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My first summer in seminary I did a field placement in a United Methodist Church retirement community. One of the residents, Annie, suffered the condition that this woman in our reading suffered. It’s more than just being hunched over. It’s completely bent over at the waist and unable to stand up. My first encounter with Annie was interesting. She had a reputation for being abrasive and grumpy which she lived up to. It was nearing a mealtime and so the residents were making their way to the dining hall. I could hear Annie coming up behind me from down the hall. She used a simple old style, inexpensive, rattle-tattle, metal walker that she was quite rough on. Sometimes she rolled it, and sometimes she picked it up and slammed it down. She came up beside me. She was thin and quite wiry with long, white hair. She turned her head to the side and looked up at me with what seemed to be a permanent scowl and quite abruptly said, “Who are you?” I answered, “I’m Randy. I’m a chaplain intern here for the summer.” She abruptly replied, “Oh.” Then, she looked at me again and grunted, “Hmph”, and down the hall she went to the dining room. I asked the fulltime chaplains about her later that day and they said “That’s Annie. She’s a bit...”
I always think of Annie when I come across this passage and why she was so, for lack of a better word, grumpy. Think about it. Try to imagine being in her place, in her situation of never being able to stand up straight. You can never stand eye-to-eye with someone. Hugs are very “quite awkward”. If you have to walk in the midst of a crowd of people as we were, there’s no seeing where you’re going. Most of what you see are backsides. Then to look at someone, you have to torque your head to the side and look up. To see where you’re going you have to crank your head back. Being bent over like that puts a person in a posture where people are always looking down on you seemingly with a bit of pity. I don’t know if she was in pain, but I can’t imagine her not being in considerable pain, especially her neck. Pain messes with you…especially chronic pain. Her perspective would have already been a bit damaged by the angle of lowered status from which she had to view life but then the depression that accompanies chronic pain would have put all that on over the edge. It would take a very resilient person to not be grumpy. And who knows what else she had been through in life. What loses she may have suffered and the grief she bore. That Annie hurt was so obvious and so it’s not fair just to write her off as grumpy. She needed to be uplifted, strengthened in spirit so she could straighten and stand in wholeness. I always tried to be especially kind to her when I saw her, though my greetings were usually met by a grunt. Eventually, I did get a smile one day. One can only keep trying.
Looking here in Luke, we find a woman bent over like Annie whose situation was dramatically changed by Jesus. She got to stand up straight again and praise God for Jesus healed her. She had what Luke calls “a spirit of weakness” from whom Jesus set her free. It was a spirit, some sort of entity, that had her bent over so that she couldn’t stand up straight. Like Annie she wasn’t able to look up. People were always looking down at her. They probably also considered her cursed and would have been unwilling to have any kind of contact with her. Considerable pain likely affected her outlook. Chronic pain is debilitating in every way – emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually. It takes your joy away. It can even turn you from God.
I imagine this woman’s story as being a bit like the story of Job. She was faithful, so Satan decided to send a crippling spirit to cripple her in spirit to try her faith. But it didn’t work. Indeed, she suffered greatly for eighteen years. But still, after eighteen long years of that twisted affliction, she was still coming to synagogue on the Sabbath. Well, on that particular Sabbath, Luke doesn’t tell us that she came to synagogue because she knew Jesus was there and she believed he could heal her. It seems she was there because her faith in God was a core component to how she lived with that senseless affliction. She didn’t come looking for Jesus. Rather, it was Jesus who saw her and the initiative to heal her. As the prophet Isaiah said, “He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless…Those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not become weary. They will walk and not faint” (Is 30:29,31). Jesus said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your weakness.” And, he touched her. He laid his hands on her. She took strength and stood up straight. For the first time in eighteen years, she could look people in the eye, face-to-face. For the first time in eighteen years, she could give a hug that wasn’t “quite awkward”. For the first time in eighteen years…no pain. You bet she began to praise God and she did it so exuberantly that it became a disturbance. For eighteen painful years afflicted by a spirit of weakness she did not give up on God but kept coming, seeking her God, and finding comfort at the synagogue…then finally, a joy unspeakable. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).
Her praising eventually infected the whole congregation. Luke said they were rejoicing because of “all the wonderful things that Jesus was doing”. Our English translations just do not do that phrase justice. In the Greek it says that they were expressing joy because of “all the glory-things that Jesus was bringing into being.” Here was Jesus, the Lord God become human, doing things through which God’s glory shone. He was putting to right those things that are inexplicably hurtfully contorted by evil in the Creation God called “very good” when he completed it and then rested on the Sabbath. These “glory-things” that Jesus was doing brought joy that was uncharacteristic of the typical, humdrum that characterized the typical, dutiful worship/teaching at the synagogue on the Sabbath. At that synagogue on that Sabbath the glory of God was shining forth. God was with his people. They were being visited by God who was actually, in real life giving them reason to have joy. It became as the Psalmist says: “Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy” (Ps. 126:5).
I’ve been reading the Psalms a lot lately. They are good to read in difficult times as they give us the authentic voice of people struggling with very painful difficulties in a faithful way and they also show us that God indeed responds in loving-kindness out of loyalty to us. There’s a verse that got my attention one night: “But as for me, God’s presence is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell about all you do” (Ps. 73:26). God's Presence with us is the "good" that we all seek. But “Good”, what is “good”? Looking back at the Creation Story in Genesis 1, when God saw all that he created and called it good and then very good on the sixth day after he created humanity. This goodness of his creation delighted God. So, at heart the Creation is fundamentally “Good”. In fact, Psalm 33:5 says, “the earth is full of the Lord’s faithful love.” God’s loving kindness is foundational to God’s very good creation. We can get a sense of this foundational "goodness" when we find ourselves in God's presence as we look around and breathe and see and feel the beauty and joy and love of the moment of just being where we're at and we somehow sense that God is present to us there. A beautiful sunset isn’t God, but God is certainly there reposing with us and appreciating it.
I also think “good” is profoundly relational. In fact, I believe the “very good” that God pronounced is found in relationship. It is “very good” when we feel at home, secure, beloved with family and friends and even strangers sometimes, but yet there's even more. It is very good when there's an inexplicable and inexpressible sense of a bond of love with another and we know that it is God we have to thank for bringing this bond into existence. This “very good” points us to God. It is “very good” when the loving kindness of God is embodied in our relationships, in marriage, in family, in friendship.
It is also “very good” when healing froths up in whatever its form be it emotional, physical, or relational. There is indeed brokenness in God’s very good creation. On the other side of this goodness, is the twisted stuff that leads us to ask why God permits the un-good, the evil. Why did God allow Satan to afflict this woman with a spirit of weakness? Why did God allow Satan to wreak havoc on Job in a way that just seemed like an unholy bet? Why does God allow our faithfulness to be tested by means of just plain horrible and unfair things that happen? Why does God let the good in our lives suddenly and with great hurt just go to pots? I don't know the answers to questions like those and you have no idea how much I wish I did. But I have learned to seek refuge in the presence of God and there find the strength of hope and the glimmers of joy to hold me while I wait for the healing to come, for God's joy-filled restoration of the good. While I wait for the “Glory-thing” to come about. While we wait God avails us to his presence that we may find our “good” in God alone, in God’s healing presence, that God who assures us that we are God’s beloved.
I’ll end just by saying that Job didn’t get his answers. In fact, God shut him up with the Goodness of his presence. Satan afflicted Job because of Job’s faithfulness and God let him do it. We don’t know why and it doesn’t seem like one of God’s better moments. Satan murdered all of Job’s children and took everything Job had and then afflicted him with a horribly gross and painful skin condition. The only comfort Job received was in the form of hypocritical friends relentlessly accusing him of some hidden sin for which he was being punished. But Job was innocent. Finally, God came to Job in the form of a life-threatening storm. As animals of all sorts were fleeing the storm and passing by Job as he sat on the heap of ashes that he had become accustomed to, God bluntly asked Job who he was to question the God who made everything; that jackal, that lion, that hippo, and even the sea monsters. That sounds harsh, but…Job suddenly realized he was in the “very good” presence of God and that changed everything. There in the midst of a life-threatening storm that Job probably wished would kill him he simply says, “I had heard reports about you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I reject my words and am sorry for them.” The presence of the Lord was his “good”. The injustice of all Job went through paled in comparison to the goodness of the presence of God with him. Too often we get caught up in the hurt of our own situations and forget God is with us and we can find rest and strength in God. Even so, God still hears us, still sees us, is still with us. He is still inclined towards us with loving-kindness and fierce loyalty. Sit in Good’s presence and wait on him. There is the “good” in which God strengthens, heals, and restores us. Amen.
