People today talk about mental maps. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase before. Our mental maps represent to our minds a world that’s familiar to us, a world where we can find our place. They give us a sense of how people, places and things belong together.
Mental maps are vital. We can’t live without them. That’s why if there’s something in our world that we cannot locate on our map, we feel uneasy, even anxious and insecure.
Consider, for example, a church congregation. Why, for example, does the color of new carpet in the narthex upset people? Granted, the color of the carpet may not always be the real issue; it may only bring to the surface issues that have been festering for a longer time. But sometimes it is the real issue.
We may be surprised and even indignant at people for lashing out at one another and even dividing over what seems so trivial. But this response does not always give due consideration to the fact that we all have mental maps. Changes in the church’s interior, or changes in the order of worship or the music selection—these tend to upset us so much because we can’t locate them on our mental maps. They render a world that’s unfamiliar to us.
We’ve all witnessed or even experienced a variation of the following scene: Someone suggests a new and improved way of doing things. The others react: “That’s not the way we do it here. We do it this way.” And when he asks: “Why?” the others respond: “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
The leader of the synagogue in our gospel lesson has a mental map. Its coordinates are determined in large part by the law. When we use the term “law” we of course mean the Law of Moses.
The Law of Moses regulated every aspect of life. It imposed order on time and space. It renders to the Jewish people, both then and now, a world that is familiar to them. It gives them a sense of how people, places and things belong together.
At the heart of the Jewish law is the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment goes as follows: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work.”
It was an ordinary sabbath. The Jewish people are at worship at the synagogue. There happens to be a guest preacher. He’s Jewish and devout. And he knows the Scriptures. Indeed, his reputation as a dynamic expositor of the Word of God has been growing. All is right with the world.
But then there’s this episode. It involves a certain woman. The people probably know her, but probably not very well. You see, she has an ailment that’s crippled her, so that she’s hunched over, making her appearance rather grotesque. As a result, she’s been ashamed of showing her face in public.
This shame is compounded by a belief common at the time. People believed a physical defect is divine punishment due to sin, either committed by the individual or by his or her parents.
That belief too determines the coordinates of their mental maps. It dictates the place to which such a person belongs. And that place is on the margins. This woman ought to know and respect her place.
Our mental maps can make us rigid and inflexible. But Jesus is not bound by them. To be sure, he acknowledges that we need them. He implied as much when he said that the sabbath is made for us. But to this he added that we are not made for the sabbath. Our mental maps serve us so long as we remember that we do not slavishly serve them.
Jesus sees the woman and calls her over to him. This attracts the attention of the ruler of the synagogue. No doubt he’s already aware of his reputation, not only as a dynamic preacher, but also as a healer.
This episode has upset the order of things for the synagogue ruler. He is so disturbed by what is taking place before his eyes that he cannot see a human being in need behind his map. All he can see is his map.
He is a synagogue ruler. We don’t know if that corresponds exactly to pastor. Perhaps it is closer to parish administrator. Nonetheless, he is still a leader of a faith community. Is he really exercising appropriate leadership?
The woman responds to the call of Jesus. We wonder if she ever foresaw that she would be the cause of a public disturbance, that she would be the occasion of controversy, that she would be the center of attention. In the Gospels, a person who responds to the call of Jesus incurs personal risk. And to take on that risk requires courage.
Cynics and atheists say that religion is a crutch. It’s for weak people who are too feeble-minded to deal with life on its own terms. But if you’ve been in church ministry long enough, you find that that’s not really how it works. Jesus calls each one of us, just as he called this crippled woman, to a genuine encounter with him. And in presenting himself to us he at the same time presents us to ourselves and to our own need, to our own misery.
And that can be frightening. We see what’s at stake. If we respond to the call, we see that we can no longer make excuses for the ways we have tried to treat on our own the ailments that have crippled us. But those ways are all that we know. They may not be the most effective, but at least they’re familiar to us. When Jesus calls us, he calls us out—out of our self-deception, out of our biases and preconceptions, out of our self-complacency. All these serve conveniently to keep us in our comfort zones.
“Do you want to get well?” It seems an absurd question. “Of course, I want to get well.” But this is the very question that Jesus posed to the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, as recorded in John’s Gospel. And the invalid made excuses for why he was still lying there with other disabled people at the pool after 38 years.
Luke makes it a point to tell us that this woman too was crippled by her ailment for a long time—18 years to be exact.
Now of course in her case there may have been nothing she could have done about it. It was just a painful and ugly reality that she had learned to endure.
But what if the 18 years tells us something not only about the duration of the condition, but also about the heart of the woman? What if it implies that she preferred to stay in hiding? That she has not until now sought out help, because she despaired of ever finding it? What if the bondage in which Satan kept her not only refers to the physical infirmity, but also to the shame at her disfigurement, which prevented her from showing her face in public?
If this is the case, then Jesus’ words: “woman, you are set free from your ailment” take on added significance. Her ailment bound her not only in body, but also in heart, mind and will.
When you hear people recount their experience of a genuine encounter with Jesus—they call them “testimonies” in certain church traditions—they will say that he freed them. That is to say, he unshackled their heart, mind and will, so that they became free to make healthy, constructive choices for their lives, choices that conform to God’s will.
The great hymn writer Charles Wesley gives classic expression to this experience in the well-known and beloved hymn And Can it Be, which he wrote on the occasion of the conversion of his brother John to Jesus Christ.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening
Ray— I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was
Free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
After Jesus lays her hands on her, the woman stands up straight, able to see the one who has healed her. We don’t know what she says exactly, but we see the appropriate response to what has happened: she begins to praise God.
But as we hear her praises in one ear, we hear the synagogue ruler’s indignation in the other.
He turns angrily to the congregation: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day” (Luke 13:14).
Is he really giving a proper interpretation of the Law? Or is he making a proper application of it to this case? Jewish tradition stipulates a number of activities that, if undertaken on the Sabbath, constitute a violation of the Law. But it’s nowhere clear in those texts that healing is one of them. Besides, is it not “lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” as Jesus asks earlier in Luke (6:9). Do not even the religious authorities affirm this to be true when they untie their ox or their donkey from the manger and lead it away to give it water?
In making the judgment that Jesus is breaking the fourth commandment by healing the woman, the synagogue ruler ironically is destroying the ends for which God gave this commandment in the first place: the well-being of his people and his own praise.
As Bible student Chelsey Harmon observes, “Denying God his glory and praise is quite a serious sin for a synagogue leader, for this is part of the very thing he has been tasked with protecting and promoting. Even though they probably did not intend to become it, they have become ‘opponents’ to the very God they wish to serve and worship. No wonder the leaders felt such shame when Jesus confronts them with their reality.”
How many of us pastors and church leaders have driven people away because our adherence to religious custom prevented us from responding to their immediate need? How many of us have thereby denied God the praise due him and a fellow human being the care he needed? As Bible student Philip Bock cautions, “We must be careful not to let the commitment to religious practice according to our custom outweigh our responsibility to show compassion to those in need”
The woman is healed, the religious authorities are put in their place, and the congregation joins in the woman’s praise. The episode has a good ending.
But one last question remains: How does Jesus ensure that the woman continue standing straight and tall after healing her?
Remember that the mental map of her congregation is hers too. It has told her that her place is on the margins. She may no longer be crippled, she may be able to hold her head up high, but how long before the identity that she has internalized the past 18 years, makes her once again droop her shoulders and hang her head?
We can feel so low for so long that we forget our worth and dignity as a human being created in God’s image. And our posture will betray this.
That is why it is significant that Jesus refers to the woman as a “daughter of Abraham.” She’s no longer that “crippled woman.” That’s an identity that no longer applies. But in case there’s any doubt, she can recall what Jesus has said of her, that she’s a daughter of Abraham. That is to say, she’s a member of God’s covenant community, God’s own people, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.
When asked recently to comment on the malaise that characterizes so much of the Western world today, Carl Trueman, author and professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, replied: “People don’t know who they are.”
Political parties, activists, advocacy groups, school curricula, advertisers, social media, —these are the sources of our identity today. They form the mental maps of so many in the world. But when you think about all the conflicting voices that we hear from these sources, is it any wonder that people today don’t know who they are?
Far better to find our identity in who Jesus says we are.
With Jesus God is glorified and people set free—from Satan’s power, from sin, and from shame. Where once the message was “not today” “not for you,” the promise of God is “Today is the day!” “It is for you.”