Kendall's Notebook, Page 72

Title: Bent Into Shape

Text: Luke 13: 10-17

Date: August 26, 2007

By: Kendall H. Brown

In today’s story from Luke, the temple leader is the epitome of someone throwing water on someone else’s fire - the party pooper par excellent, the perfecter of the icy stare. Jesus has healed a woman from an eighteen year long affliction. After all these years of being bent over, of hardly being able to raise her head to see where she was going, Jesus has given her a straightened back and a new outlook on life. The worshippers who witness this happening are amazed and filled with joy. Yet, the temple leader sees things differently. All he can see is that the Sabbath law has been violated. He is so into what is important to him, that he can not see for a second the healed women before him. He looks right through her. He acts like she doesn’t exist.

I suspect that all of us at one time or another have been in the sandals of both the woman and the temple leader. We have shared the woman’s place when we have had something to say and not been heard, or when we have been overlooked and left to feel like we must be invisible. We know her heart when we have been excited, even impassioned about something, and unable to share it with others who apparently couldn’t care less. We have been the bent women, when all we needed was a word of encouragement or support, an arm around the shoulder, a pat on the back, and

Have not received a breathe of acknowledgement that we even exist. Sometime we leave people bent in pain because we think there is some special combination of words that we should have for the occasion. Death, accidents and misfortunes leave us speechless. But all that is really needed is our presence and a gentle touch.

We have also been the temple leader. Who among us has not at one time or another been so wrapped up in ourselves or our causes or whatever is important to us that we have not noticed others around. In those incapacitated moments we are unable to affirm anyone else because we are so busy affirming ourselves.

The bent woman is not the only bent person in this story. The Leader of the temple in his own sad way is just as bent. The woman has a physically affliction. The leader has a much more difficult form of bending to heal. His is a spiritual bending. He has become so caught in the letter of the law that he is unable to have any sense of the spirit of the law. Thus Jesus reprimands him with the question about being kinder to animals than to humans. Anyone who would do that has a spirit that is beyond bent, it is outright twisted.

For Luke, the telling of this story served a purpose. For him the important issue in this story is Jesus’ authority. Throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is confronted with the question of his identity. John the Baptist’s disciples arrive in another story and ask if Jesus is the promised one. For Luke, Jesus’ healing is a crucial sign that he is indeed the promised one. Jesus answers the question of the disciples of John by telling them to see for themselves. The sick are healed. The imprisoned are visited. The captives are set free. For Luke the greatest and most significant sign of Jesus’ authority is that he forgives sins. Only God or one who shares God’s authority can do that, and in Luke, Jesus is found forgiving sins at every turn. The forgiveness and healing are signs that tell who Jesus is and demonstrate the authenticity of the claim that he is the son of God.

In today’s lesson, Jesus is in the synagogue for the last time. This is his final appearance in a setting that had become quite familiar to him and those who knew him. On the Sabbath he was in the synagogue. Important to Luke is telling us that Jesus was a regular worshipper on the 7^th day of each week. He was often a visitor and often invited to teach as he had been in today’s lesson. His words and actions were not always welcomed as they were not welcomed in today’s scene by the leader, the host who soon regretted making a place for this guest.

In this last synagogue scene, Jesus affirms who he is for one final time. As had happened many times before, his authority was questioned by the representative of the religious system. The temple leader did not discount the healing. His beef was that Jesus had violated sacred law by healing on a Sabbath. Luke is suggesting with this story that the split between Jesus and the synagogue was irreconcilable. After this last argument with the synagogue leader, we do not find Jesus in a synagogue again. The story is as much about the authenticity of Jesus’ power and authority as it is about a healing or keeping the Sabbath.

Jesus brings into the world a whole different outlook and understanding of power. His world and our world were and are quite well acquainted with power. In Jesus day, the most powerful force on earth was the Roman government. Many others also had their smaller spheres of power. In the New Testament, we learn about Herod the local king who also had great power. But his power was nothing without the backing and support of the Roman overlords. Likewise, the religious community had its sphere of power and authority carried out by scribes, Pharisees, rabbis, and synagogue leaders.

Power is in our day an equally well known and understood entity. In our society a source of power is money. It grants power to overcome hunger, to provide security, to gain entrance to high and mighty purposes, to be free to see the world and study what one would like, to gain access to health care systems. We exercise great power with our money every day with little appreciation for how much we have. We are well acquainted with the power of the media. There is much power in exposure as the advertising industry well knows. Along with military power and economic power and the power of the media there is the power of position that comes in the world.

In all ages power has provided the means to control and exert one’s will over another. Jesus was a dangerous and subversive person in the synagogue. The leader may not be a hero in our sight today but neither was he stupid. He realized that Jesus was operating out of a whole new understanding of power. For Jesus, power was not something to get but to give. He did not use power to hold authority over others or to control others. For him power was not the vehicle to gain status.

For Jesus, power was used not to lord over but to uplift - -to empower others. He used his power to free others from a variety of captivities. He used power to heal others. In today’s story his power is used to release the bent woman from her infirmity and to challenge the shackles of a system of rules that had lost its spirit. The Sabbath was made for persons, not vice versa.

There are many questions and topics of discussion and study that we can bring to today’s text, as there are every Sunday. We could spend hours discussing Jesus’ authority verses the authority of the temple leader and the system he represents for example. But to me, reading the Bible is pointless without asking the questions that bring the text into our lives. The Bible is not among us to inform us. The Scriptures are still speaking today to transform us.

We need to read the Scriptures for transformation not information. With today’s lesson transformation starts by seeing the Christ, not only in the story as an actor doing marvelous stuff, but also in us. Jesus has power and authority. Yes, each of us has power and authority.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the well known writer about death and dying, makes this point about the universal presence of power in a book called Life Lessons. “Our real power,” she says, “is not derived from our positions in life, a hefty bank account or an impressive career. Instead, it is the expression of that authenticity inside of us, our strength, integrity and grace externalized. We don’t realize that each of us has the power of the universe within us. We look around and see others as powerful, we see nature as powerful, we can witness a seed turning into a flower or the sun crossing the sky every day. We even see life created in us, from us. Yet we see ourselves as disconnected from all of this power. God did not make nature powerful and man weak. Our power comes from the knowledge that we are unique, and from our understanding that we have the same innate power as all other creations.”

Kubler Ross affirms the presence of power in each of us. Jesus teaches us how to use that power. He leads us in using power to empower others. So far that sounds like a lot of words. Let us be a little more specific. I think everyone is looking for affirmation from others. We don’t like to be criticized. We want to be uplifted, supported, affirmed. We live in a world where there is much that doesn’t affirm, that even puts us down or makes us feel less than. The driving force of our economy is the advertising industry that is always telling us that we need something or we are lacking something. The flip side of that message is that we are not whole and are less than what we should be. That un-affirming message bombards us in every page of magazine or newspaper and every few minutes with an ad on TV or the radio.

We are bent. Others around us are bent. Miraculously each of us as Kubler-Ross points out has the power within us to help others unbend. And as we empower others we empower ourselves too. The church if it is fulfilling its mission of being Christ’s presence on earth, a presence badly needed, is a practice hall for empowering others. Sometimes when we arrive on Sunday mornings we know the bent woman in ourselves. But look around in see the bending in others. Empower them. Help to make their ways straight by a word of encouragement or a greeting of love or a sign of interest in who they are or what they are doing. In that empowering, you will be empowered to and the Biblical miracle in today’s lesson will happen over and over again among us here.

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