Story of the Crippled Woman

What the story is about:
An important part of the ministry of Jesus was the healing he gave to people who were disabled in a physical, emotional or mental way. The story of the crippled woman deals with physical healing, but it has a larger dimension. Her twisted body, permanently bent downwards, was a symbol of those who lack hope. The story suggests that, with Jesus’ help, we can raise ourselves so that our vision is upwards, to God.

                                                                                                                                                                                                Torah scrolls in a synagogue

SETTING THE SCENE

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, on the Sabbath. There were two places of worship in first-century Palestine:

• the Temple in Jerusalem, where people worshipped God by making sacrifices. It was regarded as a sacred place and access was limited to those who purified themselves by washing

• the synagogues, where people gathered to read and discuss the Scriptures. There were thousands of synagogues through Palestine, public buildings in which people could meet, talk, pray, argue, share information and sing. Anyone might attend them. Visitors were welcome. Sacrifices were not offered in synagogues. (See below for information about women's lives.)

                                                                 Interior of an ancient synagogue, with recess for Torah scrolls

Synagogues contained:
*  a chest for the scrolls of the Scriptures
*  a raised podium from which the texts were read
*  a seat of honor in the center of the room
*  rows of stone benches around the wall.
There might be a leader of the synagogue, but any man who could read, who knew the Scriptures, and who was respected by the community could be a speaker - Jesus obviously fitted this description. A leader, in this case Jesus, spoke from the middle of the room, reading the Scriptures and offering comments; then there was a general discussion of the text he had read.

There was a woman there, listening to Jesus. She had been crippled for eighteen years with a spinal deformity that left her body twisted. She may have had acute arthritis. The people of the time thought that she was crippled because her body had been taken over by a spirit or demon.

Spirits and demons appear frequently in Luke’s gospel, in different guises. Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit (1:35); at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove (3:21); Jesus is tempted in the desert by a spirit or demon (4:1-13); Jesus teaches that ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me’ (4:18); Jesus frees people from unclean spirits and from demons that cause cosmic disorder. Luke therefore shows Jesus as being
  *   inspired by the Holy Spirit
  *  able to control spirits that (Luke believes) cause illness, either mental or physical.

Arthritic hands; examples of spinal deformity

THE WOMAN IS CURED BY JESUS

The woman in the story could not straighten her body, so she could not look upwards or forwards. The shape of her body, always bent over towards the ground, was a symbol of people who are stunted and distorted by ignorance, prejudice, anger or malice. As it was, she could see only the dirt at her feet, as many people can see only the bad side of things. She could not look up and see the possibilities before her. She could not see the smiles on people’s faces. She could not see the sky. She could only see downwards to the dirt.

Jesus called her over into the center of the synagogue, from the side where she had been standing.
This was an unusual thing for a male religious leader of Jesus’ time to do. Women usually stayed in the side area of the synagogue, sitting on built-in masonry benches in rows against the wall. Jesus must have walked across and led her to the center of the room.

He told her that she was free from whatever had twisted her body into a deformed shape. He put his hands on her, and immediately she was able to straighten her body. She could look upwards, and she could see forwards. It was not just her body that was healed, but her soul as well. Her immediate response was to praise God.

Jesus raises the crippled woman

THE DEBATE ABOUT HEALING ON THE SABBATH

The leader of the synagogue reminded Jesus that curing of the sick was only permitted on the Sabbath to save a life. After all, there were six other days in the week when healing could be done. The Sabbath should be kept special, set aside as a time for praising God, not to be used for anything else.
This type of debate was common in synagogues in first-century Palestine. Jews have always been fascinated by the precise meaning of the laws in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the exact way that Jews ought to live their lives.

Jesus argued that if you could water an animal on the Sabbath (which was allowed) then you should be able to help a woman who was ill.
His argument is that the Sabbath is a day set aside for people to praise God. If what you are doing praises God, shouldn’t it be allowed?
Jesus was not alone in holding this opinion. Several other Jewish rabbis at that time taught that the Sabbath was made for people’s benefit, and should not be a burden for people.

The story finishes by noting that everyone was happy with the wonderful things that Jesus did. Everyone was rejoicing. Surely, says the author of Luke’s gospel, what Jesus did is right. He has observed the true purpose of the law, because people praise God as a result of what he has done.

 Summary

Luke’s story about the crippled woman was about hope. We should focus on that which praises God, that which is optimistic and hopeful. If we do so we shall, like the crippled woman, be inspired to straighten our selves to a standing position, where we see forward to the possibilities in life, and upwards to God for inspiration.

                      This modern sculpture suggests there are many different ways of being crippled

ATTITUDES TO WOMEN AT THAT TIME

Gospel stories are often discussed as if they happened in isolation, outside the real world. But in fact they occurred within a historical context, against a cultural background quite different to our own. Knowing about the world of the gospel gives the reader a better understanding of the stories.

Greek philosophy was greatly admired at the time of Jesus, and it had a profound impact on the way that people saw their world. One of the greatest philosophers, Plato, proposed the theory of dualism, suggesting that everything in the cosmos had an equal and opposite other. This theory had a profound impact on the way that women were viewed, and it was not to women's advantage. 'Woman' was placed in a category containing elements that were viewed as negative:

   Man   -                 Woman
  Civilization   -      Nature
  Reason/logic   -  Emotion
  Good   -               Evil
  Light   -                Darkness

Keep in mind that
   Civilization was the ideal; Nature was mistrusted and potentially dangerous
   Logic and reason were admired, and emotion was to be subordinated.
   Goodness was always preferable to evil.
   Light, especially in the pre-industrial world, was preferred to darkness.

'Sin', Franz Stuck

These are examples only, but they show that Platonic dualism placed women in a negative category. They were seen as closer to the natural/animal world than men. By nature they were irrational and untrustworthy, and therefore unfit to make their own decisions and govern their own lives. They had to be looked after and controlled, never treated as equals.

This differed from the traditional Jewish way of looking at the world, which saw all things in creation as integrated and complementary, rather than as opposites of each other. An example of this is the creation story of Eve, which relates that the first woman was created from a rib taken by God from Adam's side, thereby suggesting that a man could never be fully complete unless he was in partnership with a woman.

Jewish and Jewish/Christian women resisted the ideas of Platonic dualism, which patronized them and diminished their status. While Christianity remained a Jewish sect, the status of  women within the Christian communities was high.

But as the ideas of Christianity moved out into the Gentile, Hellenised world, the first Christians found they had to use the Greek philosophical framework to explain their beliefs and be accepted. So Jesus' original ideal of mutual respect between the sexes was watered down and changed. Women found they were given roles that were acceptable in the outside, Hellenistic culture. In doing so, the Christian church stepped back from the radical ideals of the first Jewish/Christians.

Women were still powerful in the private sphere, but were shunted to the side in the public arena. This shows up, for example, in 1st and 2nd century re-tellings of the biblical stories. Where these stories had often had women as central characters, they now focused on men and male activities.

The ideal Roman matron

  An example of this is the story of Moses’ birth in Josephus’ Antiquities (Josephus was a Jewish writer and historian of the 1st century BC).
In the original biblical telling of the story (in Exodus 1 and 2) the baby Moses is saved by the two midwives, by his mother, by his sister, and by Pharaoh’s daughter – all, obviously, women.

In Josephus’ retelling of the story written in about 94AD, the focus is largely on Moses’ father Amram. He performs many of the actions previously attributed to the women. Female characters in the story are changed. The mid-wives in Josephus’ retelling
   are Egyptian, not Hebrew
   are unnamed
   are not present at Moses' birth
   kill Hebrew babies, not save them.
The basic story of Moses’ birth remains the same, but the female dimension has been lost.

There were reasons for the changes Josephus made to the story. He was trying to counter the anti-Semitism that existed in Rome at the time, so he wrote about Jewish women who behaved like decent Roman matrons! This ideal of Roman womanhood had been vigorously promoted in a ‘back to basics’ program by the emperor Augustus and the Roman authorities.

The ideal Roman woman, they said, was a mother of many children, content with her household duties. She kept to her traditional role, in the home, and did not speak assertively to the men in her family. She did not enter the public world.

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