STAND UP STRAIGHT!
A sermon based on Luke 13:10-17
By Rev. Rick Thompson

She didn’t have a name. She was simply known as “the cripple, the bent woman”. For eighteen long years, she had been getting worse and worse, so disabled by her bad back that she couldn’t stand up straight and could hardly walk. She had become her disability. When she shuffled by, people would whisper, “Look! There goes the bent woman!”

She was labeled. She no longer had a name—just a label. And we’re still good at labeling people, aren’t we. “Nerd, geek, jock, goth”—school is back in session, and those labels are being tossed around in hallways and cafeterias. “Drunk, retard, bum, crook”—the labels keep piling up. “Man-hater, wife-beater, fag, liberal conservative.” On and on it goes. It’s so much easier to dismiss a person with a label than to remember that he or she has a name.   [1]

A middle aged man sat with his pastor in a restaurant. The pastor ordered ice cream for dessert, and invited his lunch partner to join him. The man refused, insisting he could not tolerate the forbidden calories. “Why are you so concerned about your weight?” asked the pastor. “You’re not fat.”

“But I was,” the man replied.
“Really? That must have been a long time ago.”
“It was. When I was a kid, they called me ‘Chubby’. The name stuck with me all the way through college. I hated it! I smiled when they called me that, but deep down inside, I was dying. And I swore to God that, one day, nobody would ever call me that name again.”
The man’s pain was real. The label, even though no longer spoken, still lived in his heart. He still had a hard time saying it; he still believed it; he still couldn’t forget that he was once known to other as “Chubby”. To himself, that’s what he would always be.
He was a bent man, weighed down by the painful memory of his obesity, still carrying the biting label “Chubby” so close to the surface of his being.   [2]

And how are you bent? How are you incomplete, less than whole, dismissed by the labels you and others impose upon you? What sin, what imperfection, what shortcomings weigh you down? What leaves you bent and burdened? How are you and I among the “bent ones” of the world?

And how does Jesus respond to you, to me, to “Chubby,” and to all the “bent ones”? Isn’t that an important question, too, for those who want to follow Jesus?

The key is in his response to the “bent woman”.
What did Jesus do when she intruded into his life that day in the synagogue?

First, he saw her. Jesus noticed. He realized that there was an actual person there. He didn’t look right past her, didn’t just label her, as we might so easily do. He saw her!
As Jesus did so, he touched her. He touched the one who had been labeled and dismissed for so many years, and a woman at that, and in public, no less. Scandalous!

And Jesus named her. When the leader of the synagogue protested—it was the Sabbath, after all, and no good Jew would perform work on the Sabbath!—Jesus gave her a name. “She’s a daughter of Abraham!” Jesus retorted. “You’d rescue your livestock on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you? Then why not a daughter of Abraham who has suffered for so many years?”
No longer “the bent woman,” she was now a “daughter of Abraham”. She was no different from the synagogue leader, the other worshippers, the disciples, or you and me: she was, above all else, a child of God! SHE BELONGED TO GOD! This poor, crippled, ridiculed woman was granted the same dignity as all the rest of God’s people for all the centuries since Abraham and Sarah became partners in the covenant. And that name far outweighed the burden of her illness, the pain of being ignored and shoved aside for eighteen long years!

And what did the woman do? She stood up straight! For the first time in years, the woman was able to life her head up with dignity and hope! Why? Because had seen her, spoken to her, touched her, healed her, and named her. JESUS REMINDED THE WOMAN OF THE TRUTH SHE—AND EVERYONE AROUND HER—HAD LONG FORGOTTEN: SHE WAS A PRECIOUS, BELOVED CHILD OF GOD!

The woman stood up straight, and responded to Jesus with grateful, joyful praise. She didn’t claim credit for her own well-being. She didn’t doubt, didn’t get skeptical, didn’t say “thanks” and walk away; no, she stood up straight and praised God for the wonderful things Jesus had done!

Because of Jesus, she was able to live as a new person, live in God’s new reality, live as a somebody when once she was a nobody. Because of Jesus, the woman was set free and now, finally, it was Satan who was bound. It was Jesus who empowered the woman to stand up straight, all because he recognized, recognized her need, and granted her wholeness and healing.

Noted preacher Fred Craddock tells of meeting a man one day in a restaurant. Upon learning that Fred was a preacher. The man pulled up a chair and told his story. He told of the sadness and pain in his early life because his mother had never married. In small-town Tennessee, people were especially cruel to fatherless children. They had a name for them, and it was a name nobody wanted to be called.
“We never went to church, were never invited,” the man continued. “But one night, we went when they were having a big revival. The preacher was a big, tall man, dressed in black, with a thunderous voice. The preacher preached up a storm that night, got everybody stirred up—even me, though I had no idea what he was talking about.

“After the service, we were slipping out the back door. The big preacher’s hand touched my shoulder; it scared me. He looked way down at me, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Boy, who’s your Daddy?’

“I ain’t got no daddy,” I said, with a trembling voice.
“Oh yes you do!” boomed the preacher. “You’re a child of God, you have been bough with a price! The Lord God is your Father!

“After that,” the man continued, “I was never the same!”
The man got up to leave, thanked Craddock for listening, and introduced himself.

He was the former governor of the state of Tennessee.
Knowing that he was a child of God enabled that scared, lonely, bent-down boy to stand up straight! Knowing that he was a child of God set him free! Knowing he was a child of God empowered him to become all that God created him to be!

“Child of God.” Isn’t that our name, too? In Baptism, the word of promise was spoken over us when we received the water and the Word: “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever!”

So stand up straight! There is nothing that can completely bend you over or knock you down, because you are a child of God! Satan cannot bind you, sin cannot hold you, death cannot destroy you. Stand up straight! You have a name! And you are free!
Stand up straight—and act like it!

When the woman stood up straight, after all those years, she praised God. And that’s our appropriate response, too. When God does something great and wonderful—something like create a universe, send a Savior, fill us with the Holy Spirit, call us God’s own child, defeat Satan, establish a rule of justice and peace, forgive sins, destroy death—when God does that, our praise of God is called forth. We are set free and empowered to stand up straight, and praise God!

And, we’re called upon to remember the “bent ones” in our world—those who have not yet been released by the power of God, those who are labeled by the world, those who do not know or have forgotten that their name is “child of God”.
In the story of the bent woman, the leader of the synagogue couldn’t see the woman as a child of God; to him, she was still “the bent woman,” the nobody, nothing more than occasion for Jesus to break the Sabbath law.

And how often do we, like that leader, keep others in chains, refuse them their God-given dignity, deny them the same grace-filled opportunity we have received to stand up straight?
Stand up straight, and act like it! That’s what a child of God does. When youth from the high school loiter on our property because they don’t think they have anything better to do, do we label them “troublemakers,” or do we befriend them? When people off the street interrupt us and confront us with their desperate needs, do we label them as “losers,” “poor, lazy folk,” who will never amount to anything? Or do we recognize that they, like us, are entitled to the same dignity and identity Jesus offers when he calls us “child of God”?

Today Jesus says to us and to all the “bent ones” of the world, “Stand up straight! You are a child of God! You are free from all that enslaves you! You are empowered to live abundantly, to live a life of praise and service to God!”

Today Jesus sees us, calls out to us, touches us, makes us whole, gives us a name.
What a wonderful gift!
And we stand up straight! We stand up straight and tall, as God’s beloved children. We stand up straight, praise God—and act like the children of God we are!

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T   [1] The theme and treatment of the nameless woman, named by Jesus, are inspired by William Willimon’s sermon, “What’s In a Name?”, in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 26, No. 3, July/August/September 1998.

·        [2] The story of the preacher and “Chubby” is a personal story shared by William Willimon in his sermon: “What’s In a Name?”, in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 26, No. 3, July/August/September 1998.