman is more than just a story; it is divine revelation. The story
shows us that God sees us, and it invites us to see those who are invisible in
our society. The story shows us that God liberates us from the ways in which
society asks us to contort ourselves to fit in, and it invites us to stand tall
in our faith. The story shows us that God seeks to reconcile all people by the
radical equality of the Sabbath, and it invites us to lay aside our differences
and come together in God’s community. It’s more than a story; it’s a symbol of
God’s love and salvation that is being offered to you.
