Can we all stand up straight in our freedom?

first draft with thanks to Suzanne Sykes

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Psalm 71: 1-6, (VU p. 789, part one)
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 13: 10-17
Bent Over
This passage speaks to our age of anxiety.  Worries about the economy. The issue of unempoyment.  Climate change.  All create personal and societal aniexty.

The bent over woman lived in a world of worries and anxieties. There was always the question of what the Romans were going to do next. Would they round up people and crucify them as an example of the futility of any ideas of independence or justice? Would there be enough food to feed her household? Would there be enough even for today? Much less tomorrow? Was her physical affliction really a sign of sin? Had God really abandoned her? Were the temple priests right? Did her infirmity really mean she was not welcomed by God nor fit to be in God’s presence? Was this world the only world possible? Could life be different? better?

She was literally bent over by her burdens, her responsibilities, her worries and anxieties. She could no longer stand upright - look others in the face, face life directly. Her worries had beaten her down.

She was pointed at the ground, at the present. She couldn’t stand upright, face forward, look at the future. She was caught in a perpetual everlasting dismal present. No wonder she was bent over. She was without hope.
Jesus comes along and answers all those questions. He doesn’t change the situation, he changes her attitude, her perspective. He gives her and all those watching a different way of thinking and living.

The text tells us that he says she is set free. Jesus frees her from her burdens, from all that weighs her down and crushes her beneath its load. Jesus unbends her, unburdens her, stands her upright, points her toward the future. He releases her from her worries, from being excluded and ostrasized and gives her hope. He restores her to her relationships - her family and neighbours whom she can now see face to face. He offers her a vision of the world as God sees it and loves it, and she accepts.

The bent over woman is us when lose hope, when we are burdened down with anxiety, worry and fear. She is us when we think that nothing we do can make a difference to our situation, our world.

We have times when we are the bent over woman. We have times when we are burdened down with anxiety, fear, doubt, worry. We have lots of worries. Especially since 9/11 our world seems a lot less safe and secure. And maybe it really is. And maybe, because of 9/11 we just notice. That what was true for a lot of people in the world before then is now also true for us. I don’t really know. But the world seems scarier than it did.

Then there is the worry of global warming. Do we even have enough time to correct the damage wehave done? Or is it already too late. Then there are energy shortages and nuclear power, pollution, pesticides, food safety. Not to mention the church. We worry if the church means anything any more. Will it matter to our grandchildren? Will it even continue to exist?
Our list of worries goes on and on. Lots to worry about, burden us, weigh us down and bend us over.

Bend us over so that like the bent over woman, we cannot see anything but the problems in our present. We cannot see ahead - into a future with hope.
We need Jesus to set us free from our anxieties to unburden and unbend us just as the bent over woman did. We need Jesus to show us hope. We need Jesus to show us God and restore us to God’s vision of the world - God’s world of beauty, abundance, harmony and compassion.

Life always presents us with a choice. On the one hand we can accept the world’s definition of reality. Then the world is a place of scarcity, competition, danger and threat. On the other hand we can see the world as Jesus saw it - as God’s world that God loves - a world of beauty, abundance, grace and peace.

We all can live out of the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer - for anxiety is the greatest most widespread addiction in our time - Help me to change the things I can change, to accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference. It is wisdom, the wisdom of God, the wisdom of discernment that is the spiritual gift we need in our day. The wisdom to know what we can do andcourage and perseverance to do it, and acceptance to let go of what is beyond us.

I do know that there isn’t much I can do to about national security. So I am not going to worryabout it. I can change my light bulbs to energy efficient ones. I can reduce the amount of garbage I produce. I can compost and garden without pesticides. I can protect the stretch of river that I live
on by planting trees and shrubs that hold the soil and preserve the river bank. I can look for food that meets the “under 100 km limit” and shop in stores that honour that request. I can drink fair trade coffee. I can make a difference in small ways to value up occasions of well-being and goodness in God’s world. I can insist on seeing and living and caring for the world as God’s creation of beauty and abundance.

That is what Jesus offered the bent over woman. She gave her worries to Jesus and that freed her to glimpse the world as God loves it. When we see the world as God’s world we look for signs of hope, of beauty, of peace and grace and we work to value them up - to make them more visible, more  beautiful and more lasting.

Like the bent over woman, we too can replace anxiety with gratitude, worry with abundance and fear with celebration. Just by giving our anxiety, our fears and worry, all that weighs us down and bends us over to God. Then we have room for hope and a vision of a future.

Each of us can let go of our fears and anxiety. When we give our fear and anxiety to God we are freed, unbent to act to change the world for the better. When we give our fear and anxiety to God, when we join our individual acts of caring together we begin the healing of our world. Our individual
actions are valued up by the work of others and together we actually change the world. We make it more whole and just, more compassionate, abundant and beautiful. More like Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God.

   I think this is one of the instances where circumstance, reflects into what one reads.  Today is cleaning day and I just came here for a bit of break.  First thread I see is 'What Bends you over".     First thought, "iron stains in the bathtub."  I just spent over half and hour bent over and scrubbing them off.   Had to stop because my hand actually got tired. 

    So I click the thread a read, oh this isn't a humorous type thread but one with serious and interesting questions.  So I go a read the scriptures you're looking at.   Get to Luke and guess what 'all I can think about is it in terms of housework and being held in bondage to this durn hard water that stains everything orange.  Gosh would I like to be free from it some days.  

     I know you are talking about bigger things then housework or iron stains so I've been trying to see if I can use it as some sort of metaphor about something bigger.  Can't seem to though or at least in a way that doesn't sound really superficial and cheesy.  :)   I want to be free of housework!   Nope doesn't quite cut it.  Too mundane.

Anyways at least I'll have something bigger to think  about while I'm tackling  the toilet.   

Sometimes bending is better than breaking

So, witch, bending over then becomes resilience..

Could this also be a lesson for our churches that they should be encouraging and supportive and not twist God's (Christs) message to mean something else?

Why does it take Jesus presence to point this out? It seems the further we stray from God's truth, that Jesus is required to redirect us back.

Was this woman a poster child for how a church can be so far from the truth and cripple us?

Interesting thread...for me this is very much about consequence and the 'bonds of freedom' (to borrow from an aptly named book title of the same name about existentialist ethics). 

Firstly, on a more random note, these scriptures make me think  about the ethical imperative I have to act morally/authentically in the world to realize my freedom which as the existentialists might say can only happen once everyone else is free. 

(Obviously this seems counter to the 'might is right' attitude of many --that one's freedom can/will/should only come about at the expense/loss of someone else's.  one reason why social justice is so important.)

More specifically, my own very personal answer to "what bends me over" currently is the consequence of past action.  For instance, I have spent a lifetime coping fairly poorly with clinical depression which I didn't seek to remedy (a case of "not knowing what was binding me").  Recently, I have sought a remedy with very effective results --to the point I feel like I've had a personality transplant.  I can clearly look at many of my negative past actions which, if seen through the lens of a "medical condition" can be explained perhaps --can even be seen as bondage or subservience to something dominating me. However, through the lens of my recent clearer, positive, non-angry thinking --freedom--I can only be completely mystified as to how or why I would have made those decisions, said the things I said to so many people, spread so much negativity.  

The upshot is still, however, bondage --I am ashamed of my past actions and although I have the freedom to put things right, and perhaps everything is forgiven,  not everything is mendable (consequence).  Can I stand upright in my freedom in the wake of consequence?  I'm not sure I can.  Not yet anyway.