“A Crippling Spirit”
Luke 13:10-17
August 27, 2007
St. Paul United Methodist Church of Little Rock
Rev. John A. Fleming
I heard the story of the doctor who called one of his patients when the check she wrote to his practice failed to clear the bank. In an envelope from the bank, the check returned marked with the words insufficient funds. That has happened to me before. Now my saving’s account protects that from happening to my account.
The doctor’s practice was a small one. There were only three employees. He, of course worked there. A receptionist and a nurse also worked there. The receptionist hated to make phone calls when checks were returned so the doctor often did that. So the doctor had one of his faithful patients on the telephone, a Mrs. Taylor. He said this to her, “Mrs. Taylor this is Dr. Jones. I am sorry to have to call and tell you this, but the check that you wrote to my office was returned.” There was silence on the other end of the line. At first the doctor was sure that the silence meant embarrassment. It didn’t. The silence meant that Mrs. Taylor was attempting to come up with a great come back. She found it when she said, “That is all right, doctor. The arthritic pain you treated me for has returned, too.” With that she hung up the phone. My guess is that Dr. Jones never received payment for that office visit.
This morning we meet a woman in Luke’s gospel who, for eighteen long years, had a pain in her back. The pain was bad. You might say it was terrible. For sure you could say that it was debilitating. People tell me that there is nothing like a back ache. When your back hurts every part of your body hurts.
This woman, in our lesson, had a pain that was so bad that she was not able to stand up straight. Unlike the woman in our opening story, this woman’s pain never left her even for a minute.
Luke is the only one of the gospel writers who tells this story, this healing on the Sabbath day. I guess that doesn’t surprise me. I hope you will recall that before following Jesus, Luke was a physician. When Jesus healed people, it must have fascinated Luke.
Now there is a problem with this healing story. This healing happened on a Sabbath day. And this is not the first time Jesus healed on the holy day. Mark has three stories of Jesus doing that. John tells two more. And Luke tells two, one of which is the one before us this morning. I want you to hear this. I don’t think that this is a story about breaking Sabbath day rules. Look a little closer and you will see something powerful. Jesus called the woman to come towards him. He healed her. She stood up straight for the first time in nearly two decades. Her friends rushed to the altar to celebrate with her. But when the leader of the Synagogue witnessed it, he was angry. He was a rule follower and you are not supposed to heal on the Sabbath day. Perhaps he is mad about that. Or, maybe he was upset because he could not do what Jesus just did. He, too, had seen this woman come to the Temple for worship. He noticed how she was bent down. And he was not able to help her in any real way. Maybe this little story really tells us who had the crippling spirit.
Let’s look a little closer at the details of this tale. Consider this woman and her situation. For eighteen long years she suffered from back pain. I have a pain in my back right now. I’ve had it since the spring. When I bend over, it hurts. In July I had an x-ray that showed arthritic changes in my back. I now have an appointment with a back doctor. Arthritic changes in my back? I’m thirty-nine years old! How did this happen?
I don’t know the answer to that. I also don’t know what caused the pain in the woman’s back. There were no x-rays in her days. What I do know is that the pain was constant and I do know that she always had to bend down. If she had grandchildren, my guess is that she could not bend down and lift them above her head to let them pretend to be airplanes and hear the giggles when they did that.
Luke tells us that the cause of her pain was a Spirit. And that, of course, was the answer given in Jesus’ day when someone had an ailment that could not be explained or understood. The same thing happens today. Today we don’t call the unexplainable a Spirit, today we call it a virus. Imagine the scene. You go to your doctor and sign-in. You wait your turn to see the doctor. A nurse takes you back and weighs you and then leads you to an examination room. She takes your temperature and your pulse. She puts the cuff around your arm and takes your blood pressure and then she gently tells you that the doctor will be in in a few minutes. The doctor comes in and listens to your symptoms and to your heart and to your lungs. He asks you to take deep breaths and he looks into your ears. And sometimes he offers a remedy, a prescription, an antibiotic for what ails you. But sometimes the doctor says, “It’s probably a virus. It will have to run its course. If you don’t feel better in a few days, give me a call.” It may have been like that in the days of Jesus. Maybe a doctor would say, “I’m pretty sure you’ve got a demon. You should go and see your priest. Please pay the receptionist on your way there.”
So the woman could have had a demon or a Spirit as Luke calls it. It is also possible that Luke is trying to tell us something else about this woman. He could be telling us that there was something crippling about her spirit. There may have been something inside her, deep inside her that just beat her down. By the way, I’m answering a long questionnaire before I see the doctor for my back. There are the usual questions. How long have I had the pain? Was the pain a result of an injury? Near the end of the survey there was this question, “Do you like your job?” By the way I answered, “Yes.” But I guess the doctor understands that some pain can be related to your job.
What was it for this woman? How did she handle her pain? Was she quiet about it? Did she bear the pain silently or was she more vocal about it? I wonder, did she minister who others who had the same kind of pain she had? Did they have coffee together and talk about the latest drugs and treatments that were working? I wonder what she would say if you went up to her and asked how she was doing. Would she say something like, “Today’s a good day. Thanks so much for asking. Now, how are you?” I guess we will never know how she daily dealt with the pain.
What we do know is that she went to the Temple every Sabbath day. Jesus was there on one of those days. He was teaching, as was his custom. Jesus must have seen this woman as she came in the front door. He must have noticed that she was bent over and not able to stand up straight. Luke tells us that Jesus called out to her. She must have slowly made her way to the altar. When she arrived Jesus said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Now I have to wonder which ailment was she set free from, the one in her back or the one in her spirit? As it turns out, it was both. The two seem to be connected.
Jesus placed his hands on her and she stood up for the first time in eighteen years. She began praising God, which is a pretty good thing to do when you’ve just been healed. It’s also a pretty good thing to do when you’re bent over. I think we should all remember to praise God when our Spirits hurt, when we are angry and when we are misunderstood and when we feel like the weight of the world is on our shoulders. I think we should stand up and remember this is not the way Jesus wants our lives to be. We are precious children of God and God loves us very much. That is one of the things Jesus points out to the Synagogue leader. He says, “She’s a child of Abraham. She’s better than the oxen you lead to water on holy days. She deserves to be set free!”
I guess it is easy to be beat down. I like the story that Rev. Emmanuel Cleaver told when he preached at First United Methodist Church here in Little Rock. Emmanuel told of a time when he was hurting. His ministry was tough and he was discouraged. He went to get a haircut. Haircuts almost always make us feel better. Emmanuel knew his barber. His barber was a member of his congregation. During the cut, his barber said something all barbers say, “Keep your head up, preacher.” Emmanuel said, “My barber said more than he knew!”
I don’t know about you, but I am glad that the woman in our story did not retreat and stay inside. I’m glad she came to church. I’m glad she did, because that meant that she never quit seeking relief from God and healing for her Spirit. As bad as she felt, she knew that going to church made her feel better!
What should we do with these words this morning? The way I see it there are at least two sermons in our lesson for this morning. Let me preach one of them. Here it is. There are a lot of things that bend us over these days. What are some of them?
Some of us are bent over because of our responsibilities. Our responsibilities are not bigger than anyone else’s. We just don’t feel adequate for the task. Maybe we feel that way because we have been told that most of our lives. You can see this in the way people walk and how they talk. Ask them how they are doing and they will say, “I’m getting by.”
Others of us are bent down with our worries. We worry about what has happened. We worry about what might happen. We worry about disappointing others. We worry about raising our children. We worry about money. Will there be enough to send the kids to college and when it’s time for their weddings, will there be money for that, too?
These are just a few. We are bent down with grief. We are bent down with anger. We are bent down in resentment. And here in scripture is a portrait of a woman who is an example for us. She kept going to church and she asks us to stand up under whatever has kept us down until the healing happens.
We find comfort in the scripture, where Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” That’s what Jesus wants to do for us. Let us pray.