Luke 13:10-17 Now he was
teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared
a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent
over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 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. 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.” 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?
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?” When he said
this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing
at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
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Years ago I was drinking coffee with my friend Deborah and we
came up with a youth ministry idea that we thought would be great. It would use music as the means of gathering
kids together, targeted at the many kids we knew who played in a band, or
wished they played in a band. Neither of
us was a musician but we just wanted to give them a safe place to gather and
the freedom to play and learn from each other.
And we put the proposal out to the church where Deborah worked and I
worshiped, just to see if we would get a reaction. We got a reaction. The church music director sent out emails letting us all know how
upset she was that we had done this without ever consulting her. She was, after all, the church music
director; this was her domain. She
believed that what we had done was completely out of order.
A meeting was called, Deborah and I apologized profusely. The music director wanted to handle the new
program, she had several ideas about how it should be run. We said, please do, we want to do things the
right way, in an orderly fashion. We
never meant to break the rules. We would
be grateful if you would take this on.
And that was the last we ever heard of it. Nothing. Ever. Happened. But at least we can say that nothing was done
out of order, right?
“There are six days on which this type of work can be done,”
said the leader of the synagogue. There
are six right ways to do this, and some people insist on choosing the wrong
one.
The leader of the synagogue directs his disapproval to the
crowds, in case any of them came expecting Jesus to heal them on this day when
healing is, evidently, prohibited.
There are a lot of things we don’t know about this
incident. We don’t know if this bent
over woman was a regular at the synagogue – if she came every day or if she
just happened to come this day. We don’t
know if there was a crowd of people who were there specifically for the intent
of asking Jesus to touch them and heal them of their sickness and
brokenness. We don’t know what town they
are in or how long Jesus and his disciples have been there. All we know is they are in a synagogue, it is
the Sabbath, and there is a woman there in need of healing.
They are in God’s house, there is a clear need, and there is the
ability to help. What is to stop him
from this act of mercy? The rules.
Now, we had some discussion at the roundtable this week about
the laws of Israel. The basis of this
rule is the 4th commandment, remember the Sabbath day and keep it
holy. But the interpretation of the
commandment was built on layer upon layer of secondary law, spelling out every
one of the possible activities that might be classified as work and therefore
prohibited on the Sabbath.
To be fair, it is important to realize that this was not a life
or death emergency. This woman had borne
her affliction for 18 years; she would still have the affliction the day after
the Sabbath and she could be healed then.
If she had tolerated this for 18 years she could certainly tolerate it
one day longer. Why not just honor the
rules and wait one more day? This may be
the reasonable question to ask.
The gospel tells us that she was afflicted with an evil spirit
that kept her bent over. What could that
possibly mean? It might have been
arthritis; someone who suffers from arthritis might agree that the term “evil
spirit” is a fair description of it. Her
affliction might have been osteoporosis; it might have been the result of a bad
accident years ago that never healed properly.
It could have been many things.
But no matter what the precise diagnosis, one things we can be sure
about: she was suffering, and had been suffering for 18 long years.
There are times, we all agreed at the roundtable this week, when
we stop seeing the suffering around us because it has been there for so long. There are times we become so used to someone
else’s suffering that it begins to seem normal.
Sometimes a need is so chronic, so long-lasting, that we stop
seeing it. The need, itself, becomes
normal.
It might be that this bent-over woman had been seen in and around
the synagogue for so long, she was an institution! And if not her, others like her, because
there is no shortage of suffering people in the world. Maybe the sight of her bent over body was a
part of the landscape everyone expected to see, with never a thought to how it
felt for her to be a bent over institution.
We can grow accustomed to a lot of things that aren’t good for
us. For example, we can grow accustomed to
the youth being alienated from the life of the church, so that the rules become
more important than finding a new way of inviting them in.
I feel compelled to say now that I am not a rule-breaker. I actually like rules. It’s just that I am concerned that we
sometimes use them to put up a barrier between ourselves and the needs
surrounding us, because the need is intractable and it overwhelms us.
This past week there was a photograph of a child in Aleppo that
shook us up like very few photos do.
Omran is a five-year-old boy who was dug out of the rubble of a bombed
building. He was covered in dust and
blood. Physically, he appeared to be
fine. But watching him sit in this
ambulance seat looking toward the camera with a thousand yard stare was unnerving. It showed us the real effects of this war in
Syria. The photographer said he was
surprised about the reaction to this picture.
Because he takes photos like this one every single day.
Every single day.
We can’t react to every single photo of every single
shell-shocked or dying child every single day.
The sheer magnitude of the need would overwhelm us.
Suffering has a way of doing that to us. We simply stop seeing it. And when the suffering stand before us
saying, “can I get some help,” we might avert our eyes and reply, “well, I’ll
have to check the rules first.”
You see, on his own, the leader of the synagogue couldn’t have
done anything to relieve the suffering of the bent over woman, nor could any one
of the other regulars at the synagogue.
But the point is this: they were at the synagogue. They were in the house of God, in the
presence of God – where suffering goes to be relieved, where brokenness goes to
be healed, where need goes to be met.
That is exactly what Jesus was demonstrating when he touched
this woman and healed her, when he spoke to her and relieved her lonely
suffering. And although Jesus’ opponents
were put to shame, the entire crowd rejoiced.
Why would they not rejoice? For
this is the good news we all are waiting for.
We all, every one of us, need some help.
And we all, every one of us, can offer it with the help of God.
We don’t have to put up obstacles to doing the right thing.
I was reminded this week of a story I read several years ago[1]. Sometime in the 1980’s a woman was walking
down a street in Manhattan heading to an appointment. She misread the address she was looking for
and accidently walked in the wrong door, and she found herself looking at a
mass of people, children and adults, knocking on a door, begging for something
to eat or drink. She estimated there
were about 75 families in there. The place
stank.
This woman immediately made three phone calls. First she called the Red Cross disaster
relief; second, she called to the mayor’s office to request an emergency food
delivery; and third, she called the New York Times to get a photographer out
there. Then she did one more thing: she
went to the nearest market and bought bread and peanut butter and orange juice,
and she went back to feed them.
When we see suffering, we are hearing someone ask, “Can I get
some help?” The gospel shows us that
Jesus will provide the help needed. And
the expectation is that we will provide the help, too, as followers of Jesus.
And before we say, “Ah, Lord God, I can’t. For I am too young or too old or too small or
too poor, too powerless or too busy” let us remember how God equips those whom
God appoints and anoints. As God
equipped Jeremiah, as Jesus equipped his disciples, so are we.
We all need some help.
Let us open our eyes and see one another in truth. Let us respond to the need that we see there,
with the help of God.
[1] From
God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith Are Changing the World, by Katherine
Rhodes Henderson.
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