O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
The story of the bent over women - the woman afflicted by a spirit which crippled her for eighteen years - is a favourite text in many churches.
It is often enacted in workshops, discussed at gatherings and mediated upon in prayer circles.
It is a very powerful story featuring as it does the unbidden grace of God coming upon a person - a woman - and setting her free to walk upright and to praise God. A story about an awesome miracle - bestowed freely upon one in need in the midst of the worship of the living God - in a place not unlike this place.
"Woman, you are set free from your ailment."
I think that this story is so popular because ultimately this woman, this daughter of Abraham, afflicted for 18 years with a spirit that left her crippled and bent over, is us.
She is no-one important, just another person worshipping on the Sabbath day in the synagogue of her ancestors, just another person carrying a heavy burden, and not doing well with it at all.
She is oppressed, perhaps, as so many say, oppressed by a social system that devalues her, by a world order that sees her as more or less of no account, much as today's world order sees us as more or less of no account - as consumers, as numbers to be valued only by our power to purchase commodities and to be ignored when it seems that we will return less to the bottom line than we take from it, if it seems we will be a drain on the health system - a drain on the economy - a drain on the family.
Eighteen years she was afflicted by spirit that crippled her, that bent her over, that wore her down. Eighteen years.
She is oppressed - perhaps not so much by a social system that sees her as not being important, but by a system of expectations and demands that she simply can't live up. Perhaps she feels forced to carry the burden of a another person's desperate need, or the burden of a child gone wrong, a husband who abuses her, a mother who expects her to look after her, a father who criticizes her every deed...Perhaps she is afflicted by friends who love her only if she does those things that they want her to do and a society that expects her to keep silent about her own woes.
Bent over, crippled, unable to stand upright, in need, this woman comes to the synagogue to worship God - and perhaps to silently pray for help while others read the lesson and others teach - and still others pray aloud, to the God who delivered Israel from bondage, to the God who led Israel with a cloud by day and fire by night, and brought them into a promised land - a land once again under the rule of strangers - she comes to a synagogue full of people, people like her in need, some not knowing just how much in need they are - because their outward circumstances are good, and others, like the bent over woman - knowing their pain - but resigned - after a year, or 18 years, or a lifetime, to their condition.
She is us, and we are her, bent over, crippled, oppressed by a spirit, perhaps a spirit of self-doubt, a spirit that convinces her that she has no strength, no ability, no purpose, even though she is a child of Abraham, even though she is one of God's chosen ones.
And Jesus as he is teaching in the synagogue, sees this woman and discerns that a spirit has oppressed her and bent her over for these many years and in the midst of his teaching he calls her to come to him...
How easy is she to overlook. How easy are all those like her to miss.
Looking at the crowd in the synagogue that day, Jesus, like the rest, could have seen this bent over woman as simply someone needing a good doctor.
Or, like some today, he could have seen her as victim of an unjust society, as one more casualty whose presence informs us of the need for change in our social order, as simply one more person who needs to be set free from the disease and disorder that is present in our world.
How surprised she must have been to have been beckoned forward by Jesus, to have been called to his side.
She is easy to overlook. She is the poorest of the poor children of Abraham, a woman - with a crippling condition, she knows she has little worth, that she not only is bent over, but that to most others she is but a pain and bother, someone who needs more than they give, more than they want to give.
Yet Jesus sees her and calls her. Without being bidden. Without being asked. He sees her and calls to her, and then he touches her and speaks to her saying, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment"
That is for us!
That is what so many of us need.
The word of Jesus addressed to us.
The touch of Jesus healing us.
And praise be to God when it happens to us,
and praise be to God when it happens to others.
Think of the joy that flooded her soul, think of the joy that would flood your soul - even as a witness to this.
But what happens?
We end up with a concrete illustration of how the coming of Jesus causes division - how it separates day from night - good from evil. An illustration of how love can expose emptiness and reveal things that are not right.
The synagogue leader criticizes Jesus for desecrating the Sabbath day, as indeed he had according to some of the rules of the faith he was born to, the faith he taught.
He worked by performing a healing - a healing that could have been put off till another time, after all eighteen years had gone by, what difference a day? Except the difference that God commanded...
Six days shall you labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work - you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Some people cannot see the forest for the trees, others can't see the trees for the forest. And they too are bent over - like so many of us - some more visibly than others, some less so.
There are many rules, many expectations, to be found in our faith, to serve as guides for our conduct.
Even this church has a constitution and a set of rules which, while not thousands upon thousands of years old, is meant to help us in our conduct with one another and to guide our actions.
But to miss what the synagogue ruler missed when he criticized Jesus, is to miss what all the rules and regulations are really all about.
To forget the glory of God and the wonder of a love that can heal with a touch and a word is an illness too - an affliction of the spirit - an affliction that bends one over and leads one to afflict others even as they do seek to reveal the glory of what God is doing and to increase the praise of his name.
I started off by saying that this story of the bent over woman is a favourite story of many people, a favourite perhaps because many of us see ourselves in the story, many of us see ourselves as being bent over as one who needs to be set free, and who longs for it to happen..
I believe that is so - but many there are who have heard Jesus speak, and have witnessed his healing touch, and yet do not accept that which he is offering - that which he does, because he does not do it in the way that they expect he should, the way the rules by which they organize their lives say he should.
What they see in Jesus - is not the God that they worship, but rather what they see in him is a disregard for holy things, a disruption of order, a change in what was planned long ago, an alteration of the usual and proper way of doing things, those things that they have always done in a particular way, because experience has taught them that is the way they should be done.
This is not surprising. Even though it is very sad.
There are many people who cling to their illnesses because they are familiar to them, or because they have been taught that this is what they should expect in life - so why should their not be those who cling to their spiritual blindness - because they know how, within it, to feed and clothe themselves and do that which sustains them..
There are many kinds of oppression that can bend us over, there are many kinds of spirits that can cripple us.
We need to be set free.
And that is why this story of the bent over woman is a favourite story.
And why Jesus is portrayed as speaking so strongly in it,so strongly to the crowd to whom the synagogue ruler had spoken to, when he repeatedly criticized Jesus for breaking the clear rules about the Sabbath:
"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?"
Sometimes we need verbal heart surgery to set us free, just as sometimes we need the firm voice of faith and the power of the healing touch.
Of course, we are not to be the judge of that for others - our task is not to decide who should be chastised and who should be coddled, who should be condemned and who should be shown mercy, as the synagogue ruler decided. Rather our task is to listen to the master - even when it may be uncomfortable to hear his words because they convict us in our hearts of things that we know are wrong.
Our task is to listen, and to respond as he wants us to respond. Our task is to come to him that he may set us free, and to bring others to him that they may be set free as well.
Part of the freedom we need is the freedom to accept the passion and the power of love.
So many of us are afraid of the expansive power of love, of how it sweeps aside rules and regulations - and yet fulfills them a hundred times over. We are afraid of how love takes things out of our control - of its unpredictability - of how it seems to sweep away caution and good sense, and overturn those things that we normally count upon to be fixed and immovable.
And in truth there are things to fear once love gets hold of you, once God comes by a visit.
Nothing for sure will be the same. Our ability to hold on to our sense of who we are and what we want to be about almost surely will be swept away by what God has to say about us and what God wants us to do.
God has a plan and purpose for us - love has its special demands and its special logic, and it will lead us in ways we have never thought of.
We need to be set free for this. All of us. Some more than others. Some less. Each of us has a spirit in us that wars against the spirit of God - a spirit that oppresses us.
But praise be to God - the Spirit of God is stronger than all the spirits that might oppress us.
Jesus sees us, he discerns who we are and the spirits that are is in us, and unbidden he calls to us, just as he called to the bent over woman and unbidden, he reaches out to touch us unbidden, he seeks to set us free.
Jesus is calling to us - he is stretching out his hand - he waits to speak a word to us.
The question is will we recognize him in our midst, and accept what he has to offer us?
Someone told me a while back that Lame Deer, a Sioux Medicine Man wrote, some years ago "The trouble with white religion in America is this: If I tell a preacher that I met Jesus standing near me in the supermarket, he will say that this could not happen. He'll say, 'That is impossible; you are crazy.' By this he is denying his own religion. He has no place to go. Christians who no longer believe that they could bump into Christ at the next street corner, what are they?
Jesus sees us in our need.
He knows what oppresses us.
He is here to set us free.
He may be the next person whom you see on the street corner, or the man next to you in the supermarket, or the person who comes next to speak at this lectern in this holy place.
Look and believe, listen and be set free. His word and his touch still drive out the spirits that oppress, and allow those who respond to his call to stand straight once again, to stand straight and to praise God's name - both now and forevermore. Praise be to God. Amen
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