Are We Bent Too?

Today we are looking at the story of a woman who is suffering from a condition which caused her to be bent over. In a surprising kind of way, Jesus sees her and calls out, “Woman, you are free from your illness!” It is only then that he goes across and lays his hand on her, and she suddenly straightens up. There is no request from her for healing and Jesus intervention is a surprise. She must have been astonished along with all the people nearby.

This story is set in the context of a number of surprises and quite confronting teachings. Remember last week Jesus was talking about a fire that he is sending on the earth and about divisions in families. Before that he was talking about servants being whipped for their disobedience. Following that he raises the threat of jail and the question of death if people don’t turn away from their sins.

Just before today’s story in Luke 13, Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree which is threatened with destruction because it is not producing fruit. All these stories are confronting and even frightening. They are warnings to people that there are negative consequences for unfaithfulness. Jesus is suggesting that there is something wrong with their faith system. He is challenging the faith culture and he wants to bring change. Maybe this woman is an illustration of the difficulty they had.

Because of their sin they are bent over, unable to see anything but their toes and ground directly in front of them. They have a blinkered view. What Jesus wants to do for them, is to set them free from the evil which binds them to disobedience. He wants them to be able to stand straight, look forward, and have a vision of the Kingdom of God.

Their blinkered view is illustrated by the response of the religious leaders. They have such a restricted view of the Sabbath, that they described his actions as healing and therefore work, which should not be done on the sacred day.

Jesus has a broader view and points out their hypocrisy, because even they treat their animals better than that. I wonder what Jesus preached in the Synagogue that day. Surely the purpose of going to worship is to connect with God, and at least to find mercy if not grace and to find forgiveness and acceptance. These were Jesus themes and I assume they were what he was talking about. This act of setting a woman free on the Sabbath could well have been an illustration of his sermon. He was certainly confronting the rigidity and coldness of their interpretation of the Sabbath law.

I wonder if we are much different from them. What influences have caused us to be bent over so that we cannot see the hope that Jesus gives. Certainly Christians in the early 21st century seem somewhat introverted about their faith. What in our culture binds us to fear so that we would rather look down? Jesus calls us to raise our eyes to the heavens and see the great vision of the Kingdom of God, because this is good news for us, our church, our community, our whole world.

Graeme