A farm family from a rural area was making their first visit to a big city. They checked in to a grand hotel and stood in amazement at the impressive sights.
Leaving the reception desk the father and son came to the elevator entrance. They’d never seen an elevator before, and just stared at it, unable to figure out what it was. Just then an elderly lady with a cane hobbled towards the elevator. The doors mysteriously opened; the old woman entered, and the moving doors swallowed her whole.
About a minute later, the door opened and out came a stunningly beautiful young woman. Without turning his head the amazed father said, "Son, go get your mother." [1]
There’s a lot of crookedness in life. Isaiah had this to say about it:
4Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: 5And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Isaiah 40:4 - 5 (KJV)
In our main text Luke has the incident of a crippled woman healed of her crookedness, a religious leader shamed for his hypocrisy and a synagogue brought to life with praise for God!
Certainly wherever Jesus shows up, crookedness will be made straight! Let’s look at some of those places.
A Crooked Spine
10Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11And 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. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. Luke 13:10-13 (NRSV)
In a poem [2] entitled “Oh Woman…Dear Nameless Woman” Anna Murdow describes the crippled woman at the synagogue:
Oh woman, dear nameless woman,
Your life isn’t as it should be.
What has held your head down?
What has bent your back and heart
so severely?
What has burdened you so, dear woman,
that you are bent over …
that you are unable to stand straight …
that you cannot look into the eyes
of others?
What has shackled you in this position?
Is it poverty … or abuse?
Has all sense of worth
been stripped from you?
Have the cruelties of life
spit upon you and mocked you?
Have you been used by men to the point
of losing your own name?
Has death taken the very ones
who would have taken care of you?
Oh woman, dear nameless woman,
how your heart must long
to look into the eyes of others once more;
to seek hope and acceptance and love.
But alas, you cannot, can you?
Your head cannot be lifted.
For whatever reasons, it is bent low.
You see only the dust of the streets
and the feet of those who
step over you and around you
and on you.
Oh woman, dear bent-low woman,
God has brought you to this place …
to this synagogue … to this person
who is teaching freedom from bondage.
On this day … yes, on this very Sabbath day
you will be set free
and will stand tall once more.
You must sense this hope, don’t you?
You made such a great effort to come.
You risked being turned away by the leaders
as being one so nameless that
you would be in the way …
a mere nuisance in their day.
But you have come to this place.
Dear woman, is this a last hope for you?
He has called you … not by name, but “Woman”.
Even before his touch,
even before you might stand tall,
he proclaims that those things
that had kept your head low
and your back so bent
be gone forever.
Did you hear his words, dear woman?
SET FREE!
Set free from all of the bent-down bondage!
His eyes are the first eyes
that you have seen in so long.
How can you not respond
in the way that you do!
Standing straight … Praising God!
Oh woman, dear nameless woman,
Have you heard his name for you?
"Daughter of Abraham".
Your great faith has given you a name
and this man whose own name is Jesus
has seen your faith,
even in your crippled posture.
What a beautiful name you have!
This crippled Jewish woman was quite low on life’s totem pole. In that culture and time, women were to keep “their place” in the synagogue, and also keep quiet in a man’s presence; she lived a crooked existence in a crooked society. And her crookedness was severe and overpowering. The description of her being “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight” is literally translated as “overcome”….she was unable to “unbend” – she was powerless against her crookedness.
Then she was touched by Jesus
This crippled woman had been faithfully seeking God – after all, she was in the synagogue on Sabbath. In the midst of (and in spite of) the painful struggle of life’s everyday crookedness, this woman worshiped God. She had been living her death; Jesus called her into life!
The Scripture changes her being “overcome and unable” into stood up straight. Jesus said she was free from her ailment. His phrase implies he pardoned or divorced her from the sickness. He completely changed her life with a word.
Besides a crooked spine, Jesus also met…
A Crooked Soul
14But 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.” 15But 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? 16And 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?” 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; Luke 13:10 – 17a (NRSVA)
The text says the synagogue president was “indignant”. In Greek the word implies he was really ticked-off…he had much indignation! “Indignant” is, at its root meaning, a “swelling”; it means to be puffed-up with prideful anger. Other words that give a fuller picture of what lies below the surface of this being “put out” are: fraudulent, deceitful and polluted. What we encounter with this religious leader is false anger.
Jesus turned to the preacher and called him a hypocrite. A hypocrite says one thing, but lives entirely opposite. In ancient times hypocrite was the term used for actors – it meant to wear a mask, play the part of someone else.
The effect Jesus had at the synagogue that day was a palpable challenge to the religious leader’s self-importance, his authority. Jesus was saying, “You are a theologically-trained and recognized leader of God’s people – and you’re absolutely spiritually blind!”
People who have blind spots rarely know it. Elizabeth Myer Boulton wrote about her grandmother whose name was Nellie.
In her prime she was a force to be reckoned with: tall, full-figured and bold. She loved a good hat, a pretty dress and fire-engine-red lipstick. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, with the threat of nuclear war looming, Nellie stockpiled her basement with cans of tomatoes, tuna and bean salad. During the sugar shortage of the ‘70’s, she filled her cupboards with sugar: brown, refined and raw. When the energy crisis came, she became obsessed with keeping the needle of her Buick’s gas gauge above three-quarters of a tank.
Every other day she would wait in long lines to fuel up. My grandfather could never understand this, and one day he’d had enough. “My goodness, Nellie,” he said. “Do we really need to wait in line for gas again? We’ve got three-quarters of a tank.”
Every member of my family can recite her answer word for word: “Well, Jimmy, of course we have to wait in line. We’ve got to get that gas before the hoarders do!” [3]
We must be careful – especially those who are “in-charge” around the church – it’s easy to develop spiritual myopia! Spiritual blindness means you don’t understand that you’re not the keeper of the rules; you’re the problem! Jesus was God incarnate, touching and healing God’s creation; the synagogue president was opposing God, and didn’t have a clue. We must be careful, indeed!
Then he was touched by Jesus
The touch of Jesus had healed the woman; this touch from Jesus – really it was a rebuke – shamed the leader of the synagogue. Playing a part, being a hypocrite, the leader was busted and shamed.
Jesus met a crooked spine, a crooked soul…and then…
A Crooked Silence
and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. Luke 13:17b
The crowd finally got into what Jesus was doing! Probably for years before Jesus showed up, this synagogue was as crooked as the woman’s back. The one purpose of a house of worship is … well, worship! The rules-keeping synagogue president had so stunted the praise of God that there was something of the institutional deadness we see in many churches today. The silence was deafening, when it should have been praise in God’s house.
Again, we mustn’t be too quick to judgment; many people see dead churches and assume that the God of those churches is also dead. There was that “God is dead” movement in the 50’s and 60’s. “Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death. ” [4] The institution [framework, etc] may indeed be dead, but it protects something alive!
It’s a curious oxymoron to say that a dead church holds an alive faith in Christ, but no more so than to look at a house of praise filled with silence.
The synagogue too was touched by Jesus
The healing of the woman stood her up straight and loosed her vocal cords to lift up loud praise to God. Like dominoes falling all the people who witnessed this event began to raise their voices in praise. One woman’s praise became a whole town’s revival!
How about our crookedness?
There’s lots of crookedness – just watch the news, read our prayer list or think of some of your loved ones and neighbors. There’s lots of crookedness. Some crookedness is like the woman’s body, some like the synagogue president’s ego, and some just forgetting to give God the praise He’s due.
We know that God is willing to come to us in our crookedness; Isaiah said so, and Jesus did so. Jesus is always willing to touch us at the very center of our crookedness. And when he does it’s time to give Him the glory.
Author Mary Ann Bird shared this very personal story in The Whisper Test. She wrote, “I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.”
“When classmates asked, ‘What happened to your lip? I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.”
“There was, however, a teacher in the second grade that we all adored— Mrs. Leonard [was her] name. She was short, round, happy—a sparkling lady.”
Annually we had a hearing test . . .Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back—things like “The sky is blue” or “Do you have new shoes?” I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth. [They were] seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl”. [5]
When God makes your crooked places straight, you then have a job to do. Listen once more to Isaiah:
…the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: 5And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, Isaiah 40:4b – 5a (KJV)
God reveals His glory to you by making your crooked places straight; He reveals it to those around you when you open your life and lungs and give Him all the glory!
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ENDNOTES
1] Transformed by an Elevator, Citation: Owen Bourgaize, Castel, Guernsey, United Kingdom
2] Anna B. Murdow, “Oh Woman…Dear Nameless Woman”, www.pewponderings.blogspot.com
3] Elizabeth Myer Boulton, Christian Century, July 27, 2010, p.21
4] Homiletics, August 2010, p.67
5] Tony Miano on SermonCentral.com “Two Kinds of Wisdom – Part Two”
