Mostly all she could see was her feet and a little patch of floor around them. Her back was so bent that to walk around, she had to look up as far as she could, which made her neck hurt, and which only allowed her to see a little ahead of her feet. She was often short of breath because her crooked back squeezed her lungs. She couldn’t see the faces of the people encountered, or the looks they gave her, but she could feel them. You would think that after eighteen years of this bent-back-hell, she would be used to it, but she wasn’t. Her back, her neck, the looks, still hurt.

It was the Sabbath, and she was at the synagogue. She heard a man’s voice. "Woman," it said, "please come here." She had become very sensitive to people’s voices, and she knew that this voice was full of compassion.

She watched her sandals plod in the direction of the voice, and she could see from the legs around her that people were clearing a path. When she came to the legs that did not move, she tried to look up, to see his face, but she could not. And then, to her amazement, she felt his hands on her head. It had been so long since anyone had touched her. And now she felt these hands lovingly holding her bent-down head. "Woman," he said, "you are set free from your ailment."

And she straightened up. After eighteen years, she stood straight, and tall, and proud. And after eighteen years, she was able to stand and look a person in the face. She stood straight and tall, and looked into the face of Jesus of Nazareth, and she praised God.

I like rules. They provide clarity, predictability, dependability, and they reduce risk. I’m generally in favor of following them. And when I encounter people who break the rules, it often scares me. "If this goes too far, there will be anarchy," I think. "People will start running red lights on purpose," I think.

The leader of the synagogue liked rules, too. When he saw that bent woman set free to stand tall, he scolded them all for being rule-breakers.

And he had good reason to be concerned about this. In Judaism, work of any sort is prohibited on the Sabbath. This is not some obscure rule; this is the Third Commandment: "On the seventh day, you shall not do any work." (Ex. 20:10) Jews were not allowed to kindle a fire in their homes on the Sabbath. (Ex. 35:3) And get this, the Book of Exodus says that they penalty for working on the Sabbath is death. (Ex. 31:15). In the Book of Numbers, there’s a story about a man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath. He is arrested and stoned to death. (Num. 15:32-36)

The leader of the synagogue has been entrusted with maintaining a very serious rule. There were no specific provisions in the Bible about healing on the Sabbath, but in light of the importance of the prohibition against work, the Rabbi’s had ruled that only emergency medical attention was allowed. You could stop the bleeding, but chronic medical problems had to wait until the next day.

So the leader of the synagogue was trying to enforce a very important rule. And if he didn’t, well, doctors’ offices would start opening on the Sabbath, Judaism would unravel, and people would start running red lights on purpose.

Jesus faces the leader and his supporters and says, "You hypocrites! Even on the Sabbath, you untie your animals to lead them to water. And here is a woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, and shouldn’t she be set free from bondage on the Sabbath?" He’s saying, "Do you think it’s faithful to use God’s rules to justify you treating your animals better than you treat this beloved child of God?"

The crowd loves it. The leaders are put to shame. But Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and this kind of rule-breaking troublemaking is going to control how things go there.

This is a healing story, but it is really about restoration of dignity, of self-worth, of status as a beloved child of God. It works on two levels: the individual, and the corporate. On the individual level, this is a story of a person being restored to dignity and value. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in a counseling setting and heard someone tell me something that says that their back is bent, they have been weighed down, made to think that they are unable or unworthy to stand before the Lord. "I don’t think God could care about someone like me. My back is bent." "My father, my mother, my whoever, always told me I wasn’t good enough, and part of me believed it, and that part haunts me now. My back is bent." "I’m an addict. I’ve used and manipulated and stolen and lied. I am so ashamed. My back is bent." When I came to St. John’s in 1998, I went on retreat with the vestry. After we had talked for a while, I said, "This sounds like a parish with low self-esteem." Bill Sims, sort of a village elder, said, without thinking, "We’ll, we’ve earned it!" He was saying, "This church’s back is bent."

Your back may be bent for any of a thousand reasons, some of your doing, some not. Maybe it’s bent only in one part of your life. But if there is a part of your life where you have come to believe that you are not worthy to stand straight and proud, there is a cure, and I have seen it many times. You have to come to believe that God really, really loves you, and is devoted to you, just as you are, bent and all. Think about that bent woman. Jesus lays hands on her and says, "You’re free from your bondage." Suppose she had not thought that anything had changed? She would have stayed hunched. She had to believe that she could stand tall. She had to straighten up.

I’ve seen miracles when people believe that God wants them to stand tall. I’ve seen people really believe that they are really forgiven, and be freed from their shame. I’ve seen people begin for the first time to understand that God doesn’t love them for their accomplishments. They are free.

I’ve seen this church straighten up. This place used to look at its shoes. Now it looks people in the face and says, "We’re not perfect, but by God, we’re the Body of Christ in College Park!"

Last week, a young man came to the door and nervously asked me about our AA meetings. He exuded pain. He was bent so low. "Do I need to pre-register?" he asked. I said, "You’ve never been to a meeting?" "No," he said, embarrassed. He hesitated, taking stock of me, then said, "But I’m going to try to get my life straightened out." I reassured him, prayed with him, and thanked God for the privilege of having been with someone as they began, in a small way, to straighten up. God does not want any of us to be bent. God wants us to be able to look into the face of Jesus of Nazareth, and praise God.

Jesus healing this bent woman is a powerful story that can touch every life. But it is not only about individuals who have been bent. It is also about groups who have been bent low because they are not treated as children of God. One commentator, the Baptist Dean of The School of Theology at Mercer no less, says that there are features in the story that suggest that it is symbolic of "Jesus’ mediation of the kingdom to women who are demeaned, denied their proper status and oppressed by religious and social restrictions. The story of the stooped woman," the Dean says, "is, in fact, the story of many women."

Women’s backs were bent for so long. It was thirty years ago last month that the first women were ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, and they were ordained irregularly in a rule-breaking service conducted by three retired bishops who heard their cry, "Must we wait another day?" As some of you recall, this freeing, this enabling women to stand tall at the altar, was greeted in many quarters with jeers, hostility, schism, and cries that the rules against women’s participation must be enforced.

This following Jesus is a risky business. I like following rules, because that’s not so risky. That’s predictable and dependable. And Jesus is certainly not about throwing all the rules out. Under most circumstances, he scrupulously follows Jewish law, and says that he came to uphold it, not abolish it. He’s no anarchist. Stop at red lights!

But, for people who like rules, he’s a dangerous and risky guy to try to follow because he absolutely will not countenance God’s rules being used to bend the backs of any of God’s people. If he can ever say to us, "You are using God’s rules to justify treating anyone, any group, with less respect than you treat your animals," we’re in big, big trouble. And that’s risky business, because the rule-breaking troublemaking Holy Spirit keeps opening our eyes. As "God at work in the world" opened our eyes to how we were bending the backs of black people, women, Asians, Native Americans, to name a few, following Jesus became difficult, conflicted, and uncertain. Following the rules is so much easier.

On October 2^nd, we will celebrate the Feast of St. Francis with the annual Blessing of the Animals. As we bless our relationships with our pets, I hope we remember Jesus’ words about using religious rules to treat people worse than animals. I hope we can all stand tall, look into the face of Jesus of Nazareth, and have the courage and humility to ask, "Whose backs might we be bending now in the name of God’s rules?" And when we get an answer, and I’m afraid we will, I hope we will have the courage to lay our hands on those people, and say, as I say on Wednesday nights when I lay hands on some of you, "Lord, uplift them, uphold them, and fill them with grace, that they may know the healing power of your love."

It may not have much to do with following the rules, and that does make me uncomfortable. Because it’s always easier to just follow the rules then it is to follow a Savior who keeps saying to the "wrong" people, "You are set free. Stand tall."

The Rev. James H. Pritchett, Jr. St. John’s Episcopal Church, College Park, GA