07/28/2021 BENT OVER
Luke 13:10-13 Now HE was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. And when JESUS saw her, HE called her and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” And HE laid HIS hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised GOD. [Revised Standard translation]
DISCUSSION
JESUS was a teacher. HE spoke in parables in order to try to open his listeners’ minds and hearts to the word of GOD. HE taught “by example” in the way HE loved others, in the way HE “saw” people who suffered. HE extended HIMSELF to the poor and to people in need--the lost, the ignored, the poor, and many in bondage by sickness and sin.
HE taught lessons of service, sacrifice, compassion to community and in a world that favored, “separation,” “racial bias,” “religious bias,” “elitism” “self-interest,” and “bondage.”
The synagogue was a Jewish place of worship. It was the place where the religious leaders often gathered. However, the prominent sects of Judaism during the time of CHRIST---the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Essenes [some might even include the Zealots], however, believed themselves “separate” from each other and from the “common” people.
The name “Pharisee” by definition meant “separated one” for they saw themselves as Hebrews who “separated themselves” from every kind of impurity, according to the Mosaic law of purity. The Pharisees were so caught up in the “letter of the law”-- ritualistic handwashing, avoiding “sin” and “sinners”-- that they often missed “the SPIRIT of GOD’s law,” which JESUS demonstrated.
According to Smith’s Bible Dictionary1, there were seven kinds of Pharisees, including for example, “Bleeders: who to avoid looking at women shut their eyes and so bump their heads;” “Mortars: wearing caps in the form of a mortar, covering their eyes from seeing impurities;” and “Fearers: who keep the law for fear of a judgment.”
The Pharisees probably walked by this woman every day, as if she were part of the dirt on the road. They did not “see” the woman.” Some Pharisees, like the “Bleeder”, would have looked away, shut their eyes, looked right through her (as if she didn’t exist), or intentionally crossed over to the other side. The idea that someone would interact in public with this woman, extend a hand to this woman must have been an “incomprehensible lesson” for the Pharisees. The sick, all women---but especially women like her--- were to be avoided. Any Pharisee would vehemently proclaim to love GOD and the Mosaic law---but would not want to associate with this woman.
When JESUS had compassion for this bent-over woman. HE taught a lesson on love. HE demonstrated that in order to show love for GOD, we must love “one another,” including “the lost,” and “the bent over.” HE wanted each of us to know that no matter “how bent over” and “bent out of shape” we may be, HE can lift our burdens, straighten out our lives, and set us free.