Set Free

Preached at Prescott American Baptist Church

August 25, 2013

Luke 13:10-17

He was teaching. It was the Sabbath day in the synagogue and Jesus was teaching. No word is recorded about what he was teaching before the bent woman entered the synagogue and got his attention. I have had teachers—so have you—who really teach, really live out and model fully the lesson they are trying to pass along to the students.

She entered the synagogue without any expectation that today will be a different Sabbath day than any of the others she has lived. Bent over and looking down, she is accustomed to studying the ankles and feet of her neighbors and friends. Bones are so unforgiving. Once they curl and knot up with arthritis, they pull us toward the ground. She had been looking down for eighteen years. It wasn’t something she expected to change. She went to the synagogue for Sabbath worship because it was her habit, her tradition. Strong inside her like bones,  her tradition of  regular worship was the central architecture of her life. She had been entering that synagogue with a crippling spirit for eighteen years and this Sabbath day seemed like all the others. 

She couldn’t see Jesus, unless his feet fell under her face and into her gaze. She didn’t have to see him. He saw her. And the teacher saw his chance to teach the lesson in an unforgettable way.

She didn’t ask for healing, didn’t request a miracle. She didn’t write out a list of her needs. She didn’t have to say what she needed. Jesus could see for himself that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, had been bent and bound for a long time and she needed a chance to see the faces of her neighbors and friends. She needed to be set free. 

This woman, who gets set free but is never given a name of her own, becomes a living testimony as she straightens up and immediately begins to praise God. She is a testimony to the freedom that God can give and does give to any of us since all of us know what it is to be robbed of life’s fullness and freedom. All of us have been bent toward the ground by one burden or another. 

This week, on Wednesday, we will recognize the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington. It was a march for civil rights, a march for jobs, a march for equal opportunity, a march for freedom. August 28, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to mobilize all of us in this country against the burden of racism, a burden that continues to bend us and twist us and keep us from living freely and fully. We don’t even know how to have a decent conversation about racism. 

Dr. King had a written speech in front of him as he stood before 250,000 people. He was struggling with it, some sentences too awkward to be eloquent. And it was the voice of Mahalia Jackson he heard. “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin,” she urged. And so he left the manuscript and soared freely into a speech that we remember, a speech that inspires us still, after fifty years. A dream. That we might all be free and recognized for our character rather than for the color of our skin. 

Michele Norris , an NPR journalist, created a project she calls “The Race Card Project.” She was curious about people’s individual experiences with race. She sent out postcards and challenged people to write about their experiences with race – telling about it in only 6 words.  Some of the responses:

“She volunteered to sit by me.” 

Drinking from the wrong fountain: Colored.” 

“My great great grandfather owned slaves.” 

“A terrible, unnecessary barrier against love.”

Norris reports that the postcards tell six word tales of heartache, regret, violence, guilt, anger and defeat. The post card stories speak to personal encounters, small unpredictable moments that leave a big impression. 

Fifty years ago a quarter million people stood before the Lincoln Memorial and dreamed of a day when race would no longer define us, twist us, limit us and and bend us over as a nation.

Those who work to maintain the status quo have a job to do. Their voices are loud and the volume makes their voice sound like power and authority. “We do not have a racial problem in this country. We are living in a post racial world. Stop your whining. Get on with being free.”

Yet the President of our nation said recently after the Trayvon Martin verdict: “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. And there are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.” 

Racism continues to bend us over and bind us so that we cannot straighten up and move forward toward the dream. It keeps us from seeing each other, really seeing each other, face to face.

Jesus touches the woman and she stands straight up. Immediately she began to praise God. Her praise and her worship became something new, something far more than dutiful or obligatory. Her praise and her worship were part of the miracle after she was set free from her bent bone stance. This one woman, healed and set free, has sent ripples of connections, understanding and hope through the ages. We know the longing to be touched, straightened up and set free. 

“Tell them about the dream, Martin.” 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of Brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day, even in the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 

I have a dream today…”

Because we share the dream we are committed to the work—every day of the week. Because we share the faith we trust that one day our dreams will be reality. Because we have been touched and healed we know the joy of the bent woman. And that is why we gather here—to be part of the miracle working power of God’s presence among us. To meet the teacher, to learn and to be touched until we are all set free.

Amen