For Sunday, August 21, 2016 – Luke 13:10-17
While Jesus teaches in one of the synagogues, a woman appears “with a spirit that has crippled her for eighteen years.” For eighteen long years she has been “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.” What kind of spirit has so much capacity to alter a life? The better question is, what are the spirits that bend and stunt each of us, that keep us from living fully upright and free?
For some of us it might be past shame or grief, left untended until it lies in stagnant pools of anger and regret. Or it might be a critical spirit that makes razor sharp cuts in an endless litany of put-downs. Maybe we are weighted by pride or continual comparison, losing our sense of self in the exhausting race to be thought better, or less, than others. Who would we be and what would we see if we could just stand again, balanced on our own two feet? What is our heart’s calling? Who are we meant to be? Maybe we have been stricken by the spirit of disconnection, unable to fully meet each other, unable to reach out to the one in need for fear of seeing our own vulnerability and pain mirrored in another’s eyes. What diminishing spirit bends you, leaves you misshapen, less than the whole person you long to be?
We are not told what condition impacts this woman, only that it is a spirit that cripples. Each of us must bravely inspect our own lives, our own crippling diseases. Our limitations, when they are no longer hidden, can bring us closer to Jesus, close enough to hear him say what he says to her: “Woman, you are set free.” Set free! Imagine! Who wouldn’t be excited to hear such good news as this? But the truth is, there is within us also a “leader of the synagogue” quick to caution against becoming free. This is the voice that urges us not to disturb the old order, to wait it out, to be quiet and endure, to be content with less. The choice is ours. We can keep slogging along under the heavy cloud of our familiar pain, or we can say yes to the gift of healing. Which will it be—bent over or free?
