Biography
The Rev. Dr. Jana Childers is Dean of San Francisco Theological Seminary and Professor of Homiletics and Speech-Communication. She’s ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and is the author of several books, including Performing the Word: Preaching as Theater, which incorporates her training as an actress into the art of preaching. Dr. Childers is a popular and frequent guest preacher at gatherings throughout the country. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Kyphotic Woman" 
“Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent and quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman you are loosed from your infirmity.’ He laid his hands on her and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”

In those four brief verses, Luke tells us a great deal about the life of faith. You can hardly imagine a more vivid picture of helplessness than the one suggested by Luke’s story about the Kyphotic Woman. Kyphotic. The original Greek word used to describe her gives a fascinating clue to what Luke wants us to see. The word translates not just “bent” or “bent over,” but a better translation would be “bent together” or “bent with.” This is a woman who is bent in on herself. It’s a picture of someone who has not only born the yoke but bought it. She is not just a woman with an infirmity but, as Luke says, with the spirit of an infirmity. Whatever it was that had bent her, whatever emotional or physical burden she had born, Luke suggests, ultimately became part of her until her very body was conformed to its image. There is nothing she can do now to help herself out of the spiritual pretzel her life has become.

I don’t know if you have ever known anybody like that. Have ever been anybody like that. Somebody, perhaps, who has started to believe that the job or the break or the ship is never going to come in. Somebody who has bought the idea that all the problems in the marriage are her fault. Someone who can’t even imagine being debt-free. Some one who can make his mouth say, “God loves me,” but cannot say it in his heart. Some one who every day runs a race against a low self-opinion and every day loses. I don’t know if you have ever known anybody like that. Have been anybody like that.

If you have ever been caught on the horns of the faith dilemma—knowing that the one thing you need to straighten yourself out is the very thing you can’t seem to come up with—maybe you can understand. Maybe you can imagine how astounded she was by Jesus. “Startled” or “surprised” doesn’t really begin to say it. She was bumfoozled, she was gobsmacked, not by what Jesus said, but by what he did. Did you see it? Did you see what he did?

“And seeing her,” the text says, “Jesus called her near and said to her, ‘Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.’ And he put his hands on her, and instantly she was made erect.”

Did you see it? Maybe the movie that is playing on your mental motion picture screen is not exactly the same as mine – so let’s see. Let me ask a couple of questions.

“And seeing her, Jesus called her near...” How near do you suppose he called her? Near the text says. It’s like saying “he called her to him.” But how near do you suppose he called her? Near enough that a moment later he touches her. So near enough to look her in the face, don’t you think?

Now let me ask you, do you think he would have pronounced those words without looking her in the eyes? “Woman you are loosed.” Would he have said that looming over her? This is Jesus we’re talking about here. He called her near and looked her in the face, don’t you think?

How do you suppose he looked her in the face? If she is bent together, as the Greek so picturesquely puts it, I’m thinking he had no choice but to get down on his knees—way down on his knees, down in the dirt on his knees—and crane his neck up to look into her face.

Now here’s the last question and the kicker. How do you suppose he touched her? Where do you suppose he touched her? How could he have, as the text says, laid his hands on her? If you are kneeling on the ground, looking up into somebody’s face, what are your options?

Do you know what I think? I think he put his hands on her feet. Tenderly on those dirty, broken toe nails and scabs that were the only thing she had seen for eighteen years. I think he put his hands on her feet. Now, if Luke hadn’t said “he put his hands on her,” I would have said he kissed her feet. I would have said he let his hair fall over them the way the Alabaster Jar Woman’s hair had fallen over his. I would have said he wept on the Kyphotic Woman’s feet. But Luke says hands, so I’ll just say maybe he wept on or kissed her feet. Maybe he just held them.

The scene Luke describes is a dizzy one—a familiar picture taken out of the frame and put back in upside down. Ancient Israel had a very nice painting of the God whose feet we grasp. The God whose ankles we throw our arms around. The God to whose skirts we cling. Luke introduces the God who gets down on hands and knees with us. Luke’s God is a God who runs to fall on the neck of the prodigal and the feet of the broken. A God who bends to us…when we cannot even lift our own head!

We have a God, Luke assures us, who is soft, empathic, gentle; whose kindness is unfathomable. We have a God who cranes, who reaches, who loves us before faith kicks in and when it gives out. Don’t let anybody tell you that you have to scrape yourself together and run to God, that you have to screw up your will to do the right thing, that you have to dig deep and find your faith and offer it to God before God will speak to you. You have a God who loves you, who yearns for you, who, as the poet Roberta Bondi remind us, is in love with you.

It may be possible theologically to overstate God’s power. I don’t know. It’s an interesting theological problem. But I’ll tell you what I do know. According to Luke, there is no overstating the tenderness of God’s love. There is no overstating the tenderness of God’s love. There is no overstating the tenderness of God’s love. Or the healing power of tenderness.

I heard the story told recently about a little girl living in a rural community, light years from where I live. It was just a few years ago, but it was one of those towns where driving down Center Street is like driving back into the thirties. She lived in a little house and went to a two-room school. She had loving folks and, from time to time, a good teacher. But the way she was growing up was not the way you would want your little girl to grow up. She had a cleft palate and the money for the repair hadn’t been there. By the time she was seven, she knew what the world was. She had heard the phrase, “only a mother could love that” and she understood it.

One day a special teacher visited the school and put the children through some basic speech tests. When it was her turn, the little girl went into the classroom that had been set aside for the exams. “Just stand over there by the door,” the teacher said from her desk at the far end of the room. “I want to test your hearing first. Turn your back, face the door and tell me what you hear me say.”

“Apple,” the teacher said in a low voice.

“Apple,” the little girl repeated.

“Man,” the teacher said.

“Man,” the little girl repeated.

“Banana.”

“Banana.”

“Okay,” the teacher said, “Now a sentence.” The child knew that the sentences where usually fairly easy—she wasn’t the first child to take the test, after all. She’d heard you could expect something like, “The sky is blue” or “Are your shoes brown?” Still, she listened very carefully.

So it was that standing with her face against the door, she heard the teacher’s whisper quite clearly, “I wish you were my little girl.”

The God who saw a daughter of Abraham in a Kyphotic Woman, is the same God who sees God’s own child in you. Before, between and after you reach out in faith; before, between and if you never deserve it, that God is reaching out to you. You have a God who loves you as her own. Because you are. From the top of your head, right down to the bottom of your feet.

Interview with Jana Childers
Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: Thank you for your wonderful message. What a talent you have for painting a picture, the picture of the Kyphotic Woman bowed and how Jesus addressed her. I saw a visual picture of that. You teach aspiring ministers and students. How do you teach them to express the faith or try to instill it in the audience?

Jana Childers: Faith is a hard thing to teach a young preacher. Faith is a hard thing to teach a Christian or a person of faith in general! To a certain extent, it’s the kind of thing that has to be caught, as we often say. It’s a little bit more caught than taught! Certainly the topic of faith in preaching is that kind of subject. I would say though, my one piece of advice to my own students is don’t claim more for yourself than you actually have. When you’re preaching about faith it’s better to be honest about the struggle that we all have. Certainly, even preachers have. It’s better to be honest about that than to overreach and to sell yourself as the kind of person that has no doubts and to whom faith comes easily. Faith doesn’t come easily to anybody, ultimately.

Brown: A dear friend of mine who was a minister—he’s gone now—had cancer. We spent a lot of time together when he had cancer. It was some years ago so it was during the early stages of treatment. We had discussions about how you deal with it because everybody was expected to die immediately back then. He said, “Floyd, no. You don’t despair because tomorrow they are going to find the cure. All you have to do is live today.” Have you ever been challenged, when you had to call upon your faith for something like that?


Childers: Oh, my. Well, I’ve never had cancer and I’m blessed that I’ve never had a huge physical struggle like that in my life. But all it takes to have your faith tested is to love another human being. You loved that pastor of yours that had cancer and it tested your faith, I’m going to guess, as well as his as he went through that chapter of his life. All of us get tested in that way. All of us who have attachments to our mothers and our brothers and our husbands and our wives get tested that way. Cancer is maybe one of the biggest tests of our generation.

Brown: Can I share with you his reaction to me? He said, “Floyd, I’ve been preaching for all of these years. Thank God, I have the faith that I’ve been preaching all these years when it came my turn to find out about it!” Maybe you could tell us a story of someone that you know who was really tested and how their faith came through for them.

Childers: What you make me think of is my favorite image of faith. I have a preacher friend, Ben Patterson, who talks about faith in terms of mountain climbing. It’s that classic moment where you have to put your foot just a little farther across the crevasse than you’re really willing to. He says that his experienced friends told him what you need to do in that moment is lean into the mountain. I like that image! When my faith has been tested, that little refrain goes through my mind: lean into the mountain. Lean into God. Lean into your faith, even though your instincts tell you to pull back and try to protect. When my faith has been tested the thing that has helped me most is just that image of leaning in. The gospel songwriters liked that image, too: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.

Brown: Is there anything that is testing our faith today that’s greater now than in the past?

Childers: In this generation? Well we mentioned cancer already and certainly, at a personal level, that touches almost everyone that we know. But in our generation, we do. We have this world situation and not only do we have a world situation, wars and rumors of wars—as the Bible says we have always had those—but now we know it. We see it all the time. What a challenge to our faith that is! I hope it will challenge people to prayer.

Brown: Thank you. You are wonderful.