We know that we get bent over. Weighed down by illness, aches, and pains. Troubled by worry, stress, grief, emotional challenges, family baggage, economic struggles. Overwhelmed by wars and rumors of wars. Despairing because of the climate crisis. Wavering in hope because progress toward the equity, justice, and beloved community we labor for seems endangered. We can empathize with the woman of today’s scripture.
We don’t know the exact nature of her bent-overness. We do know that she carries a condition that causes pain, distress, suffering, weakness. That bends her back over. For eighteen years she has been unable to look upward or very far forward without pain. She must look simply downward; her field of vision is limited.
The same thing can happen to each of us, metaphorically speaking. The burdens we carry preoccupy us and limit how we see. As for me, I’m pretty sure that after eighteen years of being bent over I would be deeply depressed, not often in the mood for human company.
So it astonishes me that this woman shows up at the synagogue at all. Maybe she even shows up on a regular basis. She felt the need to be among other people, to join with the rest of her community, to overcome her distress and self-consciousness and gather with others. She clearly possessed something in addition to a spirit of pain and suffering. As do we all.
She did not ask for healing; Jesus notices her, speaks to her. He declares that she is set free and lays hands upon her. For the first time in almost two decades, she stands up straight. Then the enforcers of rules and laws and norms object to the healing; it doesn’t fit into their framework. But Jesus shames and silences them as hypocrites.
That’s one clear point from this scripture: the Divine’s intention for healing challenges institutions and their power. It might even undermine them. What would happen, after all, if all the bent over, burdened, suffering and oppressed people in the world suddenly stood up straight, released from whatever troubles them, as Jesus declares? The world as it exists would be turned upside down. This release, this pursuit of genuine healing for all rather than a focus upon individual cure, is one place where Jesus’ proclamation of liberation meets the work of healing. In building God’s reign care and healing (not necessarily cure) are available to all, without condition.
For that to happen, we all need, first, to see those among us who are “bent over.” And to be willing to show our own burdened and weighed down conditions to others. Healing requires vulnerability. The willingness to see others’ pain and trouble, as Jesus did. The capacity to reveal our own, as the woman did. Seeking genuine Spirit-led healing and seeking to be an agent of healing will always move us beyond our comfort zones. We must see in love and reveal ourselves in trust. That can be extraordinarily risky.
And then, we must touch each other. Come into direct contact with one another.
Health and healing and wholeness do not occur in a vacuum. Scripture tells us that. The spiritual wisdom of countless traditions tells us that. And today, in this service we acknowledge that. In the service of anointing, we make ourselves vulnerable and acknowledge burdens and needs. Others need not know the specifics of that, just as we don’t know specifics of the bent over woman. But she showed up, as we show up. We show up, trusting that the Holy One can move in our lives in ways we don’t understand. We show up, opening ourselves to the presence of the One who touches us each in different ways and intends that we be whole, each of us in different ways.
Scripture: Luke 13:10-17
-Rev. Ruth Moerdyk