Bent Over Unable to Stand

Bent Over Unable to Stand

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

August 25, 2013;14 Pentecost, Proper 16, Year C

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 13:10-17)  Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

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As I entered the International Terminal in Atlanta a few weeks ago headed to Africa, I stopped at a display I’ve looked at before.  It’s the airport exhibit honoring Dr. Martin Luther King.  There are pictures, handwritten notes from his speeches, a suit that he wore on a significant occasion.  I had not noticed before, but the exhibit continues on the back side of the display, and as I went around to the other side, my eye was arrested by something familiar.  I recognized a picture.  It was the side of a building with familiar columns and a balcony.  It was the courthouse on the square in my hometown of Oxford, Mississippi.  And in the foreground, the top one-third of the photograph, was the sign that hung on that building during my childhood:  “Ladies Rest Room – Whites Only”.

This week is the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” when a quarter of a million people gathered to call for full civic and economic rights for African Americans.  It was the setting for Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. 

For three hundred years, black people in America lived burdened, oppressed lives, like the woman in our gospel today, “bent over and unable to stand up straight.”  In my hometown we had separate schools, separate drinking fountains, separate waiting rooms and public entrances.  Our neighborhoods were segregated and so were our churches.  Black people were not allowed into restaurants or soda fountains, motels or the front seats of buses.  Or in the voting booth.  All of this was legal.  It was the law of the land, enforced by police and judges.  Sometimes laws are bad.  Sometimes what everybody thinks, is wrong.

On this week fifty years ago, Dr. King stood upright and tall upon a high podium and reminded the world that fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation the life of an African American “is still sadly crippled by the manacles segregation and the chains of discrimination,” living “on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity… an exile in his own land.”  Dr. King reclaimed the founders’ promise of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

At age 23, John Lewis was the youngest speaker that day.  He had already been arrested 24 times in the non-violent struggle for equal justice.  He had been beaten severely on several occasions.  Today John Lewis is in his twenty-sixth year of service as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I heard him tell a story on the radio the other day.  It was from 1987, when Congressman Lewis returned to Montgomery to help dedicate a civil rights memorial.  An elderly white man came up to Lewis and said, “I remember you from the Freedom Riders.”  Then Lewis recognized him.  He was Floyd Mann, Alabama’s safety commissioner in 1961 and a dedicated segregationist.  Mann believed he had reached an agreement with the Birmingham police chief that when the Freedom Riders came to town there would be no violence.  But as the Riders got off their bus, a white mob with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains moved to attack, unimpeded.  There were no police present.  It quickly became violent and bloody.  On his own, Mann “charged into the bus station, fired his gun into the air and yelled, ‘There'll be no killing here today.’  A white attacker raised his bat for a final blow.  Mann put his gun to the man's head.  ‘One more swing,’ he said, ‘and you're dead.’” 

Remembering that day, Congressman Lewis spoke softly to the now elderly Floyd Mann, “You saved my life.”  They embraced, and Lewis began to cry.  “I'm right proud of your career,” Mann said, as they parted.

Floyd Mann stood up for John Lewis and a small group of Freedom Riders when they were bent over and unable to stand up straight from the blows of bats and chains – people whom Satan had bound for 300 years – and Floyd Mann set them free from their bondage that day.

Did you hear the story last week of Antoinette Tuff, the bookkeeper at an elementary school in Decatur, Georgia.  A man armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition entered the school and fired one round into the floor.  She called 911 and stayed calm and gentle as she kept a conversation going between the gunman, herself and the 911 dispatcher.

He told her he had “nothing to live for.”  He wanted to kill himself.  “No. You don't want that,” she told him.  “You gonna be okay.  I thought the same thing.  You know, I tried to commit suicide last year after my husband left me, but look at me now.  I'm still working and everything is okay.”

He mumbled something about no one wanting to listen to him.  “I’m sitting here with you and talking to you about it.” 

He told her he should have gone to the hospital.  He was off his medication.  She told him she would try to help him.  “Let’s see if we can work it out so that you don’t have to go away for a long time.” 

Antoinette kept talking and listening, until finally he said he was sorry and put his gun down.  “It's gonna be all right, sweetheart.  I just want you to know that I love you, though, okay?  And I'm proud of you.  That's a good thing that you're just giving up and don't worry about it.  We all go through something in life.”

Antoinette Tuff saw a man whom most people would only see as a threat, a monster.  But she could see him as a human being, “bent over and unable to stand up straight.”  With words of understanding, compassion and honesty she verbally laid her hands on him and set him free, simultaneously freeing children, police and everyone in that school. 

The scripture says, “Perfect love casts out fear.”

Wherever people are “bent over and unable to stand up straight” – wherever people feel oppressed, stifled, boxed in, burdened and powerless – the perfect love of Jesus casts out fear, insisting that every human being is God’s child, created in the image and likeness of God, beloved of God, therefore worthy of the perfect love of God that casts out fear.

There are all kinds of laws that cripple human beings in the name of high principles – sabbath laws, immigration laws, insurance laws, moralistic laws, debtor laws, laws of privilege and place.

Jesus simply sees the bent-over woman and heals her on the sabbath.  Floyd Mann simply sees defenseless people and stops the violence.  Antoinette Tuff simply sees a scared man off his medication and talks him down.  Compassion in action.

We can look at today’s gospel from two perspectives. 

You may be that woman.  You may be “bent over and unable to stand up straight” for countless reasons.  Jesus says to you, “Stand up, erect and tall.  You are freed from your ailment.”  Don’t let your burden oppress you.  For you are God’s beloved.  As Antoinette Tuff says, “Don’t worry about it.  We all go through something in life.”

Or, you may see someone like that woman.  It is your calling to be her advocate.  Put your hand and your power on the side of the oppressed, and stare down the enforcers of oppressive sabbath laws.

It's all about love.  Perfect love.  God’s perfect love.  Let God love you so infinitely that you can stand up straight and tall.  Let divine love flow through you so perfectly that you can help others stand up straight and tall.  We all need our place in the sun.  The Son of God gives us that place, and invites us to share the light with everyone, especially those who are bent over and living in the shadows.

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