“There appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and quite unable to stand up straight.” That woman in our gospel lesson today had a physical ailment quite evident in her misshapen spine. Luke uses the incident to demonstrate the healing power of Jesus, but today I hear it more as a parable of hope calling out to us If we have “ears to hear.”

Many of us suffer from a crippling spirit that has us “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight,” but it’s very likely not visibly noticeable. Our crippling is inside. Some of us are consumed by the crippling spirit of worry. We might call it the “what if” syndrome—what if __________ happens; how will we deal with it? It’s all we can think about, and if it doesn’t happen immediately, we worry about it facing us in the future. Anxiety is a similar crippling spirit. It too occupies our mind about the unknown that awaits in our future. We find it hard to be present in the here and now when anxiety about the future has us twisted up inside. Some of us are crippled by anger, so occupied with bitterness and resentment that we can’t move past it. Sometimes our anger is at ourselves for our failure to cope with whoever/whatever has pushed our buttons. Certainly, addictions of all kinds can cripple us in many ways, rendering us “quite unable to stand up straight.” Experiencing rejection, feeling abandoned, forsaken, 0unloved, unappreciated, unworthy, cripples us in our relations with others as our self esteem suffers, and we become “bent over” deep within. The crippling spirit of fear binds some of us so tightly that we find it difficult even to breathe. Fear comes in many guises, but all of them can be completely debilitating. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list of the crippling spirits we sometimes experience, of course.

These few examples are intended to start you thinking, so take a moment and consider what may have you “bent over and quite unable to stand up straight” right now. When you recognize what is holding you in thrall, hear Christ Jesus call you by name and experience your healing in his grace-filled words: “You are set free from your ailment.” That is the good news for today!