Lifted

Luke 13:10–17 tells of a woman bent over for eighteen years, weighed down by pain and invisibility. She doesn’t even ask to be healed—but Jesus sees her, calls her forward, and sets her free. In this sermon, we hear the good news that Christ meets us in our weariness, lifts us when we cannot lift ourselves, and restores us to dignity and praise.

Transcript

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You're listening to The Word on Baker Street, a podcast from Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Bakersfield, California. Each week we share the good news of God's love through the sermons from our Sunday worship. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here.

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The Holy Gospel according to Luke 13, 10 through 17. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, Woman, you are set free from your ailment. When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, there are six days on which the work ought to be done. Come on those days and be cured, not on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered him and said, You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, who Satan bound for eighteen years long, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day? When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at the wonderful things that he was doing. The gospel of the Lord. Let us pray. Loving God, may these words and all of our meditations draw us closer to you today. Amen. So the lesson today, it tells of a woman who's been bent over for 18 long years. She's weighed down. Her body is folded in on itself. And we we don't know her name. We don't know her story. We don't know her age. I keep thinking that she's old, but maybe she's young. Is she a widow? Is she a mother, a grandmother, or a neighbor? We don't know. All we know is her posture. She's bent low and she's she's staring at the ground. She's unable to lift her eyes and see those around her. And what weighs on her is even more than physical. In the culture of the time, illness also carried with it moral judgment. I'm sure some of them wondered, you know, well, what sin caused this? And her condition, it made her invisible. For nearly two decades, she lived a life staring at her feet. You know, I can't imagine being in that much pain for such a long time. Like this last year, uh, during weed whacking season up into hatchee, I had a couple of days that it was really hard to straighten up. But 18 years? I'll pass on that. We don't typically get to make a choice about those things. I mean, something does seem to get all of us. And sometimes it's literal. The curve of arthritis or fatigue of illness or the toll of age, and sometimes it's emotional. It can be grief of losing somebody that we love or the shame over a past mistake, anxiety that that knots our stomach up and makes us fold inward. Sometimes it's systemic. The weight of poverty and racism and homophobia and sexism and ableism, these forces they press down on us and people bend beneath them. And so this bent-over woman becomes a mirror for all of those of us who carry too much. Her posture, it tells this story of how life can weigh us down. Theologian Serene Jones, in her book Trauma and Grace, writes it's hard to know God when your knowing facilities have been disabled. It's hard to feel divine love when your capacity to feel anything at all has been shut down. That's the truth of this story. Trauma and pain can leave us unable to even reach towards God. It got me kind of thinking about that Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing. You know, it's that pyramid where there's the food, very basic needs at the bottom, and then safety, and then up to love and belonging and self-esteem, and finally at the very top, self-actualization. It's a neat and tidy thing that as if life somehow gracefully moves from one stage to the next, but there's something missing in the chart, and it's pain. I've seen pain take people completely out of the pyramid. Nothing else matters when every nerve ending is screaming. A friend of mine, a retired pastor, lives with debilitating headaches. By every account, his he has a wonderful life, a loving wife, a beautiful home, children and grandchildren that adore him and whom he adores, and yet pain has brought him to the brink of suicide on more than one occasion. Pain consumes, it bends us down, it isolates, no matter how much love surrounds us. And this is what I see in our story today. This bent over woman who may not even have had the strength to hope anymore. I mean, she doesn't even cry out to Jesus to ask for healing. Trauma can do that. Here's the thing I love about our lesson. Jesus doesn't wait for her to ask. He sees her, he calls her forward, he lays his hands on her, he speaks these words of freedom and she straightens up. This is grace. Grace that meets us in the silence, grace that notices when we can't raise our eyes, grace that comes unasked and unearned and unexpected. And that synagogue leader, he completely misses the miracle. He is so concerned with the Sabbath rules that he can't celebrate this woman's healing. All he sees is a broken commandment. But Jesus sees differently. Jesus sees this woman as a child of God, a daughter of Abraham, and he restores her. He restores her dignity and her belonging and her place in the family of God. And the seeing is powerful. To be seen is to be known. To be seen is to be restored to community. And there's so many people today that long to be seen. LGBTQ youth who are told that their very being is a mistake. Elderly folks in nursing homes who feel invisible, immigrants that are living in the shadows, terrified of being noticed by the wrong authorities, the poor who will pass by on our sidewalks, the grieving who feel their sorrows are just too heavy for others to bear. The gospel lesson today says Christ sees you, and Christ names you, Christ calls you forward. God's grace sets us free from resentment and shame and invisibility. And this grace doesn't, it doesn't see through the eyes of judgment, but through the eyes of love. Jesus not only sees this woman, he lifts her, he puts his hands on her, and she is restored. And the thing is here, she doesn't raise herself. She is raised by Christ. I mean, how often do we believe that we must be the ones raising ourselves? You know, we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps kind of thing, you know, but we that we must somehow fix ourselves before God can love us. But that is not the gospel. The gospel is that Christ comes to us when we're bent low and unable to move, and Christ lays his hands on us and speaks freedom. Christ lifts us and lifts, but we cannot lift ourselves. This is mercy, not merit. And it is a gift. That synagogue leader he objects and he says, he says, Come and be healed on other days, not the Sabbath. But Jesus isn't confined by those rules. He insists that the Sabbath itself is about freedom. You know, ought not this daughter of Abraham be set free on the Sabbath? The Sabbath is not about restriction, but release. Not about control, but compassion. And it's not about keeping people in bondage, but setting them free. Old Testament scholar Walter Bergaman said in his book, Sabbath as Resistance, that Sabbath becomes a decisive, concrete, visible way of opting for and aligning with the God of rest. It is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. In other words, Sabbath is about freedom and freedom from those systems that bend us down. And it's God's declaration that we are not slaves to Pharaoh, not slaves to the economy, not slaves to endless striving. The Sabbath is liberation. So of course, this bent over woman should be set free on the Sabbath. That's exactly what the Sabbath is for. In the end, the synagogue leader is humiliated, but the crowd rejoices. And the woman, she praises God. Her healing's not merely about her spine, it's about her dignity, and she's no longer invisible, but she is defined by her ailment. She is named a daughter of Abraham. This is what grace does. Grace renames us, Grace claims us as beloved. Grace says, you are more than your shame, more than your illness, more than your mistakes, more than what society says about you. For 18 years she was bent over, but in one moment of grace, she stands tall, claiming her identity as a beloved child of God. And we need her story. Because there are so many places that we get pushed down. Maybe you carry grief that has folded you inward, or shame from your past that keeps your eyes on the ground, or perhaps a systemic injustice that has you bent low, racism and sexism and homophobia and poverty, or maybe you're weary at life itself, or the constant pressure of debt. Maybe caregiving for a loved one has worn worn your body and spirit thin. Maybe depression or anxiety presses on you until you can't breathe. Or maybe the endless news cycle of war and violence and political chaos. Maybe it's disappointment. Disappointment with God and the church and with people that we trust. Perhaps addiction has weighted you down. Loneliness has kept you feeling folded in on yourself, feeling unseen and forgotten, or even fractured relationships, estrangement from a child or a sibling or a friend. All of these things can exhaust our spirits, our chronic illness. Can leave us into the hope just feels heavy and unavailable. I mean, it can be anything. I venture to say all of us have something. But here's the good news Christ sees you. Christ calls you. Christ lays hands on you. Christ lifts you up. And when he does, you will find your voice rising in praise. And I can't even imagine the sound of that woman's voice when she praised God that day. And the thing is, it's not merely an individual story, it's communal. This healing of this woman, it confronts a whole community that has learned to ignore her, and it confronts a system of values and rules that honors those things over compassion. It confronts a world that is bereft of people staying bent down. Beloved, we are called to be a community that sees and lifts and restores. A place where those who are bent over by life can be renewed into dignity. A place where the invisible are named. A place where Sabbath is about liberation, not legalism. After eighteen years, that woman stood tall. Her eyes were lifted, her voice was strong. That is what grace does. Grace meets us when we are bent low. Grace sees us when we are invisible. Grace calls us when we are voiceless. Grace lifts us when we cannot lift ourselves. Grace restores us to dignity, belonging, and praise so that we too can stand tall, restored, not by our strength, but by Christ's. Seen, lifted, restored, giving us strength to bring that restoration to others. Amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Word on Baker Street. If this message has spoken to you, share it with a friend. More sermons and reflections can be found at emmanuelbakersfield.org. May God's grace and peace be with you today and always.