Proper 16
Have
you seen those t-shirts about the “evolution of humanity?” They show a series
of creatures with the words “Somewhere something went terribly wrong” written
underneath. First, you see a small ape. He’s followed by a larger ape-like
creature, standing a bit straighter. Then there’s a prehistoric human, standing
tall and carrying a tool. Then you see a man stooping a bit over a garden hoe. Then
there’s a man deeply bowed down under the weight of grueling work. Then,
finally, you see a person totally hunched over a computer desk, just as bent
over as the ape. The only thing that’s missing from that shirt, of course, is a
person with a cell phone! Last week, I spent my vacation walking through New
York City bent over my cell phone, eyes glued to Google Maps as if it were
leading me to buried treasure. And I wasn’t alone. The whole mass of humanity
pushing down those bustling Manhattan sidewalks proceeded with bowed heads and cradled
phones. No one looked to the right or to the left or up into the face of
another. Their attention was on their tiny screens. Is the old t-shirt design
accurate? Are we indeed turning into a hunched humanity?
It’s
no accident that the woman described in today’s Gospel is suffering from a
disease that causes her to be bent over, as if by a mighty burden. Technology
might feel like a burden to old fogey’s like me, but the truth is that there
are many kinds of loads. No matter what the century, we human beings all know
what it’s like to be bent over, face to the ground. We can stoop from illness
and age, but also from less concrete burdens. Work, worries, hopelessness,
rejection, stress, addiction … they can all cause us to bow our heads to the
ground and to stoop our shoulders in shame or resignation. Some of us shoulder
small burdens, and some of us are bent double with our weighty loads. Some of
us weigh ourselves down—with unreasonable expectations, with over-commitment, with
worry that we are not enough unless we carry the world on our backs. Others
have burdens thrust upon them: illness, grief, poverty, injustice, racism, war,
oppression. In the Hebrew Scriptures,
the poor and marginalized--the widows, the orphans, the foreigners--are called
the “anawim,” or the “bent over ones.” God cares for them in their
vulnerability, and God calls us to join in lifting their burdens. When we’re
bowed down, we can’t look up to God; when we’re bowed down, we can’t look into
the loving eyes of others. Such an existence is not God’s desire for any of God’s
beloved children.
How
our God must constantly yearn to lift those weights from each of our shoulders.
“Come to me all ye that travail and are
heavy-laden,” Jesus offers in the old translation, “and I will refresh you.” “My
yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” Jesus promises. What would it be like
for Jesus to take whatever is weighing on you this morning and to lift it from
your aching back? Can you imagine the surge of hope, the amazing freedom of
movement? Can you feel what it would be like to stand straight and tall for the
first time in years? To look others in the face as an equal? To share a loving
glance? To see the blue skies and the tops of the trees? To lift your head in
song? In prayer? That’s what happens to the woman in our Gospel. She has been
cursed for 18 years with a heavy spirit, a burden that oppresses her, that
holds her down. For 18 years, she has hasn’t been able to lift her head or make
eye-contact with another human being. Jesus sees her in the crowd. He touches
her and sets her free. He takes her burden from her. And finally, she can lift
her head. She can stand up straight, a full human being. And she can sing her
praises to God.
Of course Jesus heals the bent woman on the
Sabbath, for such healing is a deepening of Sabbath, rather than a
transgression of it. The judging Pharisee was forgetting the true meaning of
Sabbath when he attacked Jesus for breaking the rules. In Judaism, the Sabbath
is a day set apart to mend our tattered lives, to fill them with good things
and to delight our souls with pleasure, resting in God. It is a day for
personal rest, but it is also a day of rest for society and for creation itself.
Sabbath includes a rest from buying and selling, a rest from wheeling and
dealing and making a profit off of the backs of the poor. It’s a day when no
one has to work, a day when all have the same freedom. The wider concept of Sabbath
includes fields that must lie fallow for a season in order to replenish their
soil with nutrients. It includes farm animals who need rest. It includes the Jubilee
year, when debts are forgiven and the poor can find hope to start anew. By touching and healing the bent woman, Jesus
is giving her the things that Sabbath is meant to give to us all: freedom,
fullness of life, wholeness of body, and a welcome back into the strengthened
community of her brothers and sisters.
Miracles
like hers still happen today. I recently heard the story of women who survived
the killing fields of Cambodia, during the horrors of the Pol Pot regime.[1]
These survivors of terrible violence were languishing in a refugee camp, oppressed
for years by a heavy spirit, bent in two under the weight of their traumatic memories.
They could only crouch in their tents. They couldn’t take care of their
children. They couldn’t interact with others. They couldn’t look up to face the
future. One of them, however, was strong enough try to help her fellow
refugees. She used beauty to lift the burden of shame and despair from these
abused women. She invited them to relax their broken bodies in tents of warm
steam. She gave them manicures and pedicures. And then she taught them to give
one another manicures and pedicures. You can be bent over and still do nails,
can’t you? You don’t have to be able to raise your head. You don’t have to be
able to stand and look someone in the eye. But you do have to touch another
human being, gently, on the feet and on the hands. You have to give them a gift,
the gift of feeling beautiful. Through beauty and gentle human touch, these
bent and broken women learned slowly to trust again, to touch again, and finally,
to stand up straight again. They stayed together and opened a home for orphaned
children. They loved and were loved, and they were free. They were no longer
bent over. They had fullness of life, wholeness of body, and a welcome back
into the strengthened community of their sisters.
I
think that we Americans could use more healing Sabbath in our lives these days,
as well. There is so little rest, so little time for praise and joy, in our frenzied
modern lives. I was talking to a young mother just yesterday who spoke with
passion about the short glimpse of Sabbath that she experienced at a child’s
birthday party with her daughter: in just one tiny instant, the sun was
shining, a cool breeze was blowing, and children were out on the lawn giggling
with delight in getting their faces painted with beautiful colors. “Suddenly,
time stopped,” she sighed. It was just one of those brief moments, all too few
and far between, when a parent’s burdens are lifted, life is full, community
flourishes, and love flows. Those are the Sabbath moments, whether they happen
on Sunday or a Monday or a Thursday night.
A
few years ago, I met with a refugee from the Congo and asked her what she
missed most from her home country. “I miss the Sabbath,” she said. As a maid at
a hotel, she does not have control over her schedule, and she desperately needs
her job for her family to survive. She has no say in when she will work, no
real choice in how she can provide for her children. She does not mind hard
work, and she is grateful for her job, but she spoke to us with some
indignation. In her home culture, she explained, no one works on Sundays.
Sunday is a day to spend in worship, in time with family, in rejoicing and
delight. It is a pause in the back-breaking grind of poverty, a breath of
freedom in lives filled with hard work. “In America,” she said with disdain,
“there is no Sabbath. There is no time for God or for one another.” For her,
the Sabbath is not a duty; it is a life-saving way to stay upright amid the
pressures that our society heaps upon the backs of the anawim.
“O
God of the Sabbath, this is the day and this is the hour when [men and] women
long oppressed learn to stand with dignity, when your healing escapes our
desire for control: may your joy stretch the fabric of our hearts and inspire
us to loose each other’s bonds; through Jesus Christ, the shamer of the
powerful and the raiser of the dead. Amen.”[2]
