Psalm 71:1-6
In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. 2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. 3 Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. 4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel. 5For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth. 6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.
Luke 13:10-17
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 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. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 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.’ 15 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? 16 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?’ 17 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.
The beauty of stories, especially in the Gospels, is that we can easily connect with at least one of the characters. Perhaps you relate to the leaders of the synagogue. You are righteous and indignant and persistent, believing that a faithful Pharisee--a faithful leader--supports and upholds the Torah. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy,” which is mentioned both in the Ten Commandments in Exodus and in Deuteronomy.
And sometimes I think the leaders of the synagogue get a bad rap, because, after all, they're just doing their job. They're just being faithful to the best of their ability. They’re firm that Jesus’ actions and work shouldn't be carried on this day. (Every good Jew knows that!) “There are six other days in a week. Why today, Jesus? Why today? You know the rules…” But…Rule keepers (people who can also be self-righteous, have an inflated sense of importance) can also sometimes ignore the needs of human beings for the sake of their own religiosity. They call others the ‘seemingly unfaithful’, because they themselves are bound by a rugged sense of legalism. Now… we want that when we need an attorney. I get that. But in a synagogue when someone's hurting? Maybe not so much.
Sometimes we think that we’re even better than others when we follow the rules to letter to the law. It's really crazy, but in the Mishnah, which is part of the Jewish code with 613 laws--there are even laws so specific that you can tie some knots with rope, but not others. So to be able to carry out all the rules at the same time is physically impossible. But the subtext, I think, is that the leaders are perhaps digging in because they feel threatened by the power and the compassion of Jesus who’s both gifted at knowing the Torah and the laws while also knowing who's hurting and who needs healing. The law the scholars are driven by blinds them and binds them, so that they're unable to see who is in need.
Joel Green, who is one of my favorite scholars from Fuller Seminary, says that “when Jesus is teaching in a synagogue, it’s never good news for those who want to maintain status quo. They want to help their own personal status”. So the first question that the story begs is not to name others that we know who are just like the scribes and Pharisees, but how are we like the scribes and the Pharisees? Do we catch ourselves trying to maintain status quo or elevate or hold on to our own personal status? What lengths do we go to, to do that? Are we critical of others when they're not in agreement with our rules or alignments, our politics? Don’t we find ourselves sometimes being judgmental of others who interpret things differently than we do? Do we find ourselves sometimes driven by our own agendas, that we are unaware of those who are really hurting and in need of compassion or connection or even justice? The headlines alone, of this past year, have shown us that there are cries for justice in spite of people trying to maintain rules and law, perhaps beyond what is humanly necessary, possible or humane.
On a lighter note, I have a very dear friend whose husband is an orthodox Jew. Well, he's kind of an orthodox Jew. He's an orthodox Jew on the High Holy Days. And when he goes to his synagogue, he's so important in the synagogue that he's up front with the rebbe (rabbi) and the cantor and all the other leaders. And they have to stand there for hours and hours reading through the Torah. And because it's orthodox, where are the women? They’re in the balcony.
So a couple of years ago, in the middle of Yom Kippur, which is the Day of Atonement, they're saying the prayers. They're going through the prayers…. and all of a sudden the rebbe stops and he yells up in the balcony, “Ladies, stop talking and start being faithful.” Who do you think was doing all the talking? The rabbi's wife!
Maybe you don't perceive yourself as someone who is tied and bound of following things to the letter of the law. But maybe… you are bound--deeply bound--by something more troubling. It might be physical; it might be mental. It might be spiritual. Something that's holding you, binding you; something from your past and you don't even realize it, but slowly and surely you're bending over more and more, trying to protect yourself and your heart. I know that happens to me when I'm under a lot of stress. Sometimes when I'm at the supermarket I'll notice someone who has some sort of spinal issue and is quite bent over and I think to myself, I've got to be more mindful of standing up straight. I'm going to stretch my shoulders back, otherwise I'm going to be like that when I'm 60, (which unfortunately is only a few years away!) But something binds all of us. Hopefully, it’s only one thing, but likely it’s not. It’s likely a number of things that burden us and make us bend over more and more to protect our hearts, perhaps not to deal with the shame and the pain. It can be a place of shame from the past, dread of the future, unresolved hurts or loss. But unlike the bent over woman, we haven't yet had the courage to fully come before Jesus and ask for healing and release.
In the NRSV, which is the version we read this morning, the language is a “spirit that had crippled her”. Scholars debate what that spirit was and a lot of them land on the place that she was possessed or had an evil spirit of some sort. Some even call it mental illness. Or maybe even just completely bereft, because of social oppression and isolation as an elderly, single, poor woman. The Greek translation--the original—widens the possibilities. The translation reads, “She had a spirit of weakness.” A spirit of weakness--now we're all included in that. Why? Because we are this woman. We don't want to liken ourselves to her, but we are. We all have places where our spirit is also weak. She's an elderly single woman, bent over and outcast for 18 years. But in spite of that she, had the courage to go to temple, while they were teaching the lessons, where she knew she wasn’t welcome, to present herself to Jesus because she believed He could heal her. And he did.
Notice Jesus doesn't come to her home to visit her. She has the courage to say, As Psalm 71 says, “O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. 2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me”. She trusts that if she is met by Jesus, even in a place where she is not welcome by others, she puts herself in the line of sight of Jesus with her vulnerability and her weakness (obvious to all) in the hopes that Jesus’ healing will come upon her that very day.
There's something that you learn in Seminary that is a very deep level of what they call “exegesis,” which is examining a text. But basically what it is, is a “word study”. You circle or highlight all the words when they repeat or are similar. And we've done this a lot together in Bible studies and on Retreats. And I found my work from a study in Seminary and it blew me away, because when Jesus calls out the scribes and Pharisees and says, “You hypocrites!” Here are all the words He lifts up: Untie. Give water. Bound. Bondage. And set free. Jesus wants us to be unbound. Jesus wants us to be set free, but we have a part in that. We need to show up. We need to name where we're struggling. We need to name where we are powerless over our thing, our past, our worries, our anxieties, our health. Regardless of what the rule-followers say, some people may see us and think that we’re not faithful, but we know we're being faithful. The bent over woman had the desire to be set free and she trusted in the power of Jesus, even more than she trusted that the Pharisees and scribes were going to chase her out of the temple.
Psalm 71 which is not attributed to David but is in entitled “ A plea for help for someone elderly in distress”. It’s a beautiful psalm of an expression of trust as a basis for hope and God's action and activity. Now I know that when we are in deep bind or frustration or anxiety or we can't get out of bed in the morning or we're terrified about what's going to happen, or when we have that event or that thing at the job or that social thing where we don't know anybody, it’s very hard to hold on to trusting in God’s activity. But God is already ahead of us, waiting not only to unbind us and free us, but to meet us and say, “I see you. I know what you need and I can give you what you need. You just have to come and ask and it will be granted.” It may not be in our time frame, but as God sees fit. Whatever is binding you up and me up, may it happen sooner than later. Maybe even today.
May it be so. Amen.