The Bible is filled with them: characters who enter the action and then just as suddenly depart, leaving readers to contemplate their significance in light of the greater story being told – that of God’s everlasting love and His plan to save our souls. The average student might be tempted to gloss over these characters in their pursuit of the wider interpretation, but Catherine Lawton is no average student. Nor is she an average writer. Her 2004 book entitled Face to Face dials into the life of the woman in Luke’s gospel who was afflicted with a condition that made it impossible for her to stand up straight. Luke writes: “On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.”
Scripture quickly pivots to the synagogue leader’s indignance that Jesus healed on the sabbath, rendering the healing of the woman a happy footnote in the battle between Jewish leaders and the Messiah; however, Lawton sees fit to unpack her story because, like everybody who steps into the greatest of stories that is Holy scripture, she is a somebody. She has a background – a past – and because of the healing ministry of Christ, a future as well. She is, in a phrase, one of us, which endears her to us, but we also get caught up in the grand thought that miracles are not out of the question for us as well. In the woman, we see our pain. In her as well, we see what possibilities await. Lawton takes the craft of storytelling to a new level in this powerful fictionalized account of one woman's eighteen year affliction by a pneuma, a spirit that keeps her bowed and dejected: a pariah to everybody but a few. Once healthy, strong, and with nothing but good prospects on the horizon, a tragic event leaves Joakima, the woman, physically deformed and her life forever changed. As the years go by, Joakima's sense of alienation and hopelessness only deepens until one fateful encounter turns it all around. Lawton permits the woman’s humanity to poke through, even though we know the ending of the story from the start. Upon hearing that Jesus is near, Lawton writes that the woman “listened to all of the excitement with mixed emotions” only to later try to summon the courage to ask Him to touch her. The woman, in other words, did not think of herself as worthy. In effect, her distorted posture, gaze set firmly on the ground in front of her, acts as a metaphor for the posture so many of us assume. We are consumed by the here and now, heads bowed, our view severely limited. And we say to ourselves, this is my lot. There is nothing that can be done. No change. No release. The affliction and I are one.
But in Lawton’s dramatization of the life of the bent woman, we get a different message altogether: one of hope and connection. To be sure, the parallels between Lawton’s story and reality as we see it in the present age are striking. Many of us are not afflicted with an evil pneuma, but we as a society are certainly bent over, looking at our phones. You heard me correctly, dear listeners. I believe there is a valid comparison between one woman’s physical affliction and an entire society’s mental affliction to the extent that both cause pain and isolation. Consider how some are positively addicted to their devices, unable even to hold a normal face-to-face conversation, sit through an interview, or engage in small talk. Perhaps we will understand that what claims to free us actually keeps us in chains, for it is certainly not angels who keep our eyes averted.
https://www.amazon.com/Face-Novel-Catherine-Lawton/dp/0967038685
