The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr

 

Luke 13:10-17 – August 24, 2025

Joseph Carey Merrick was born in England in 1862. When he was a child, his body began to develop deformities. His skin thickened, and he had large growths on his head and on his body. His limbs were twisted. By the time he was a teenager, he was completely disfigured and partially crippled. When he was a young boy, his mother died, and later his father remarried.

Joseph finally left home. He tried to get work, but no one would hire him because of his appearance. The only job he found was in a traveling sideshow where he was named “The Elephant Man.” In this sideshow, he endured humiliation and ridicule. The thing about Joseph was that while he may have been different outside, he was very intelligent and sensitive. He was very aware of how others viewed him.

In 1884, Dr. Frederick Treves saw Joseph at the sideshow. He was a surgeon from London and was interested in examining him. Joseph was skeptical about the doctor’s intentions but went along with him anyway. What happened was amazing for Joseph. Dr. Treves treated Joseph as a person, something he’d barely had the pleasure to experience. The doctor gave him a permanent room at the hospital and cared for Joseph himself. Joseph carried this burden of deformity for years – physically bound, feeling he was inadequate, powerless in the world he lived in, ridiculed by others – and then he was seen. He was noticed.

Visitors came to see Joseph but to get a glimpse of “The Elephant Man.” They came to see him because they had heard of his gentleness, his intelligence, and his love of Scripture and poetry. People from all walks of life spent time with Joseph – writers, actors, and even the Princess of Wales. His human dignity was restored when someone saw him and treated him compassionately.

Feet, dusty sandals, dirt roads, floors, the bent-over woman was an expert on many things found on the ground. She knew every hole, every curve, every crack in the streets she walked. She didn’t know people by their faces; she knew them by their feet.

Burdened by the fact that her body stood at a right angle, I imagine she endured a lot of pain. You may know the feeling -- from working in the garden all day, bending over the hood of a car doing repairs, or sitting at your desk all day working on your computer. You endure the pain until you finally get to stand up and stretch your back, which feels so good. Imagine not getting to stand up and having to endure that constant pain in your back and your neck.

The woman who had been bent over for 18 years endured those same pains, but for her, it was day after day, with no relief. She didn’t have the option to stand up tall and stretch. But this woman, didn’t let her burden ruin her and she didn’t let her burden ruin her faith.

Faithful to God, she painfully walked to the synagogue. She didn’t walk in that day to be healed; she walked in to pray and to honor God. Yet, as she walked in, unbeknownst to her, Jesus was sitting in the synagogue, teaching. As she walked quietly, eyes on the floor, Jesus noticed her. He stopped what he was doing, and he called her over. He laid his hands on her, and she immediately stood up straight and praised God.  

Jesus noticed her. The woman did not come begging to be healed. She did not run up to Jesus and touch his clothing. She did not get dropped by her friends through the roof to be healed as people had done in the past. She brought her burden to God as she had every sabbath, and Jesus met her.

There are many illustrations and depictions of Jesus as he met the bent-over woman. My favorite is by the artist Barbara Schwarz. In the picture, Jesus meets the woman where she is, bent and broken. Jesus came down to her level. He is not standing tall with his hands on her head. He bends over to her level, grasps her hands, and looks her in the eye. Perhaps the first eyes this woman has seen in 18 years are the eyes of Jesus.

All of the Scripture we read today speaks to us about how God knows us and calls us even when we are weak. Jeremiah was a youth. He felt inadequate. But God touched his mouth and gave him a mission. God noticed him and empowered him to live out his calling. The psalmist writes that he has trusted and relied on God since birth, and God has not failed. Hebrews speaks of how the nearness to God brings us joy and that God restores what is broken. This is how Jesus works in our lives. Jesus has carried us since birth and calls us when we are in our darkest hour. He restores our dignity and sets us free from our burdens.

Our burdens are wounds that we carry, just like Joseph and the bent-over woman. In his book The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen writes, “Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually…The great illusion is to think that we can be healed by forgetting or ignoring our wounds. But our wounds can become a source of healing when we accept them as the place where God’s power is revealed.”[1]

God’s healing power is revealed to us when we are most fragile. We may not see it immediately – the bent-over woman had her ailment for 18 years. Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man was never physically healed, but he was healed spiritually over the course of 20 years.

For you and me, it may not be as dramatic as it was when the woman stood tall after so many years. It may be a quiet, slow, and steady transformation. You will know it when it happens. Your weakness will become your strength, your shame will become your dignity, and your hopelessness will become joy. We can rely on the words we heard today in Jeremiah 1:8: “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Amen.

 

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[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (New York: Image Books, 1979), 82.