Luke 13:10-17
In today’s gospel the synagogue leader insists that honoring the law of sabbath-keeping is more important than caring for a hurting person in their midst, that healing and an end to long suffering can wait one more day.
And then Jesus addresses not only the leader but the whole crowd who had been listening to his teaching, calling them all hypocrites and showing them how they routinely extend more mercy to their livestock than they are offering to the woman he has healed.
It’s the second time in recent weeks, that Jesus calls the people around him “hypocrites.” And his rebuke stings whenever I hear it.
Imagine being in the audience and feeling the heat rise on your faces as Jesus speaks and you are caught in a completely human moment of wanting to do the “right” thing, the lawful thing, the God-fearing thing, and completely missing the God-loving thing.
Now imagine being the woman at the center of the gospel story. Luke doesn’t tell us a lot about her; she’s introduced as “a woman who was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.” (v. 11)
Unlike some of the women who appear in his gospel, we don’t learn her name; we only hear Jesus refer to her as a daughter of Abraham.
We don’t know her age either; I think we often assume she’s an old woman because she is described as being bent over and “crippled for eighteen years” (v. 11) and we imagine someone whose spine has been curved by disease or who suffers from muscle weakness and cannot hold their head up. But it’s possible she was a young woman who suffered since childhood or even infancy.
Without any other description, we have to imagine her appearance. When you are bent over in pain or doubled over by illness, you cannot breathe deeply or stretch your cramped muscles. When you can’t stand up straight, you cannot look another person in the eye or gaze up at a bright blue sky or starry night; your view of the world is limited to what you can see from your waist or abdomen.
She appears at the synagogue when Jesus is teaching, but we don’t know if she was a regular worshiper or if her appearance is rare – maybe she only came that day because she had heard about the miracles that Jesus had done. I think we assume she wouldn’t have been at synagogue frequently because of the stigma one carried when it was believed they were afflicted by an evil spirit; the Jewish laws about ritual cleanliness likely would have forced her into isolation.
But Luke doesn’t say her appearance unsettled the people in the synagogue. Perhaps she had become such a familiar sight that she had faded into the background of the community’s life, becoming invisible to the people around her.
But Jesus, Jesus sees her, he calls her and he heals her.
As much as Jesus’ rebuke stings, I don’t think it was mean-spirited name calling and I don’t think he was wrong. Jesus was calling the people
to live into the whole fullness of their lives with God,
to be vulnerable before God and others, and
to experience God’s healing.
In modern life, hypocrites are people whose actions contradict their words, but more plainly, the Greek word means “performers” or “mask wearers”.
Jesus called the people out because they were wearing masks, pretending to understand and follow the commandments or the Torah, but forgetting his teaching that the greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)
Like the people in the crowd that day, many of us wear masks out in the world. We put on the mask of a faithful worshiper but struggle beyond those red doors in our daily lives. We pick and choose which scenes of our lives we will share, like actors on a set.
The woman in the gospel couldn’t hide her affliction. Stigma exists around many modern illnesses including depression, anxiety and addiction. Often discussions about money remain taboo as well and financial stress is hidden. We are quick to answer, “How are you?” with only the most cheerful highlights and hide our burdens from the people in our lives.
The Good News is that God sees us and loves us as we are, without any masks – nothing in our lives is hidden or concealed from God – and God promises healing and restoration.
So, what keeps you bent over?
What weight or burden do you carry?
Is it visible to others, or do you keep it hidden from view?
Luke tells us that Jesus heals the woman, and, “she stood up straight and began praising God.”(v. 13)
As we imagine being the woman in this story, I wonder too what her praise looked and sounded like. It wasn’t muted thanks, whispered softly. Was it shouted hallelujahs, singing or dancing?
We also don’t know what she did when she left the synagogue. Was she like the Gerasene man who went about the city proclaiming what God had done for him. (Luke 8) Or the Samaritan woman at the well who told everyone that Jesus had known everything about her. (John 4)
There’s so much we don’t know about this woman and her story, but she shows us that we are invited into life with God, with each other and with the world and God is active in our lives, seeing us and all that we carry, and helping us live our lives fully. Whatever afflicts us, whatever weighs us down, we are invited to claim our freedom and release and celebrate the grace and peace that God gives us.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
We give you thanks for the presence of Your Son Jesus who sees us and knows us by name.
Relieve our burdens and take away our masks that we may live fully as Your beloved children,
transformed by your grace in our lives.
Help us see the people around us who are vulnerable and give us compassion to love them.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
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