Atom“Seeing with Jesus’ Eyes, Acting with Jesus’ Love” Luke 13:10-17
“Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And…there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.” v. 10
I thought she was a bit cranky in the way that she responded. I had walked into the hospital room and seen her lying on the bed, eyes closed. Her white gray hair showed signs of a recent perm, but today it was a bit disheveled, witness to the difficulties she was enduring…difficulties that had brought her from the nursing home to here. The arm connected to the IV drip was thin and frail, the skin marked with age spots. We had not met before, so when she opened her eyes and turned my way, I said in rather loud voice – what my children call my “preaching voice” – “Hi, I’m Pastor Wade from the Lutheran Church…” She winced and closed her eyes again, “I’m old,” she said. “I’m not deaf.” How easy to see and to assume. Or to see and to not see.
“When people look at me,” he told me, “I don’t think they see me. All they see is this wheel chair. They see me as handicapped – a cripple – and that’s all. Sometimes they just walk by me without even looking at me. It’s as if they think that because I can’t walk I have nothing to offer.” How easy to see and to not see.
If you’ve ever felt like that…like people see your physical appearance and assume they know you. Or even look past you or ignore you because you are only the guy in the wheelchair, or the woman who can’t see – as if you have no other life, then you probably have a sense of what the woman in this gospel story experienced nearly very day of her life. At least for the last eighteen years.
Life had been so full for her before the pain started – even as a single woman who never married. For whatever reason, the right man had just never come along for her, but she had never felt that this somehow left her without meaning or purpose. She knew God had given her a calling. She was the only child of her parents and as they aged she had taken careful care of them and their needs, honoring and loving them right up until the time they slipped from this life to the next. But it was not only her parents’ lives that she had involved herself in. Again and again she had made herself available to neighbors needing an extra hand in caring for their own families, tending to a sick child for her cousin, helping with market chores when a neighbor’s wife was recovering from childbirth, cleaning the home of a friend of her parents’ who had just lost his wife. She was known up and down the street as a kind and caring neighbor.
But then the pain in her back had started, just below her neck. It was only a nuisance at first but then it became more intense and the only way to find relief was to bring her head forward and down, to arch her neck and to curl her spine. It made the pain bearable, but it also restricted her movement, and over time her back locked into a curve and the only view she had of her world without turning her body, was a view of the ground before her feet. This meant that year by year her ability to get around the community and to lend a hand to family and neighbors was more limited. So she rarely went out any more. It took longer to do her own chores and it was too hard to navigate the streets. She became more and more disconnected from those in her community…and in these later years when she did go out to the market or to the synagogue, people seemed to no longer recognize her. They no longer knew her as Levi and Elizabeth’s daughter. They no longer knew her as Miriam, the one who could always be counted on when you needed a tender, caring hand or a skilled seamstress who could sew or fix anything. They only knew her by what they now saw…by the curve of her back and eyes cast down toward the pathway. Sometimes she even overheard someone referring to her as “the bent woman,” which meant that fewer and fewer people knew her and that when they saw her they didn’t really see her.
There are some of you here this morning that have that sense about yourself. There are probably even more who are not here who sense that. Your sense is that when people see you they don’t see you…not the real you. They see a caricature, an image of you that is not you…at least not all of you. They see your walker, or your oxygen tank, or they see that you are grey-haired and shuffle when you walk. They see you as they guy with the tattoos or the girl with body piercings, the woman who lost their husband, or the man whose wife is in the Alzheimer’s unit. You are a student at the ALC…or one who didn’t finish high school. You are the one who twenty three years ago was driving drunk and rolled your car, killing your best friend. When people see you…that’s what they see…and they don’t see you, all your life, all your thoughts and questions. They don’t see what you bring to life – even their life – because when they see you, they only see your “bent back.”
She was sure that’s how they would see her too as she made her way into the synagogue that morning – late again, of course, as it was getting harder and harder to get going in the morning. They would see her, but not see her. But she had not counted on Jesus the rabbi from Nazareth…the one that everyone had been talking about, the one she had come hoping to hear. She heard his voice as she entered, heard him telling of God’s kingdom come. He had paused then and as she found a place near the wall, she heard him call out, “Woman, come near.” Someone touched her sleeve. “He’s speaking to you,” they said. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him beckon to her and so carefully, oh so carefully she began to edge toward him. And then he was on his feet moving toward her. “Woman,” he said, “You are set free from your ailment.” What? Had she heard right? You are set free? And then his hands were warm upon her shoulders and liquid heat began to flow through her body and down her spine and the pain and tightness began to ebb from her until she was able to raise her eyes and then to straighten her neck and finally to look up into his eyes – into those bright, smiling eyes that looked on her with such compassion.
She was dimly aware of the complaints of the rabbi in charge, who was insisting that Jesus was out of order – that this was not synagogue business, this healing, and it was certainly not business to be done on a Sabbath. There could be no Sabbath business in fact, other than reading God’s word and listening to for God’s voice. But she knew that she was hearing from God even as he protested – right here, right now as Jesus touched her hurt and healed her spirit. And she breathed her thanks loud enough for all to hear. “Dear God, I thank you for hearing the cry of my heart.” And then Jesus smiled at her turned to those gathered… “Do you not see what has happened here? Do you not see as God sees? You see clearly the needs of your livestock but not the needs of God’s children. You see her bent back and do not see her as God sees – as beloved daughter, bound by an illness and pain, bound by Satan – the enemy of God’s created purpose – and in need of freeing. Is this not what Sabbath is also about? Is not Sabbath about the God who sees and hears and frees?
It is a reassuring word, is it not? That God sees what others do not? That God sees past our “crippled body” or crippled spirit?” That God sees what our neighbors and perhaps even our church does not see and says, “Child of mine…I see you and know you. You are daughter and son, not because of what you have to offer me. And you are not excluded by what you lack. You are mine because I have given you life in your birth and in your rebirth through the death and resurrection of my son, Jesus. When others do not see, I do see.”
When those in the synagogue did not see past her bent back, Jesus saw. And I have to think that must have changed the way the rest of them saw ever after. At least it should have. Whenever another man or woman came through the door with a life situation that might have limited them, they must have looked at them as Jesus did and thought, “child of God.” And beckoned them closer that they might know it to be true. Do you think so? I would like to hope.
And I have to believe that is the change that Jesus would work in us as well. That we might also see what he sees, what God sees…not a wheelchair or a walker or “a punk kid,” but a sister or brother that we might not only see, but also hear, and hug, and heal as the presence of Jesus in this community. We might not be able to bring the physical healing that Jesus did here – but we can bring the deep healing of the heart that causes the one who has been healed to sit or stand a bit straighter and to rejoice in the hand of God touching their lives.
“I thought I would never fit in,” she told me. “But they wheeled me into God’s Faithful Followers and someone saw me and knelt by my chair and said, “We’re glad you’re here. Tell us about you.” And as she remembered, she sat up a little straighter and her eyes sparkled.
“Finding friends was tough,” he said. “I was new. We moved from a little town in North Dakota…only 17 kids in my class and suddenly there were 200 and they all seemed to know each other and the teachers knew them. I didn’t even know where to sit for lunch let alone who to sit with. On the third day, one of my teachers saw me and brought his lunch over and sat across from me. ‘Must be tough getting to know people,’ the teacher said. ‘I moved in high school, too, and it was hard. I wasn’t much of an athlete or musician so people didn’t exactly chase after me.’ He laughed. ‘I just wanted you to know I’m glad you’re here. Tell me about you.’ And I did, and he said, ‘Lunch tomorrow?’ And the next day there were two other students with him. We’ve been doing lunch ever since.” And as he told me, he stood up a just a little straighter and his eyes sparkled.
Friends of Jesus, it is the work of Christ in us to help us to see with his eyes and to act with his love. God help us. God help us to see not only outward appearances, but to see what Jesus sees, a child of God, and to bring healing and hope to these whom Jesus loves. Pray with me, please…
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