Our Gospel reading this morning is a tale of bondage and freedom. The bondage and then the release Jesus provides take us into two different ways of living and believing. They move us from a world of glory to the utter reality of Jesus’ cross-shaped new life. And it all hinges on a single word from our Lord.
This crippled-over woman was useless, good-for-nothing in the shape she was in – all curved in on herself. For eighteen years her spine had twisted so far that she was nearly folded up into a package that looked nothing like a human being was supposed to look. They said she had a spirit in her that made this happen, but we ought to remember that’s the language ancient people used to talk about what causes things. While we look to viruses and pathogens as causes of illnesses, people in biblical times didn’t have microscopes or the scientific method. They looked at insurmountable things like illnesses and saw demons and spirits at work – things they had no control over. At any rate, this woman couldn’t stand up straight. This bit of human origami couldn’t unfold herself into a position that would free her to carry on life.
Just before the story of this healing, our gospel writer Luke tells us a bit about how this woman was regarded. Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree. A man who owns a vineyard also has a fig tree planted there. When he comes to pluck a couple figs for his afternoon snack he finds a barren tree. In fact, it’s happened for three years running. So he tells the gardener to cut it down and use the soil for something more productive. Our crippled woman is unproductive. She can’t bear any fruit worthy of the kingdom of God. She can’t tend her household. She can’t serve on the PTA. She can’t dandle grandbabies on her knee. She’s a drag on society. She’s a misplaced fig tree stuck where productive, useful people might better work. And yet, how does the gardener in Jesus’ parable respond? He says, “Hang on another year. Let me work the soil and add a bit of manure as fertilizer. If that doesn’t do the trick, then it might be a good idea to chop the tree down.” Luke shows Jesus doing that very thing to the crippled woman.
All it takes is a word from Jesus to straighten her out: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” The ancient Greek word Jesus uses there is apolelusai (apolelusai), and it means to release. Try this with me: Stick out your index finger on one hand and grasp it with your other hand. Now squeeze as tight as you can. Keep squeezing. Tighter. Tighter. For just a bit longer. Now let go. That’s apolelusai – the release of a muscle or tendon that’s being flexed or held tight. What takes us four words to say in English, “you are set free,” is just one word in Greek: apolelusai. To paraphrase “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” one little word subdues her ailment. One little word and this woman was released from the grip of her illness. It’s no surprise that after living all hunched over for eighteen years she did a quick stretch and started praising God for release from her bondage. That woman was no dummy when it comes to the source of her healing. She knew whom to thank and praise, serve and obey.
What is this word from Jesus? What power does it have? His word is simply himself. He gives himself to her, attends to her, lays consoling eyes and powerful hands on her, and claims her as his own. The bent-over woman comes into Jesus’ presence and he transplants her into the good soil of his kingdom. He turns her soil and adds the fertile mix of his coming death and resurrection – which the world regards as pure manure, barnyard leavings. The Word of God himself, Jesus Christ, is added to her dead limbs and spines and, bam!, fruit appears. The woman can’t stop telling people what God has done, and the crowds hear and rejoice.
Did I mention that all this happened on the Sabbath day? Oh, yes, it did. And there’s the rub. Jewish religious law is very clear on this count. It would come to include 39 categories of work that could not be done on God’s day of rest, including carrying, writing, erasing, harvesting, plowing, weaving, cooking, building, tying and thirty others. When Jesus heals the woman, he’s breaking the Sabbath command to rest. And any time you break any of these lesser commandments, you’re also breaking the granddaddy of them all, “You shall have no other gods before me.” By deciding yourself what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath, you’re putting yourself before God who himself commanded the day of rest.
The leader of the synagogue will have no truck with that. He knows the law and knows that it doesn’t give an inch. He lives his entire life within the parameters of this legal system. For him, virtue and piety are the criteria for both future success and God’s good pleasure. If you don’t act as religiously as required, there’s no place for you in God’s kingdom. Jesus blows it all away by assuming his right to bring people into the kingdom when and where he pleases. So the leader of the synagogue calls Jesus on it. And now we get to the crux of the matter.
This story of Jesus healing the woman isn’t really about physical sickness and infirmity (although God does promise to bring healing to all). No, in this story we find the very thing Jesus, the great physician, has come to set right: sin. While the crippled woman had a spine that curved her in on herself, the leader of the synagogue is even more curved in and needs Jesus’ release just as much. Jesus claims all of the creation for his own. He says he wants to “draw all unto himself.” When he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he makes himself the criterion for entry into God’s kingdom. Sinners want nothing to do with that, neither the leader of the synagogue nor we sinners gathered together today. We’d rather be a part of a system where we can determine who’s in and who’s out. So we look to legalities, immutable commands that allow us to rate ourselves and others and, if necessary, work just a little harder to achieve a future for ourselves. Usually that comes down to being virtuous, pious or religious. But when God takes on human flesh and bone in the person of Jesus, he means to end it all. He says, “That religious business of clothing yourself in piety and virtue? Enough! It’s time to stop that folderol.” For the leader of the synagogue, that was too upsetting. Better the ceaseless demands of the law than the danger of letting go.
That rabbi was just as barren as the crippled woman. He too was curved in on himself, constantly looking at his own navel to see if he was good enough, righteous enough, clean enough. If he’d been alive today, he would have fallen prey to the legal scheme of our own day: the advertising and marketing world that demands of you to buy this, accumulate that, wear these, if you want to secure your future. We’re called on to satisfy those demands, and they force us to look inward to see if we’ve achieved the goals they set before us. When Jesus cuts in our dance with the law and insists on being paired up with us for the rest of his divine gala, we object. We say, “I’m not going to polka with you, because God’s orchestra is playing a waltz. The dance goes like this: one, two, three, one, two, three.” But it’s even worse than that. We don’t just refuse to dance, we take our new divine dance partners out behind the dancehall and let the brutes with Budweisers in one hand and brass knuckles in the other teach him what’s what. When Pontius Pilate presents an option for what to do with a lawbreaker like Jesus, our only answer is, “Crucify him!” We’d always rather stick to our schemes of glory, glitz and glamour than succumb to a life where we are nothing and Christ is everything, our all in all.
It sure would be nice if we could just jinn up our courage and muster the wherewithal to simply decide to answer Pilate differently. If only we had it in us. But we don’t. We can’t do it. We and that rabbi are just as stuck as the crippled woman who can’t straighten herself out. If we don’t have it in us, it’s going to take something outside of us. That something isn’t a thing, but a somebody – Jesus, who heals and straightens and makes new. You see he has come for sinners, and not just to restore you to the possibility of doing something good, but to make something new out of the nothing that is you. You know where your life is headed – to a plot of land about seven feet by three feet or to a cardboard container ready to hold some ashes. Created from nothing, you end up as nothing. And yet Christ comes to make something new out of your nothingness. The rabbi refused to let go of his imagined control and came away having been put to shame. The crippled woman knew she had no ability to fix things, to bear fruit or to stand as righteous before God, and she was given new life. The rabbi demanded commandments and obedience, and that’s what he was left with – the judgment of God. The crippled woman ran into God’s promise in Jesus and was made new.
Jesus certainly isn’t polite about these things. In fact, he bids you to run from God to God. That means Christ pulls you away from thinking all of God’s ultimates like salvation, forgiveness and eternal life depend on your fulfilling God’s demands. And he draws you in to his kingdom where it all hinges on his promise to you. And of course, that’s what the Sabbath was always for in the first place. It’s given not just so you can rest your weary bones, but so that your spirit can rest fully and finally in him, the great physician, the divine promise, the Lord of all life. Is this not why we gather together to worship? We worship so we can confess our nothingness, our inability to find any life in virtue, piety and religion, our unwillingness to anything but our own people. We worship together so we can sing, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” We gather together together so we, too, might be set free, so that we, too, might know a true and eternal Sabbath. We gather together to be straightened out from looking at our own navels and so that we can begin looking to our neighbor’s need.
So how about about it? Look at your navel now and repeat after me: I confess. And now straighten up and look my way and hear what Jesus has sent me to tell you: You, my fellow sinner, are forgiven in his name. You, dear friend, are given his unbreakable promise of salvation and new life. Where before you were curved in on yourself and good for nothing, now you are unfolded and made new. You now know Christ’s gift of apolelusai. Now you can sing God’s praises with that straightened-out, good-for-lots-of-things woman and the psalmist: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.” Now, you former barren fig trees, let’s see if a little fruit doesn’t start growing on your branches. Amen.
