Luke 13:10-17
Hunchback
August 25, 2013
It’s unexpected and it’s agonizing. You reach to pick up a package, you bend down to tie your shoes, you sneeze, you twist as you stretch, or maybe you scoop up a child. And something suddenly goes wrong. You know it in an instant. A wrench. A tweak. A tear. A pull. It’s a back muscle, a disc, a nerve . . . . you don’t know what it is, but you know it’s there, and you know it’s there, because you definitely feel the pain. Something’s gone completely wrong. You’re in pain and misery. There’s weeping and gnashing of teeth because of the pain you’re in.
Have you ever been there!?!? Too many of us have been there.
Even if you’ve never studied anatomy, you’re immediately an expert in just how intimately your back is connected to your arms and legs, neck and shoulders, hands and feet. Everything near your back, hurts. It even radiates to your tingling toes. Toes aren’t supposed to tingle. You see, when there’s a “wreck” around the spinal cord, known as the “super highway” of our nervous and pain receptors, all the other roadways in our body, all the muscles and nerves, suffer together.
For the past three weeks we’ve been looking at the storms of life, and today we’re going to end this series by looking at a gospel story in which Jesus tackles a debilitating back issue. It’s only found in Luke. Let’s look at it ~
10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues,
11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all.
12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.”
13 Then Jesus put His hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are 6 days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
15 The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?
16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
17 When He said this, all His opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things Jesus was doing.
Jesus saw a woman in the synagogue, she may not have seen him, remember, she’s bent over. She didn’t seek out Jesus, either. She was “bent over and could not straighten up at all.” Luke doesn’t tell us anything else about this woman. We don’t know if she was rich or poor, the matriarch or a pariah, someone who was honored or ostracized. All we know is that she had endured “a spirit” that had crippled her, bent her in half, for the past 18 years.
I want to make a few observations ~
Firstly, scripture tells us this woman “had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years.” Jesus also tells us in verse 16, satan has kept her bound for 18 long years. I don’t know what it’s like to suffer for 18 long years. I’ve had back issues, in my early 20's I was in the hospital, in traction, for 9 days because of my sciatic nerve. I’ve had recurrences every so often; and there’s some stuff I no longer do. And I can tell you exactly where that nerve runs on my left side. BUT, 18 years of that. Any candidates to try out her lifestyle? I didn’t think so! We’ve all got our issues anyways, right?
What I love about this woman whom we don’t know anything about - - - is where was she? She was at worship!! How excellent is that. Maybe she didn’t have pain. Maybe she just lived as a hunchback, but imagine going through life like that. Bent over, not able to enjoy a beautiful rainbow. Not able to reach for something over your head. Not able to look someone in the eye. Or maybe there was severe pain, which never really went away.
Also, know that in that day, the people looked at you with disdain if you had some sickness, especially a debilitating one. Jesus challenged the ancient belief that her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. Remember, there was a direct correlation between health and sickness and your standing before God. The sicker you were, the greater the sinner you were believed to be. The more prosperous and healthy you were, the people believed, the greater you were before God.
So, you know she was not in the inner circle of the social world of the temple. She sat in the back row, she was quiet, she came, she had a few folks she spoke to, she went home and did her best to honor and glorify God.
Yet, Jesus let’s us know this woman is not ill because God was punishing her, but because there’s evil in the world. In other words, bad things happen to good people. We’d like to think we’re immune from those bad things, but we’re not.
We all know life is hard. It’s not always fair in the ways we think. I’m sure this woman didn’t like her debilitating sickness, an illness she was certain was never going to go away, but she lived with it, and was still in the temple worshiping God.
How about us?! When the bad things in life are happening, are we in God’s house? Or do we stay away? When our kids do those things which we find unconscionable, do we still attend worship and ask for prayer? Or do we just hope it goes away and nobody will notice? Too many times people say – don’t make this prayer public, and I understand we don’t always want to air our dirty laundry, but there’s nothing better than having some real prayer warriors praying for you.
Still, this lady was worshiping God. What if she thought, ‘this is garbage. This God and this worship stuff is for the birds. I’ve had 18 years of Sabbath’s, that’s 936 worships and I’m not going anymore. God hasn’t answered my prayer for healing. So, she skips worship, it’s not worth it. And she ends up an old bitter crippled lady. But she didn’t give up on God.
How many of you have family, brothers, sisters, parents, children, friends that don’t know Jesus, and you want them to have that relationship, because you know it will change them in this life and give them hope in the life that’s yet to come. Will you just quit praying for them because nothing has changed? Or will you keep praying and keep praying and keep praying? I would hope you’d be like this lady, and keep the faith even when it’s not your dream and ideal life.
Some other events which occur in this story shows Jesus publically talking to this woman. In Jewish society, Jewish men didn’t speak to women in public places like this. Remember the story in John 4 where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. She was shocked because a Jew would speak to a Samaritan. But when the disciples returned, the Scripture records, "They were astonished that Jesus was speaking with a woman." In speaking to her, Jesus breaks the stranglehold on this type of communication.
And as Jesus spoke to her, did you see what He did? He called her to the center of the synagogue. By placing her in the geographic middle, he challenged the men in the worship to take notice that women also had access to God.
After she came forward and Jesus said “you are free from this infirmity,” He touched her, which of course goes straight against the holiness code of the Jews where they wouldn’t touch those who were sick, or that person would also become impure. That holiness code from the book of Leviticus never bothered Jesus. He shows us, the human touch, the effort to restore dignity to a person was so vital and important.
As Jesus condemns the ruler and leaders in the temple, He calls her "daughter of Abraham.” I can imagine the gasps and tearing of robes. Women weren’t children of Abraham. Not to the legalistic rulers. This term wasn’t found in Jewish literature. This was revolutionary ~ to call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God. Jesus was really treading on thin water.
Add to the fact that Jesus healed her on a Tuesday, right? No way, that’s not the way Jesus worked. He loved to mess with the establishment. That’s why Jesus was so much of a radical and rebel in the eyes of the righteous rulers of the temple. He healed her on the Sabbath. The holiest day of the week. By healing her on the Sabbath, he was demonstrating God's compassion for people over the legalism and the ceremony. Sabbath was intended as a celebration of God’s goodness.
Her response was instantaneous. She began glorifying God. Here was worship like this synagogue had never seen before. Many of the crowd joined her in rejoicing at her healing. But not all. The ruler of the synagogue and some others (15, 17) weren’t happy at all. Unlike Jesus, they had no compassion on the woman, nor did they rejoice in her healing. In contrast to the joy, the ruler of the synagogue was angry. But he did not confront Jesus. Instead, he was rebuking the people, demanding that if they wanted to be healed there were six days in the week, but not the Sabbath.
Jesus called the leader and his followers – – hypocrites. There was much about this ruler’s objections which were hypocritical. For example, he said there are six days on which people can be healed. How many healings do you think occurred in that synagogue? Do you think this woman could have come back on the following day and been healed? Not if Jesus was gone. I suspect this woman was a “regular” at this synagogue, but she had not found healing (let alone sympathy) in 18 years. How could the ruler of the synagogue dare to even suggest that healing would be available at some other time?
Another form of hypocrisy, as I read between these lines, is that this man was to be a leader in worship, as well as in teaching. While most of those present were actively worshiping and praising God — this leader was doing everything possible to “shut down” the praising of God.
The greatest hypocrisy however was what Jesus chose to highlight. Jesus accused the religious leaders of hypocrisy because they would routinely sanction “breaking the Sabbath” for the benefit of one of their animals, but not for the benefit of this woman, a daughter of Abraham. They would loose their donkey on the Sabbath, and let it drink, but they would prohibit Jesus from loosing this woman from her bondage. Their compassion was selective, self-centered, and hypocritical.
What was the difference in perspective, in the thinking of the Jewish religious leaders, which brought about this totally opposite response to the healing of this woman? How could they be indignant when the people were ecstatic?
Your perspective makes all the difference. To most of us, a car that is “sick” or “dead” has no appeal. If you own it, you want to get rid of it. On the other hand, when a junk yard looks at your car, they can count the money they will make off the parts of the car.
The son of a farmer looks at cow manure as something which he must endlessly shovel out of the barn. On the other hand, the gardener looks at manure as fertilizer. They delight to get the stuff and shovel it around the flower beds with joy. It’s a matter of perspective.
Our perspective is very much a reflection of who we are. Our perspective becomes our reality. It’s all about what we perceive. If it’s important, we’ll do it, if it’s not important, we hold off on it.
In the end, this woman endured for 18 long torturous years, yet she remained faithful to God. And sometimes it will take 18 or more long years for us to navigate through the storms of life, but we must trust, just like this woman, that God is faithful and He will not let us down.
We can’t be like the synagogue leaders who were stuck on legalism and their needs at the expense of others.
