"Bound and Bent"
Alice was a woman in previous church. Arriving early every Sunday, always asking if there was anything she could do, but also always asking if she could have this or that, had I brought her a present. She lived in a group home near the church, labeled as mentally handicapped. It took a lot of patience to deal with Alice for she was always in your face at the wrong time, thought nothing of interrupting conversations, telephone calls, and "more important" things. The saddest part of the story was that her life could have been different. I learned that Alice had been institutionalized as a child for some small reason. Rather than getting the diagnostic testing she needed to help her overcome a learning disability or some such issue, she was placed in a home for what was then called the mentally retarded. She was there for so many years she began to act in the way she was treated there. She knew nothing else. And now in her 70's she lived bound by the expectations of how life had treated her, where life had kept her.
Alice is not unlike the bent over woman that Jesus singles out in this morning's text. The setting is the synagogue. Probably Jesus is sitting with the men of the synagogue crowded around him. While teaching, he notices a woman appear in the crowd of the synagogue. He singles her out and calls her over. We can only imagine how the synagogue leaders are already beginning to stir uncomfortably at his bringing this woman to attention in their midst. A woman, let alone a crippled one had no place there. Jesus continues the outrage by giving her even more notice and declares her free from her ailment. The leaders' splutter to the crowd, there are six other days, does he have to do this on the Sabbath of all days!!!
Jesus comes back at them with a rabbinical argument. His challenge to them is first around property issues. He argues that you are allowed by Law to untie one of your animals that is bound and lead it to water on the Sabbath. Therefore he argues, you should be able to free this bound woman on the Sabbath, for she too would have been seen as property in that time. Jesus then takes his argument a step further. He names this bound and bent woman as a daughter of Abraham. He gave her equal status with the men of the synagogue. They were the sons of Abraham, members of the covenant people. By naming her a daughter of the covenant he was freeing her not only from the illness that bound her, but also all of the restrictions that society had placed on her as a woman. She was as free to receive the grace of God as any man of her day was. Her honor in this moment is contrasted by the shame of the synagogue leaders. God's grace is open to all.
After the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, a whole new social structure came into being. The structure that had bound people in their place was broken. From that time a modern day parable of Jesus' actions in today's text is seen in this delightful, even if apocryphal story of how not everyone liked this new structure, but how others were willing to live a new reality in creative ways. On a British Airways flight from Johannesburg, a well-off white South African lady had found herself sitting next to a black man. She called the cabin attendant over to complain about her seating. "What seems to be the problem, Madam?" asked the flight attendant. "Can't you see?" she asked. You've set me next to a kaffir. I can't possible sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat!" "Please calm down Madam." The stewardess replied. 'The flight is very full today, but I'll tell you what I'll do-I'll go and check to see if we have any seats available in club or first class." The woman sent a snooty look at the outraged man sitting next to her. A few minutes later the stewardess returned with the good news, that she delivered to the lady who could not help but look at the people around her with a smug and self-satisfied grin. "Madam, unfortunately, as I suspected, economy is full. However, we do have one seat in first class." Before the lady has a chance to answer, the stewardess continues. "It is most extraordinary to make this kind of upgrade however, and I have had to get special permission from the captain. But, given the circumstances, the captain felt that it was outrageous that someone be forced to sit next to such an obnoxious person." That said, she turned to the man who had been sitting next to the woman, and said, "So if you'd like to get your things, sir, there is a seat in first class waiting for you." At which point, as the story goes, the surrounding passengers stood with a standing ovation.
As the church in this day and age my suspicion is that we find ourselves in two places in this story. First we are there with that bent over, oppressed, invisible woman that somehow Jesus notices and singles out. I want you to hunch your neck into your shoulders and then lean forward for a bit. As you are there think of all of the things that bind you in negative ways, things that "keep you in your place," the expectations of others that you have found yourself fulfilling. What it costs to keep those structures in place. In this bent over place it is hard to see much beyond a limited circle. We act in ways that fulfill what others expect of us, even if they are destructive. Sometimes the binding expectations are cultural. When I worked with an inner city youth group, the girls in the group expected to be pregnant by the time they were twelve or thirteen, that was a sign they were loved and validated. Sometimes the binding expectations are placed on us from individual moments in our lives. We are nothing more than old so and so who will never amount to much. Sometimes that which binds us comes from the circumstances and realities of dealing with illnesses of our own or family members. But then all the sudden, in that bent over, shriveled place in your soul here the Jesus calling you, saying "you are set free, I will show you the way, I will teach you how to make whatever the circumstance a life giving one," and his hands touching you and straightening you. As you rise up now, experience that sense of freedom as the bindings fall away.
We are indeed those who have been singled out by God, received the unasked for, unmerited grace of God. We are set free. We are called to be like those in the poem by Emily Dickinson: "We never know how high we are, till we are asked to rise. And then if we are true to plan, our statures reach the skies."
But beware…there is also in us the synagogue leader, with much invested in keeping others in their place. Think for a moment how your perceptions and expectations of another might keep them from growing, from fulfilling what God calls them to. Think even of how your perceptions of yourself serve to keep you bound from growing.
We who are the church have our own reputation for trying to bind God. We try to box God in, determining how and when and under what circumstances God can act in our lives and in the lives of others. We tend to forget that God has set us free, along with everyone else. One of my favorite quotations, that is usually taped to my office computer, and will be once I find the box I packed it in, comes from Douglas Steere, a Quaker active in social ministry following World War II. (Of course I did manage to find the newspaper ad that someone cut and pasted together for me that says you are brilliant and charming…that has already made it to my computer!) Anyway, Steere's quote is this: "God is always revising our boundaries outward." It is a statement that reminds me that God is always pushing me to be more inclusive and open to others, that God is always pushing my boundaries, that I may be more and more one who demonstrates the incredible love of God to others.
That idea is continued in a book called "A Borderlands Perspective" by Daisy Machado. There she rights: "The borders and margins that humans have created to keep and control wealth, power and status have now lost their meaning and usefulness before God's table. To enter and sit at the feast table of the kingdom does not require a green card nor speaking with the right accent of the dominant tongues. The Biblical message is that Jesus has broken down every wall and has rejected the marginality of any of God's children."
Walter Brueggemann, a biblical scholar writes that "Jesus always refused to be limited by what others accepted as inevitable, that he couldn't seem to resist voicing and enacting a different reality born of a countertext-which means that there is a risk in coming to church. You lay down before the gospel everything you and others thought you were and are prepared, instead, to see and live a new reality-one to which Christ calls you! As this church we have chances to live that new reality. We do not have to live bound by out of date perceptions, or worldly limitations. In God s love both the oppressed and the oppressor have been called by Jesus and set free. We are called to live a new reality based on the love and grace of God. "Woman….man….child of God…you are set free!" Will you as a child of God dare to lift up that which binds you-and that with which you have bound others so that all might know they are sons and daughters of God? In the love of Jesus, we have been set free. Go to live as such!!