The Healing of the Bent Woman (Luke 13:10–17)

This Sunday’s gospel introduces us to a woman bent low for eighteen years (Luke 13:10-17), unseen by her neighbours but seen by Jesus. Her story is a story about visibility — about who gets noticed, who is ignored, and how Christ restores dignity to those the world overlooks. In a week when asylum seekers have once again been targeted and made invisible, her story feels all the more urgent. Here’s the sermon I prepared for two small Warwickshire congregations, about seeing as Jesus sees, and learning to be seen ourselves.

---

10th Sunday after Trinity, (Proper 10C) – Readings: Isaiah 58:9b-end, Luke 13:10-17

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this woman before,
this woman who has been crippled and bent for eighteen years,
even though she is highlighted in the gospel for today, from Luke’s gospel.

It makes me wonder how many people like her I’ve missed,
how many I’ve ignored, how many have gone unseen.

Because there are so many like her, bent, broken and distorted – for so many reasons.
Some suggest this woman suffered from spondylitis,
but there is no such speculation in the gospel reading.
He simply says she was crippled by “a spirit”.

I think that Luke has done this woman a kindness by being non-specific
because we can now see (or not see) her as being one of so many
who are bent, bowed, broken and distorted by so many things,

Bent by burdens too heavy to carry.
Bowed by debt that never goes away.
Broken by the loneliness of being ignored.
Distorted by prejudice and judgement.

She was not one to catch the eye.
People like her know how to remain invisible.
They instinctively know when they’re not to be seen.
Often their very survival depends on this.

But in the middle of the synagogue that day, Jesus sees her.
Without her even looking his way, he sees her and recognises her.
He sees the shape she’s in,
But while others saw a bent back, a twisted frame, a person to be ignored,
Jesus sees a woman, a daughter, someone worthy of freedom.

This is the gospel for the day,
for the everyday,
for these days when so many backs are bent,
when our common life is so twisted,
when so many people go unseen and ignored.

We could even say that Truth herself is bent and twisted these days,
Truth broken by lies,
Truth bowed down by manipulation,
Truth distorted until it can hardly be recognised.

But we have to be careful here.
Because when we make this woman a metaphor, we risk doing again what everyone in the synagogue did that day: not seeing her.
Not seeing the woman Jesus saw.
Not seeing a person with a name, a story, a life worth restoring.

Jesus does not see a symbol. He sees a daughter.
He does not free an idea. He frees a woman.

Her healing was not easy or quiet.
It was something that disrupted the synagogue
and made the ruler of the synagogue indignant.
It unsettled the powerful, exposing their hypocrisy
and everything wrong with the community.

To get to see her, Jesus had to defy those
who kept the rules that kept her invisible.
In the words of Isaiah: this was Jesus
doing away with the yoke of oppression,
doing away with the pointing finger and malicious talk.
In his eyes, this woman was a “daughter of Abraham”,
a sister, a neighbour, a friend:
someone worth seeing.

And notice how Jesus names her: “daughter of Abraham.”
That’s the same name he will later give Zacchaeus,
that little man, the tax collector
who had to climb the tree to see Jesus,
and for Jesus to see him.
He was another one the crowd preferred not to see.

She had been invisible in her suffering.
He had been invisible in his shame.

She was bent low, unable to lift her head.
He had climbed high, trying to catch a glimpse without being seen.
But both of them were restored by the eyes of Christ.
Both were claimed as heirs of God’s promise.
Both were called back into community.

And that tells us something about our own calling.
Because how often do we hear the cry, “Nobody came to see me”?
And how much it hurts.
It hurts when the visit never comes, when the phone never rings,
when someone is left waiting for a doctor,
or waiting for a neighbour’s knock,
or waiting in church for someone to notice.

Neglect is real. And it bends people low.
But the gospel calls us to resist that neglect.
The pastoral responsibility of the church is to share Christ’s way of seeing,
to notice the ones who go unseen,
to draw near to those the world passes by.

And this is a task for the whole body of Christ,
not the work of a pastoral group tucked away in a corner,
or the Vicar.
Together we are called to see as Jesus sees.

We don’t have to look far to know who is still unseen in our own day.
This week asylum seekers have been in the headlines,
As far-right protesters continue to target hotels housing those who have fled war, terror and persecution,
people who have carried heavy burdens already
now find themselves shouted down,
forced into hiding, terrified,
treated as a problem rather than as people.

They too are bowed by the loneliness of being ignored,
bent by the fear of being rejected,
distorted by prejudice and judgement.
Their stories go unheard, their humanity unrecognised.

But the gospel insists Jesus sees.
He does not walk past. He does not look away.
He sees the woman bent low,
and he sees them too, through his church,
not as a burden, not as a threat,
but as sons and daughters, worthy of dignity, worthy of freedom.

Our calling is to see as Jesus sees,
and to resist the voices that would make people invisible,
to listen, to welcome, and to see.

But there’s another side to this.
Because sometimes it’s not just that others fail to see us —
it’s that we resist being seen.
We lower our eyes.
We keep our distance.
We make ourselves invisible.

Why?
Because we fear what people will think.
Because we don’t want to be a burden.
Because we’ve learned it’s safer not to be noticed.

That was the woman’s story, bent down for eighteen years.
Between her and her community there was no confidence.
But when Jesus restored her, he began to rebuild that confidence too.

And this is what Isaiah imagines: a community where confidence grows.
Not the brittle confidence of the powerful,
but the deep confidence of a people who know they are seen by God.
“Then your light shall rise in the darkness,” says Isaiah,
“and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and you shall be like a watered garden.”

That is what happens when we dare to see one another,
and when we dare to be seen.
Confidence grows.
Trust grows.
Permission grows.
And a community that once left people bent low
becomes a community that lifts people up.

And so the story comes home to us.
Together we can grow the kind of confidence in Christ and in one another
that gives us permission to be seen for who we are.
Together we can retell stories like this gospel story
until we know deep down that Jesus sees us too.

Not as mistakes.
Not as problems.
Not as metaphors.
But as sons and daughters.
Worth seeing.
Worth loving.
Worth setting free.

---

Luke 13:10-17
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. 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.

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?”

¹⁷ When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.