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BENT OVER, LIFTED UP
Luke 13:10-17; Psalm 71:1-6
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
August 25, 2013
In many Broadway theaters and in some of the old sports stadiums, you can purchase “partial view” or “obstructed view” tickets. You may be sitting behind a load-bearing column, or in the case of the theaters, you may be sitting at a side of the stage where you will not be able to see everything on the stage. The tickets are sold at a discount, of course, unless the event is sold out, in which case the ticket sellers often decide that desperate sports and theater attendees will pay anything for any seat, no matter how bad it is.
In today’s story from Luke 13, we meet two people who have “partial view seat[s] in life.”[1] The first one is obvious: a woman who has been crippled for eighteen years. “She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight,” Luke tells us. What precisely her medical diagnosis would be we have no way of knowing. But imagine her life: “for eighteen years this unnamed woman must strain to see the sun, the sky, and the stars. For eighteen years she has become accustomed to looking down or just slightly ahead but never upward without difficulty. For eighteen years her world has been one of turning from side to side to see what those who stand upright can see with just a glance.”[2] For eighteen years, her view has been very much obstructed.
The other person with a partial view seat in life comes from a very different place. While the woman would not only have been looked down upon as a woman and a “cripple,” she would also have been seen as “unclean” in some circles. In contrast, the man we meet in this passage in Luke 13 not only is able to stand up straight; he is also a leader in the community, the president or leader of the synagogue.
Yet he also has an obstructed view. He looks at the woman and he sees someone who can wait another day to be healed. He looks at Jesus and he sees a Sabbath breaker. As a result of his partial view, he rebukes both of them before the crowd. Jesus responds by rebuking him – pointing out that what Jesus has done for this woman is no more than what the synagogue leader would do for an animal on the Sabbath, loosing the animal from what binds it so that the animal can be led to the water. The result, Luke tells us, is that the synagogue leader and his allies are put to shame. Meanwhile, the rest in the crowd go off rejoicing at what Jesus has said and done.
The Bible is not like other books – not just because of when it was written and what its subjects and main characters are. But also because, more than any other book, the Bible invites us inside – to put ourselves in the story so that we too can encounter Jesus and be transformed even here and now. So with that in mind, where do we find ourselves in this story in Luke 13?
Here is a clue. The first place to look in the gospels is always the Jewish leaders and Jesus’ critics. Why? Because they are the religious leaders and insiders, just like any of us are who serve as leaders or who have been part of this congregation for awhile. So what about this Jewish leader – how might we be like him?
We may not be tempted to over-enforce Sabbath laws. Indeed, many of us might not pay much attention to keeping the Sabbath. And yet, can we so easily discount our connection with this synagogue leader?
He is well-intentioned and trying to follow the way of God after all. Consider a more modern example – think about those individuals and congregations in the past who have followed the practice that once a person was divorced they could not serve as a church leader. They were well-intentioned – trying to reinforce the importance of marriage and marital vows, and the importance of leaders being moral examples. But in doing so, they forgot about grace and that we are all sinners. And, in doing so, they added to the burdens of those who had gone through the struggle of divorces rather than loosening that burden, as Jesus does here. Are there now laws and rules, even well-intentioned ones, which we overemphasize and in doing so overlook people in need?
Or consider another way we may find more similarities between us and the synagogue leader than we might want to admit: sometimes we too judge others rather than treat them with the dignity they need and deserve. Donald Miller, author of the spiritual memoir, Blue Like Jazz, recalls a time when he was in a grocery store line behind a woman paying with food stamps. Without thinking, he found himself looking first at the stamps and then at the food she had bought with those stamps, in a way he would not have looked had she been paying cash. He writes, “The woman never lifted her head as she organized her bags of groceries and set them into her cart. She walked away from the checkout stand in the sort of stiff movements a person uses when they know they are being watched....[B]y judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away.”[3] Do we ever do that?
Or perhaps sometimes it is our fear that gets in the way of our view of others. Fear can turn us away from those in need. In reflecting on this passage, one woman wrote, “the suffering of others taps into my own. The struggles of another remind me that I am one poor decision, one bad diagnosis, just a few years away, perhaps from experiencing the same. If I’m honest, often I am not different from [the synagogue leader] who would rather not have looked upon the suffering of this one daughter of Abraham.”[4]
When do we have the partial, obstructed view of the synagogue leader? When we let anything stand between us and Jesus’ compassion and grace.
And the woman – when do we share her partial and obstructed view? In some cases, like she, we are burdened physically, by cancer or some other illness, by arthritis or some other chronic pain. And like the woman, we can only see the ground in front of us. We are in too much pain to really look ahead and around. Getting around is so much harder; getting through the day such a struggle.
We can be bent over with illness and physical pain, or we can be bent over with other burdens that we are carrying. I remember a friend who lost his father suddenly. Not only did he lose his father; he also lost his business partner. Suddenly the fate of the business and the fate of the fifty-some employees and their families was on his shoulders. You could see it in his body. For awhile, he walked around hunched over, literally bent over by the burden of those responsibilities.
Do you ever feel that way – bent over by responsibilities, or grief, or worry? So that it is hard to look ahead or look around. So that it is hard to see the face of Jesus – or anyone else who might help you?
Another thing that can leave us as bent over as this woman in Luke is our sin. We know we have done wrong; we are ashamed. And that shame seems to be a burden that only gets heavier the longer we carry it. Some people can affirm grace in their heads but have a lot harder time experiencing grace and acceptance in their hearts. They fear that God might be like some kind of divine loan shark, who lends out His love but any time will come to collect that outstanding loan.
Do you know one of the principal reasons that keeps people away from the church? It is not something they will voice to others, or sometimes, even to themselves. But it is this: shame. They do not feel that they are good enough to be here. Little do they know what we are reallylike – right?
What burdens are we bearing? Are those burdens weighing us down and bending us over so that we have a partial and obstructed view?
The only one here in Luke 13 who has a full and unobstructed view is Jesus, and he has come to heal – to remove that which obstructs partial view seats in life. Look again at what he does and says with the synagogue leader. Jesus rebukes him – not for wanting to keep the Sabbath – but for failing to see this woman and her need, for failing to treat her as well as he would treat his own animals.
Sometimes,like the synagogue leader, we need to be rebuked so that we will no longer let our pride, or the rules of morality we have designed, or anything else obstruct our compassion. And sometimes we need to bend down to see what Jesus sees. A young girl was fighting cancer and spent a long time in the hospital. During that time, there were dozens of doctors. The girl’s mother told her pastor that there was one doctorthe young girl loved and trusted the most. Why him? Because “he was the one who got down on his knees so he could look into her eyes when he talked to her.”[5] When it comes to the needs of others sometimes we who are standing straight need to bend over.
And, if we are the ones who are bent over, let us look and listen again to what Jesus does and says. First, he sees her and calls out to her. This is not a case where she first calls out to him. Jesus notices her; his view is unobstructed. He is neither too high and mighty, nor is he too busy to “see” the woman, to notice her.
Second, he speaks to her words of assurance and healing: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Picture this scene. Based on what we know of Jesus and based on what we see of him here, do you think he simply talks to the top of this bent-over woman’s head? The one who stopped and faced the woman who touched the back hem of his robe? The one who picked up children that the disciples were trying to keep from coming to him? I don’t think so. No, it is hard for me to picture him doing anything but looking into this woman’s eyes. Which means he kneels down, lowers his head, and looks up, so that he can see her eye to eye.
Third, Jesus touches her, laying his hands on her. Once again, Jesus touches the untouchable, a woman, who was crippled and therefore unclean. No other rabbi would do that. Once again, he treats with great respect and dignity those who others would look down upon. Once again, he receives and treats all the same without regard to background or status. Can you imagine how good this felt to this woman? To be treated with such dignity? To be touched? And after 18 years of being bent over, being lifted up by Jesus so she can stand tall and straight? No wonder, she responds by praising God.
If we find ourselves in this woman, if we find ourselves bent over, whether it is because of crippling illness or physical infirmity, or whether it is because of the burdens we carry, or the shame we bear, then know that Jesus notices us, comes to us, bends down to talk to us, and touches us – so that we too can be healed in whatever form that healing might take place. So that we can be lifted up. So that our partial and obstructed view seats in life can be replaced by unobstructed full view seats.
And we get the best seats in life at a discount. Because in Jesus Christ, God already has paid the full price for upgrading our seats. Jesuswas bent low with our sins and then he was lifted up in the resurrection so that we can stand tall, basking in the love and grace of God.
This is the good news of the Gospel that Jesus wants us to hear. This is the good news about life in the Kingdom of God that Jesus wants us to see. And this is the good news of life in Christ that Jesus wants us to emulate whenever women and men cross our paths bent over with the crippling burdens of life.
“When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
Can we do any differently?
[1] Alyce M. McKenzie, “Partial View Seats: Reflections on Luke 13:10-17,”
[2] Emilie M. Towne, “Luke 13:10-17: Theological Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, year C, Vol. 3, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 382.
[3] Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 83.
[4] Janet H. Hunt,
[5]Ibid.