Bent

The woman who was bent:

10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. 14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, "There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath." 15 The Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?" 17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. - Luke 13:10-17


The UMC's "Right's of Persons with Disabilities":

¶ 162 I) Rights of Persons with Disabilities—We recognize and affirm the full humanity and personhood of all individuals with mental, physical, developmental, neurological, and psychological conditions or disabilities as full members of the family of God.

We also affirm their rightful place in both the church and society. We affirm the responsibility of the Church and society to be in ministry with children, youth, and adults with mental, physical, developmental, and/or psychological and neurological conditions or disabilities whose particular needs in the areas of mobility, communication, intellectual comprehension, or personal relationships might make more challenging their participation or that of their families in the life of the Church and the community.

We urge the Church and society to recognize and receive the gifts of persons with disabilities to enable them to be full participants in the community of faith. We call the Church and society to be sensitive to, and advocate for, programs of rehabilitation, services, employment, education, appropriate housing, and transportation. We call on the Church and society to protect the civil rights of persons with all types and kinds of disabilities.

From The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church - 2008. Copyright 2008 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.

You know, Luke's 13th chapter presents a very uncomfortable moment for me. A few weeks ago, the pastor at the church where I attend preached on this particular text. As he began his sermon, I began looking around uneasily. I felt a tightness in my chest that I soon realized came from the fact that I was holding my breath. See, the woman sitting next to me in the congregation might actually be described as a woman who is bent. I do not know what her specific disability is, but I can see the braces fitted to her legs and I can see that she cannot stand up straight and that her posture is directed towards the floor. I was uneasy because I felt pretty certain the sermon, in short, was going to say "Straighten up. Jesus straightens us up." It did, and yes, it's true, but I was secretly terrified about the subtext-- mainly--that if you are somehow short of what society defines as normal, there is something wrong with you. No, I do not believe that is the message of Luke 13 nor do I believe that was the message from the pulpit that morning, but so often we come across people and institutions who treat disability as significantly less.

I have grown to love a particular liberatory theology of a professor from my seminary, the late Nancy Eiseland. In her book "The Disabled God" she challenges the notion of the Imago Dei as she envisions God riding around in a "puff wheelchair" in heaven...an unsettling image for a lot of people. In her book, Eiseland writes, "Who is the one we remember in the Eucharist? This is the disabled God who is present at the Eucharist table—God who was physically tortured, arose from the dead and is present in heaven and on earth, disabled and whole... Christ’s resurrection offers hope that our nonconventional, and sometimes difficult, bodies participate fully in the imago Dei…God is changed by the experience of being a disabled body."

My prayer is that we will remember that we are all created in the image of God (and should, perhaps, expand our understanding of what that means), and that we should re-member those members of the body of Christ who we seem to cast aside as less because they make us feel uncomfortable alongside them. My thought is that we should cast off the social understanding of "disability" and of "normal." My read of the bent woman in Luke 13 is that Jesus does something remarkable for her and for all of us. No matter what has your eyes cast to the floor, be it physical, emotional or spiritual, Jesus Christ incorporates you into his perfectly imperfect, scarred and pierced body, not as a sort of member, but fully.