NOTE: These stations were a part of our worship in lieu of a sermon. Each prayer station involved a kinesthetic activity that aimed to depict what each person was praying for.
Station One: A Woman 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.
Jesus encounters a woman in synagogue who is “bent over and could not straighten up at all.” The NIV says that she was “crippled” but the Greek is far more mysterious and perhaps telling. The passage says that she suffers from “weakness” or “frailty” “of spirit” and not necessarily the physical disability of being “crippled” (the same word here is translated as “weakness” in 1 Cor. 15:43 and 2 Cor. 13:4). The language, in other words, is used to describe oppression and powerlessness and not a disease. Furthermore, the passage doesn’t say that she is healed but “set free.” The religious system that Jesus encounters often sought to disregard and oppress women. Even Jesus’ own disciples could be “astonished that he was speaking to a woman” (John 14:27) and a common morning prayer at the time had Jewish men thanking God that they were not a gentile, slave, or a woman. A careful reading of the passage, therefore, suggests that her physical ailment potentially was due to a domination system that literally bent women over (compare our expression, “being bent out of shape”). For her to stand erect in a male religious space represents far more than a healing. It reveals the dawn of a whole new world order – the kingdom of God. Some see it, “praise God,” and are “delighted” while others are “indignant.” Which one will you be?
Reflection: What are some of the words, actions, and attitudes in our world that bend women out of shape?
Activity & Prayer: You are invited to take one of the bent objects out of the bowl and straighten it (NOTE: some are more challenging others). While you do so, we invite you to pray for women who have been bent out of shape by sexual harassment, negative stereotypes, and hurtful words. As you unbend your object, prayerfully imagine a woman in your life being “set free” by Jesus and “straightened up.” When you’re done, you may set the straightened object beside the bowl.
Station Two: A Woman Set Free
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.
Jesus declares that this bent over woman is “set free” (vss. 12 & 16). The unique and striking language helps clue us into the nature of her affliction. The phrase “set free” isn’t normally used for healing or even demons. It can mean “depart” but also “liberate,” like a political prisoner, for example (Matt. 27:15, 17, 21, 26). The word also refers to the release of someone to do commissioned work (see Luke 8:38-39). Of course, one shouldn’t forget that by healing her on the Sabbath Jesus was also restoring the Sabbath to its original meaning of release from human bondage. When instructions were first given for sabbath-keeping in Exodus 16, God was communicating in the strongest possible terms that God’s people were now free—free from all aspects of their bondage to the Egyptians. In Jesus’ kingdom ministry, such Sabbath-like-freedom from bondage now applied directly to women. By speaking to her publicly, calling her forward in the midst of the male-dominated synagogue, and declaring her “set free,” Jesus sought to dramatize the radical inbreaking of God’s rule which sets people free from Satanic and systemic oppression. Jesus liberates her and she praises God.
Reflection: What are one or two ways that you can join Jesus’ kingdom ministry of liberating women?
Activity and Prayer: You are invited to prayerfully take up one of the pieces of paper with oppressive statements about women and rip it up. As you do so, slowly and carefully, we invite you to pray for opportunities to help women be “set free” from demeaning jokes, systemic inequalities, and physical violence. As you tear the paper, pray that all bondage and oppression against women would cease.
Station Three: A Bible Bound
14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader 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 your 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?”
Anyone familiar with the Gospels should not be surprised at this turn of events. Jesus has just performed a prophetic miracle which lifts up and reveals the heart of God toward women and religious leaders are “indignant”. In fact, they oppose Jesus and his work by quoting the Bible (see Ex. 20:9-10, Deut. 5:12-14). The debate over the Bible and women continues today. If we wish to read the Bible as followers of Jesus, we must always remember that Jesus reads it sabbathly. That is, he reads the Bible in ways that privilege compassion and human need and flourishing over and above readings which hurt people. This is precisely the reading strategy he promotes when he says, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The leader of the Synagogue, however, chooses not to read the Bible in a freeing way but adopts a strategy that keeps the woman “bound.” Jesus condemns such a reading noting that they already extend such a freedom to their animals but not to people and implicitly connects their position to helping Satan. We don’t want to read the Bible in a way that helps the Devil, that harms women, that keeps people alienated and afraid. We want to read the Bible with Jesus sabbathly so that love and liberation can take place.
Reflection: When have you experienced the Bible being read in a way that binds people? What has helped you read the Bible in a way that brings freedom and liberation?
Activity & Prayer: You are invited to take a pair of scissors to gently and carefully snip one or two of the black threads that bind the Bible in front of you. While you do so, we invite you to pray for readings of the Bible which release women, create freedom, and hearken back to the ancient egalitarian prophecy of Joel 2:28, quoted by Peter in Acts 2:17-18, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophecy . . . on both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit.”
Station Four: A Daughter of Abraham
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.
Jesus completes the miraculous healing of the woman bent over by also speaking healing and miraculous words. It’s a unique moment in that Jesus coins a phrase that exists in no other place within Scripture or in the ancient world: “a daughter of Abraham.” Through this one-of-a-kind phrase Jesus encourages the woman in a previously unheard of way as being both a commissioned actor in God’s redemptive drama and a full recipient of its promise. Her identity prior had been wrapped up in her infirmity and a lesser-than-theology that privileged men as “sons of Abraham.” Now her identity is established by the Son of God himself who declares her to be an equal kingdom partner in God’s redemptive work to restore and reclaim the world begun all the way back in Genesis with God’s missional promise to Abraham himself.
Reflection: As we watch this scene with a sense of wonder, which group do you find yourself currently with? Are you located with Jesus’ opponents and their humiliation at challenging the work of God or are you standing with the people who “were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing”?
Activity & Prayer: You are invited to prayerfully write a personal response to this story. Perhaps you need to confess and ask forgiveness for treating women as second-class citizens in God’s kingdom and need to be a herald of God’s healing. Which woman might need your repentance and forgiveness or healing? Or maybe you have been the recipient of great love from a woman whom Jesus has liberated and you wish to give thanks. Take a moment and prayerfully consider how God might be calling you to respond and to whom you might be sent.
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