For Sunday, August 25, 2013 – Luke 13:10-17
She had been bent over, crippled, for 18 years — a lifetime within a lifetime. Each 18-year segment of our lives, complete unto itself, fertile with its own potential, yielding an entire crop of experiences. Given 18 years we can reach a longed for destination, achieve a goal; we can go on big journeys, take up new callings, give away whatever binds us, become more fully ourselves.
Eighteen years is the passage from birth through high school, then from young adulthood to middle age, and onward into rolling fields of older age with its startling discoveries of riches and loss. Should even longer life be given, layer upon layer, 18-year segments begin to be measured in months, then weeks and days, each segment uniquely experienced and ordered. Each a lifetime within a lifetime.
The woman had been bent over, barely half herself, for one of her entire lifetimes. I imagine she had adapted and accommodated for so long that she had nearly forgotten to hope for more. But Jesus didn’t forget. He called her back into herself, just as he calls you and me. Can you hear him? Listen—our next portion of years is waiting: “You are set free.”
Not after he helped her to stand, but before she stood up he said, “You are set free.” The gift, already given. We forget to hope for more. We hobble around broken in spirit, all the while free. It’s time to stand up. It’s time to stop accommodating diminishment and disappointment, to stop being only half ourselves. We are already set free for our next lifetime of years.
