Bent Out of Shape
Luke 13:10-17
August 22, 2010
Jesus is back teaching in the synagogue, a natural place for him. Every once in a while someone calls him Rabbi or Teacher, so it’s not hard to see that teaching is his principal activity. Now we know he teaches outside a lot and occasionally in homes and in public settings, even in boats on a lake, but whenever he teaches in the synagogue, it’s always on the Sabbath. That is, his teaching is part of the worship of the Jewish community, and there’s an exceedingly fine line between teaching and preaching, especially when you are in a worshiping situation.
Usually we do not know what Jesus is teaching. The Gospel writer Luke figures we have heard or will hear it elsewhere in the Gospel. What is reported is the other stuff that happens while he is teaching. Those of you who are or have been teachers know this all too well. You are always engaged in the act of teaching, but nobody remembers the content of your teaching, least of all you, but everybody remembers when something non-teaching happened. Teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath always seemed to get Jesus in trouble.
He was teaching in “one of the synagogues,” so we do not know which one, but that definitely means that Jesus was a guest, and being a guest is typically a touchy, dangerous circumstance. You are not where you belong, and that gives you eyes to see things and people few others see anymore.
Jesus saw her standing there, if that’s the word for it. Everybody had forgotten to see her anymore, but somebody knew her story. How else would they know that she had had this condition for 18 years? Somebody had to be around at the beginning to know when to start counting. They kept her number in mind, but not her mind or her soul. Some translations put it that she had a “spirit of weakness,” implying her problem was a matter of spiritual failure. She had sinned greatly in some fashion and it twisted her all up, literally. She was bent over double and could not stand up straight. No one knew about osteoporosis back then, but they didn’t need to, because she was unlike the rest of us, a sinner and paying for it.
And Jesus saw her standing there. He called to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” As in many of Jesus’ healings, all he did was tell the person that he or she was healed, wake up to the fact that you are no longer afflicted. And in part that’s what happens here, but then he places his hands upon her and immediately she was made straight, she was standing tall, and she praised God. Chicken or the egg, did Jesus heal her by his touch or by his word? I think Luke is teasing us.
There’s another game going on. Jesus is a guest teacher in this synagogue, but he is not alone at the front of the sanctuary. The president of the synagogue, the pastor of the congregation, is there and he is affronted by what happens. To put it into our terms, this is his church and this is the Sabbath, his day. Jesus has taken charge and the president is not pleased. Somebody gave me that cartoon a while back with the preacher leaning over the pulpit to his congregation, “God works in mysterious ways, except on Sundays when I’m in charge.”
The president knew this woman, of course, and he was counting her years of being bent out of shape. That all Jesus had to do was speak an audacious word to her and she would stand up tall had to be wrong. At the very least it was work and there’s no work on this day, my day. The president does not speak directly to Jesus at all, instead he addressed the congregation that there are plenty of days to be healed, but not on this one sacred day. He had ignored the woman for 18 years, even now with her in his presence - you should not have been healed today. He pointedly ignores the presence of Jesus - you should not have healed today!
In colonial times there was a commonly held theory that a child is born on the day it was conceived. If a child were born on a Sunday, it meant the couple had been engaged in an activity that violated the holiness of that Sabbath Day and they certainly were not pious citizens. But when Jonathan Edwards, the pastor of the First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, undoubtedly the holiest person in the region, and his wife Sarah gave birth to one of their children on a Sunday, it was amazing how quickly that popular theory became unpopular.
Jesus is still present, and while the president is affronted, Jesus is appalled. It seems that the Sabbath is when everybody confronts him and charges him with undermining Judaism and God. Don’t they understand the Sabbath? He points out the law that had been created to allow people to water their animals on the Sabbath, so that such a necessary chore is not considered “work.” I know some people treat their pets better than their relatives, but Jesus thinks human beings are deserving of living water too.
He turns to the standing tall woman, no longer bent out of shape, and while he does not call her by name, he gives her a title: Daughter of Abraham. Pretty close to a royal title. This is where that identification of her affliction as a spirit of weakness is made clear, for he acknowledges that she had been bound by Satan for 18 years. Isn’t it absolutely appropriate that this woman, suffering from evil all those years, would be liberated and straightened up on this holiest of days of the week? It’s not just that it would be better to perform the work of healing on any day but the Sabbath, but that the best day to rid someone of evil’s clutches is the Sabbath, for holiness always defeats evil.
The president and all his cronies were put to shame because of the obvious fact that they, the keepers of the Sabbath, really didn’t understand the nature of the day they were keeping. They did not know what it meant to be holy in the presence of God. Everybody else in the congregation that day was glad to know that on God’s holy day, holy things are allowed to happen.
To try to boil this short story down to a single point is to miss the point. Already, I am pretty sure, your minds are grappling with more than one idea, and that’s the best state to be in. How do you treat and name those who are afflicted with physical or social problems? Do you think that religion is all about rules of what people believe is right and wrong, or essentially trying to imitate God’s redemption of each of us? You and I who are bent out of shape by whatever forces out there are hell-bent to mess you up, do we need a touch or a word? Do we need the right kind of physical healing or an affirmation of how tall we are meant to stand? As with so many Biblical characters, we never hear again about this woman bent out of shape for 18 years. But she did leave the synagogue on that holy Sabbath day walking tall.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan