Bent
Luke 13:10-17
August 21, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: Image is Jesus and the Bent Over Woman by Barbara Schwarz OP. Used with her kind permission
Artafiregallery.homestead.com.
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/VOHWq0czGLM
If this were a group Bible study, I would ask us to divide into two groups – Group A and Group B. For the next fifteen minutes, Group A would walk around the room as if they are the bent-over woman. Group B would walk around as themselves. The two groups would be free to meet and talk with each other, but Group A would have to stay in character. After fifteen minutes, we would sit down and talk about the experience.
We’re not going to take the time to do that, but I’ll tell you how it usually turns out. What often happens is that members of Group A, the ones who were bent over, complain that they couldn’t see very much of what was happening in the room; that they couldn’t make eye contact with anyone; and that they weren’t always sure whether someone was talking to them or to someone else. And they say that their back hurts. Group B folks usually say that it was hard to have a conversation with Group A members because it was hard to make eye contact. Every once in a while, someone will have tried to make eye contact, by sitting on the floor or bending alongside the person. That doesn’t occur to everyone, and even when it does, it feels awkward, so some people don’t even try it.
The woman in Luke’s story has been bent over for a lot longer than 15 minutes. For at least 18 years, she has lived like this. Is she bent over from a back injury or from a chronic disease? Did it happen all at once, or by degrees? Is it something with a physical cause? Maybe it is a psychological burden – she’s carrying the weight of the world. Or maybe she is bowed down by something real but invisible, like poverty or depression or misogyny. Whatever the answers to those questions might be, we should notice that she is not the only one who is bent in this story.
When the leader of the synagogue realizes what is going on, he becomes indignant – we might say that he is bent out of shape. In the gospel stories, it is always tempting to make fun of Jesus’ opponents, his detractors. But when we do that, it becomes much easier to miss the part of the story that might hit closest to home. So, for the moment, let’s give the synagogue leader the benefit of the doubt. Let’s treat him with the respect that we would give to a longtime Emmanuel member, maybe a trustee or moderator or a pastor. He’s not a bad guy. He’s trying to do the right thing, to maintain order in a worship service, and to keep his church together.
Do you remember the book Gulliver’s Travels? In one chapter, there was a shipwreck and Gulliver washed ashore on an island inhabited by the Lilliputians –They’re people about 6 inches tall. I think they’re related to Little Man. They thought Gulliver was a cruel and mean giant. So one moonlit night when Gulliver was asleep on a hill, legions of Lilliputians crept up and very quietly tied strings around each of his fingers. Hundreds of strings to each of his fingers and also to his wrists, elbows and arms. They put strings and threads around his chest, around his knees, and around his toes. Every hair on his head had a string. The Lilliputians tied Gulliver firmly down, and when Gulliver awoke the next morning, he couldn’t move.
I think that the synagogue leader has been immobilized by the strings of thousands of rules and responsibilities. He is trying so hard to get it right, to be pleasing to God, and yet, on this occasion, he misses it. He’s so focused on his Sunday morning to-do list that he became oblivious to the needs of a person standing right in front of me. I’ve been there; maybe you have too – with my head in the bulletin, bent 180 degrees from the meaningful worship of a God whose love is always healing, redeeming, and liberating.
This woman and this man lived in a world that bent them. It’s the same world we live in. It’s a world where the demonic still has power, the same power that the demonic has always had, the power to corrupt and pervert, to twist that which is good. And so, many of us may feel bound, bent over by strain and worry, by the pain of recent losses, by the accumulated weight of life’s hurt and sorrow.
Remember that Bible study exercise I mentioned? Remember how the bent-over folks complained that they could only see the floor and not much else of the room? That’s what happens when we are bent over emotionally and spiritually. Our view becomes very limited. We start to focus on ourselves, on our narrow view. We find it hard to make eye contact, to reach out to others, to give or to receive help. As this pattern goes on, we get more and more stuck. We live only in the now. We cannot imagine a future that is different, a future in which we can stand straight and tall.
I’ve had conversations recently with a number of people who seem stuck. Some were folks I encountered on my various trips and some are here in our community.
Some are bent over from the pandemic. The pattern of daily life has become so limited. There is a longing for fullness and meaning and connection, but no one seems to know what normal or how to find it again. Some are bent by fear – fear for our way of life, for the possible end of our democracy, for the continued well-being and existence of the planet. Others are bent with responsibility – trying to maintain jobs, relationships, and faith in a time that requires us to keep track of an ever-changing rule book and to adapt faster than we know how.
At another time, in a different sermon, I might have asked us to consider what bends this woman over. I might have asked us to put ourselves into the story as people in that worshipping community and wondered what we could have done to be part of her healing.
But today, I invite us to consider ourselves as the bent over woman or the synagogue leader. What is weighing us down? It might be something physical, a pain or illness, that saps our energy. Maybe it is anxiety or depression. Maybe it is guilt or anger or grief. Or profound disappointment. Or on-going weariness. What is weighing you down, bending you over?
This is a place where we seek to be honest about our lives, about what bends us over and what helps us stand straight, a place where we seek to share each other’s burdens and offer encouragement.
Courage is the thing that strikes me most about this story. First, the woman’s courage. As diminished in body and spirit as she is, she has not curled up to die. She is still engaged with life enough to show up week after week in church. When Jesus calls her, she goes to him. And when liberation finally comes, she grabs it with gusto. She stands up straight and loudly praises God. She has the courage to believe that her future can be different from her present.
Then there’s the courage of Jesus, the human being. At this point in his life, he’s just the leader of a rag-tag group of followers, a person often on the wrong side of the law, the church and the status quo. He was challenging, reinterpreting, reforming the rules of a culture that was at least 3000 years old. That’s the weight of a lot of tradition. The kind of weight that has inertia. The kind of weight that can cripple and bend you over and put you on the cross. Jesus has already begun his final journey to Jerusalem, but all along the way, he continues to live courageously and compassionately.
You and I are heirs to a Christian tradition that is 2000 years old. It’s a rich tradition with truth and power and love, but it also carries the kind of weight that can bring us down and bend us over. When that happens, sometimes all we can think to do is to repeat what we know, what we’ve always done.
As we hear the story of this woman’s liberation, we might consider the rules that we’ve always played by: church rules, social rules, family rules, the obligations, the responsibilities, the things we think we have to keep doing. But what if Jesus is here in our midst? What if we imagine Jesus calling each of us to him. How would he encourage you or me? He released the woman. He liberated her from what bound her. If you stood in front of Jesus today, from what burden would you seek release? Can you name that to yourself and to God?
The woman had been bent for 18 years. She had probably been praying for release all that time. I wouldn’t blame her if she had given up. But she didn’t. She kept showing up and she was there when her liberation came. May it be so for you and for me.
The story ends with this sentence: “The entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things he was doing.” The crowd got it. They understood what was going on. They knew exactly. Ordinary people, living their lives, doing the best they could, like you and me, taking care of business, working hard, caring for their families, trying to make the best of every day, and once a week gathering to be reminded of what it’s all about, that there is a purpose to all of this, that each small life matters, that human life all of it matters, all of it is precious to a God who loves passionately and whose love simply will not be confined, restricted, but will finally find and embrace each one of us.
Thanks be to God.