The Ugly American, a 1958 novel by
Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, tells the story of an American engineer,
Homer Atkins – a man with an ugly face – whom the military sent to Vietnam to
build dams and roads. Homer's wife, Emma, accompanied him to Vietnam. She became
curious that every woman over sixty in the village where the Atkins lived had a
bent back. Then she noticed that after the monsoon season, older people using a
broom with a short handle inevitably swept the debris from the streets. Since
wood for longer handles cost too must, Emma found a long-stalked reed and
planted shoots from this reed by her door. She tended these reeds carefully. One
day when neighbors were in her house she cut a tall reed, bound coconut fronds
to it and began to sweep with her back straight. When her guests questioned her
about the reed, she told them where it grew. Four years later, after Emma and
Homer had returned home to Pittsburgh, they received a letter from the village headman
thanking them. The letter read: "In the village of Chang Dong today, the
backs of our old people are straight and firm. No longer are their bodies
painful and bent. You will be pleased to know that on the outskirts of the
village we have constructed a small shrine in your memory . . . at the foot are
these words: 'In memory of the woman who unbent the backs of our people.'"[1]
In today's gospel reading,[2]
Jesus attends Sabbath worship in a synagogue. A woman, who has had a bent back
for eighteen years, enters. Jesus recognizes her pain, touches her
compassionately, and the woman stands erect, her back healed. I think that most
of us would be amazed and grateful to witness a similar cure. Some of the
worshipers in the synagogue, however, object. Jesus healing her on the Sabbath violated
the Mosaic Law's prohibition against working on the Sabbath. Jesus responds
passionately: "You hypocrites! You water your animals on the Sabbath. This
woman is much more valuable than any animal." Through his words and actions,
Jesus shows us who God is and God's great love for us.[3]
Jesus' passion reflects the depth of his
love for his neighbor. Passionate love refuses to accept evil, regardless of
its cause, duration, or the person or persons who suffer the harm. By healing
the woman on the Sabbath, Jesus both emphasizes the personhood of women and the
healing power of God's love.
Luke does not tell us why the woman's back
was bent. The story with which I began this sermon about the bent backs of the
elderly women of Chang Dong village in Vietnam describes a systemic evil:
people could not afford long handles for their brooms and this caused women,
who did most of the sweeping, to have bent backs by age 60.. Traditional
Vietnamese culture devalued women and consequently the village power brokers,
all men, did not prioritize discovering how to prevent women developing bent
backs. The gospel's silence about the cause of the woman's bent back leaves
open the possibility that she suffered from a medical problem, perhaps had a
genetic defect, or was the victim of some systemic evil. Whichever is correct,
Jesus' passionate love for his neighbors pierced an ethos of neglect and
self-righteousness to straighten the woman's back. God calls Christians, we who
try to walk the Jesus path, to love others with a similar passion, to act to
end evil wherever or whenever we see it.
The healing occurred in the village synagogue.
Village synagogues were small buildings, approximately the size of the open
area around the chancel altar. The walls were lined with stone benches on which
attendees sat. A wooden cabinet, called the Ark of the Covenant, occupied the
position of honor opposite the door. The Ark stored the Torah, or whatever
portion of the Torah that the village was fortunate enough to possess. The Ark
also stored other scrolls the village owned, such as ones upon which the words
of the prophets were written. Synagogue services began and ended with prayer.
Then someone would read or recite part of one of those scrolls. A man would
then expound upon the text's meaning.
The setting is important. [4] First, most
village residents attended. Similar to the way in which their worship
represented the essence of the Jewish village, our worship represents the
center or essence of our Christian community. Second, synagogue attendees
expected to hear God speak to them through their prayers, scripture reading,
and teaching. Hopefully, we gather with similar expectations. Third,
disagreements over the meaning of the scriptures were commonplace. More than any
other major religion, Judaism teaches that vigorously debating a text's meaning
sifts the chaff from the wheat, thereby distilling human opinion from God's message
for God's people. In other words, Jesus healing the woman and then engaging in
a disputation with some of the synagogue attendees about his actions benefitted
both the woman and the gathered community.
Finally, Jesus in healing the woman laid his
hands upon her. This action, which we preserve in ordaining clergy, consecrating
bread and wine during the Holy Eucharist, and praying for the sick, symbolizes
both giving and receiving power. By laying his hands on the woman, Jesus
dramatically demonstrated God's embrace and acceptance of her as one of God's
children. No longer was she an untouchable woman. Furthermore, by laying his
hands on the woman, Jesus symbolically transferred the healing power of God's love
to her.
Three men were walking by a river and they
saw a man walking on the water coming toward them. The first one said:
"Who are you?"
"I'm Jesus," came the reply.
"Well, I've got a real bad back,"
said the first person. Jesus reached out his hand and touched him, and
instantly his back was restored to normal.
The second man saw this happen and said:
"Jesus, my eyesight is really getting dim. Could you do something about
that?" Jesus reached out and laid his fingers on the fellow's eyes and his
eyesight was as sharp as when he was a youngster.
Jesus noticed that the third man walked with
a limp and asked: "What is your problem my good fellow?"
"Don't touch me!" exclaimed the
man. "I'm on disability!"[5]
The choice is ours. Will we, like the woman
in this morning's gospel reading, muster the courage to seek healing or will
we, like the man in that last story, prefer to live in misery and on
disability?
[1] Eugene
Burdick and William Lederer, The Ugly American (New York: W.W. Norton
& Co., 1958).
[2] Luke
13:10-17.
[3] James
Carroll, Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age (New York:
Viking, 2014), p. 132.
[4] The
various elements important for healing are adapted from Dale A. Matthews with
Connie Clark, The Faith Factor (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1998), pp.
223-247.
[5] Source
unknown.
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