The Mennonite writer, Miriam Toews, has a short story in the most recent New Yorker, called “Something has come to Light.” It reminds me a little bit of the passage from Luke that we just heard about the bent over woman. Remember that famous quote from Karl Barth about holding the bible in one hand and the newspaper (or perhaps The New Yorker) in the other?

Toews writes, as she often does, about an old woman in an insular Mennonite community in Canada who still carries distinct memories (and a few secrets) from her youth. In a last letter to her children and grandchildren, she describes Roland Sawatsky, a neighboring young man whose own sister calls him “an idiot.” The old woman, describes what it was like as a young teen to see Roland Sawatsky play the piano in a small concert where only three or four people attended and “…nobody clapped, because we don’t clap.”

“One other thing I remember from that concert is that he leaned his head all the way back, at times, while he played. I had never seen that before, the head so far back with the throat exposed and his Adam’s apple. I had only ever seen bowed heads. Heads praying or looking at crops or at little children or the floor or what have you.”
The old woman recalls this amazing display, of Roland Sawatsky, and how she returned home that evening.
“I went home. I put my head back as I walked home to see how that felt. It was dark.” (The New Yorker, Aug 25, 2025, p.62)

I wonder, is this Mennonite young woman exploring the possibilities of lifting her head akin to the bent over woman straightening up at Jesus command? And are there other layers to uncover in this Jesus story?

Anabaptist theologian and biblical scholar, Ched Myers, invites us to widen our scope, to expand the way we see and understand the biblical text. He invites us to look at the story of the woman in the context of the rest of Luke, to read the text less as a literal healing and more as an analogy. Myers invites us to wonder how this story relates to our current context.

Let’s start at the beginning of the story. Jesus is teaching on the Sabbath, in the synagogue.

But wait, this is not the first time in Luke that we hear about Jesus on the Sabbath. In chapter 6, Jesus’ disciples pick grain, rub it in their hands and eat it – on the Sabbath. The religious leaders watch as this happens and call Jesus out on it. “Why are you breaking the Sabbath law?” The theological gauntlet has been thrown down.

The very next story in chapter 6, on another Sabbath, Jesus goes to the synagogue where he sees a man with a withered hand. The religious leaders watch Jesus closely. Jesus invites the man to stand in front of everyone. Then he says to the religious leaders: “Here’s a question for you: Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or destroy it?” Then Jesus looks around at all the people gathered there, as if to say “do you dare me?” Jesus says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” The man does and his hand is made healthy. Now the religious leaders are furious. They talk and plot amongst themselves – but they do not confront Jesus.

Fast forward to chapter 13, our story today, where Jesus is teaching again in the synagogue, on the Sabbath. (Maybe teaching is not considered work since in the Jewish tradition you sit down to teach.) Jesus sees the woman who is bent-over, and has been bent over for 18 years! 18 is a number that in Kabbalah, mystical Judaism, represents a whole life. But why is she bent over? Does she need a chiropractor, a physical therapist?

Ched Myers suggests that with the number 18, the writer of Luke gives a clue as to the woman’s economic status. Luke would have known his biblical history: in the book of Judges, in chapter 3 and chapter 10, “Eglon the Moabite king and (then) the Philistines oppressed the Israelites for 18 years. (Judges 3:12-14; see Jd 10:7-8.)” Myers says, “This oppression was economic: they were bent over by hard labor and displacement.” Myers deduces that Luke is indicating that the woman, bent over for 18 years, is economically oppressed; she is crippled – by debt.

Jesus calls for the woman to come to him, to be seen by everyone in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And Jesus says to the woman, “You are free from your sickness.” (You are debt free? If it is an economic sickness, who is really ill?) The woman stands up straight and praises God.

The gathered group rejoices with the woman as she praises God. But the religious leader is infuriated. You can imagine him as he starts to quote scripture. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. This is the commandment. There are six days for work. Come on one of those days to be healed. Save the Sabbath for holy rest.”

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. That is the commandment. And the religious leader focuses on the small print in the commandment, the particulars – don’t work, don’t let your children work or your animals work, or the enslaved, don’t let them work either. Not even the “foreigner” who lives near. This is the way to keep the Sabbath holy according to the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.

But Jesus, who, according to Matthew’s gospel (5:17) came not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law, Jesus keeps this commandment. He goes for the message behind the words, beyond the words. He finds the deeper meaning. When it comes to healing those who are suffering, Jesus keeps the Sabbath holy by bringing people into wholeness, by restoring them to the community when they have been isolated or cut off. Jesus remembers – and honors – the Sabbath by bringing people into shalom, not just holiness. Jesus shows how the Sabbath is a step toward the year of Jubilee, when debts are removed and everyone is free.

We heard this story of the bent-over woman on Friday evening at the multi-faith vigil in Columbia Heights. Hundreds gathered to support our immigrant neighbors and to push back on the military occupation of Washington DC. As a local DC pastor retold this story from Luke, I began to squirm inside. Here we were, Christian and Jewish religious leaders, standing side by side, as the Christian preacher recounted how the Jewish leaders in the synagogue criticized the woman for being healed on the Sabbath. And Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue and his colleagues: “Hypocrites! Don’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from its stall and lead it for a drink? Isn’t it necessary that this daughter of Abraham, bound for 18 years, be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day?”

And like in the text, the crowd (in Columbia Heights) rejoiced and cheered at the prospect of freedom for those who are oppressed, who are burdened for years upon end by medical debt, school debt, credit card debt and the many economic burdens that weigh people down.

When the prayer service ended, my discomfort with this text, that once again pits Jesus against the rabbis, would not leave me. On my way to the metro, I saw a Jewish friend who had been at the event and heard the story. Had it made him uncomfortable, to hear the Jewish leaders criticized this way, straight out of the text? I was surprised when he responded, “Not really. During the time of Jesus, there were different groups of Jews. Not all Jews understood the law in that literal way. I wondered if the Christians were offended by the Jewish story that was shared about still waiting for the Messiah.” What an expansive, gracious response. How good to keep learning from each other.

Maybe it was in Jesus’ day like it is now: The Jewish leaders didn’t see that they were playing right into the hands of the Roman powers that wanted to keep people in bondage, keep the powerless bent-over in crippling debt. Today, Christian Nationalist leaders and prosperity gospel preachers are also ready to go along to get along with the government in power. The Christian leaders who hold the most power are not interested in healing the economic rifts that divide. Their compassion or faith does not extend to those stuck in immoral and demoralizing poverty and shame.

But the story of Jesus, the Sabbath, and the Jewish leaders, does not stop there. In the next chapter, chapter 14, Jesus is invited to dinner at the house of a “prominent” religious leader. There in front of Jesus is a person who suffers from abnormal swelling; today we call it edema. Ched Myers, and the Anabaptist Community Bible, say that in Jesus’ day this kind of swelling symbolized greed. Add an economic lens and Myers says this man represents not only greed but a “lust for wealth.”

The religious leaders are by now all too familiar with Jesus and his “rule breaking” on the Sabbath. Harvesting grain on the Sabbath, healing on the Sabbath. Have the religious leaders invited Jesus and this man with swelling to come to dinner on the Sabbath, to test Jesus one more time? Does Jesus have no respect at all for the commandments?

Jesus knows he is being watched closely and he does not avoid the trap or the conflict. He jumps right in and asks the lawyers and the Pharisees, “Does the Law allow healing on the Sabbath or not?” Once again, the leaders are silent, as if their silence is an answer.

So now what? Will Jesus dare to heal even this swollen man, this greedy man? Jesus takes hold of the man, cures him and lets him go/sets him free.

Then Jesus says, “Suppose your child or ox fell into a ditch on the Sabbath day. Wouldn’t you immediately pull it out?” Jesus appeals to the religious leaders and lawyers own sense of wealth: their children and their livestock. Will they not try to save their own wealth on the Sabbath? It is a trick question and once again the response is silence.

This last story surprises me. I am used to imagining Jesus on the side of those who are poor. But here he holds on to the greedy man and then also releases him from what binds. This is good news: those who are bent low can be raised up and those who want too much can be released from their lust. It sounds an awful lot like Isaiah: “every valley shall be exalted and the rough places plain.” Or like Jesus’ mother Mary in her song: “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.”

Though Jesus was a healer, these people are still with us. Jesus healed the people before him but he certainly did not eradicate these very human problems of poverty and greed. The bent-over people burdened by debt – and the people swollen with greed – they are still present in our own context, in our lives. The economic systems of injustice remain with us, indeed we are in a time of increasing disparity in this country. How will we respond? What is ours to do?

Luke and Jesus invite us to live into the Sabbath – and keep it holy. Take time, rest from our work for sure, because our work for justice is exhausting and we need time to recover if we are going to run this race, this marathon. And we are invited to live into Jesus’ Jubilee vision of Sabbath: wholeness, shalom, and freedom for all, even the wealthy if we will allow Jesus to take hold of us, heal us and set us free.