Jesus Sees You
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 24, 2025
Pastor Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
[Content Note: This sermon includes a mention of suicide and mental illness.]
***
No one likes being ignored,
made to feel unimportant,
or worse – invisible.
This woman – unnamed as so often women are in scripture –
knew this feeling all too well,
and probably better than most.
Described only as having “a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years,”
making her unable to stand up straight,
nothing more is known about this woman –
her lack even of a name underscoring her invisibility.
Judged for her disability
in a society that often ascribed such things to divine judgment
(“she must have done something ‘wrong’…something to ‘deserve’ this”).
Ignored for being a woman
in a heavily patriarchal culture that devalued her voice and her perspective.
Enduring chronic pain
that modern commentators have suggested to be ankylosing spondylitis,
a type of arthritis that affects the spine
and causes severe stiffness, inflammation, fatigue, and acute pain –
which, while not curable, can be managed
by the advances of modern medicine…
but none of which, of course, would have been available to this woman.
“She endured two types of pain,”
one commentary summarizes,
“the intense psychological pain of being rendered invisible
and the torturous physical pain of having a debilitating condition.
We do not know whether she suffered silently or loudly,
but we do know that she suffered greatly.”
She had no reason to expect anyone to notice her,
least of all Jesus, a total stranger,
who probably had other more important things to do.
She had every reason to expect
that she would keep on living the next eighteen years
much like the last –
rendered invisible by the pain in her body
and the pain of being ignored.
“Jesus heals a crippled woman,”
as my own Bible titles this story.
But you know by now how I feel about those made-up titles –
absent as they are from the original Greek.
Still, if I had to assign a title to this story,
what about:
“Jesus sees a woman in pain.”
It is a remarkable thing that,
even before this woman is cured,
even before she is able to stand up straight for the first time in eighteen years,
Jesus sees her –
when no one else even notices her,
except as maybe a tripping hazard or a nuisance
when they would bump into her –
because of course she’s obviously the one who wasn’t paying attention
(never mind the fact that her condition made it quite difficult for her to do just that).
Jesus sees her,
calls her over,
speaks to her,
centers one who has been pushed aside,
and he lays his hands on her –
there is power in physical touch like that –
and frees her
from her invisibility.
The healing act is much more than the ability to stand upright –
though that had to feel amazing.
It is the act of being seen and recognized,
instead of being talked about at best and at worst ignored.
And in so doing, Jesus sets an example for us
to see those who have been pushed aside,
to call to them,
to speak to them and not merely about them,
to center and embrace their experience;
to see our siblings who suffer,
to hear them when they cry out,
to meet them with compassion and solidarity.
***
Who is crying out to be seen in our midst?
Who is easy for us to ignore and render invisible?
I never expected my casual summer reading
to take me on a side-quest into the much darker world
of The Haunting of Hill House –
first the 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson,
and then the 2018 Netflix miniseries, loosely based on Jackson’s book.
Both book and miniseries,
which both admittedly have their share of jumpscares, the latter especially,
defy the typical trappings of “horror.”
Beyond just another “scary” movie,
they each, in their own way,
deal with the very real horror
of what it means to be haunted by trauma and mental illness.
It is through the lens of the character of Eleanor –
present in different ways in both Jackson’s novel and the Netflix adaptation –
that we experience this most acutely.
In the miniseries, Eleanor – or “Nell” as she is most often called –
is one of the youngest of the five Crain siblings,
and one of the most affected by what she and her family experienced
while they lived in Hill House,
never fully recovering well into adulthood,
the lingering trauma of which tragically leads her to take her own life.
In one particularly poignant scene,
alternating between a flashback to her childhood in Hill House
and the present with her adult siblings gathered for her funeral,
the younger Nell goes missing during a storm
that knocks out the power to the house.
By the end of the storm, Nell reappears,
in the very place where she went missing.
As her family surrounds and embraces her,
an emotional Nell tells them,
“I was here. I was right here.
I was right here and I was screaming and shouting
and none of you could see me.
Why couldn’t you see me?”
“I was right here the whole time,”
the younger Nell’s voice continues,
as the scene switches back to the present in the funeral home,
“and none of you could see me.”
***
Who is crying out to be seen in our midst?
Who is easy for us to ignore and render invisible?
To everyone who has been pushed aside,
whose cries to be seen have gone unheard,
Jesus sees you.
To everyone who suffers under the weight
of being rendered invisible,
whether by trauma, disability, age, gender, or illness,
Jesus sees you.
To everyone who has been ignored
or made to feel insignificant or unworthy,
Jesus sees you.
Jesus sees you.
Jesus sees you.
Jesus sees you,
calls to you and speaks your name,
reaches out his hands to you,
and frees you –
free to live fully,
without fear or shame or apology,
embraced by the unfailing love of God
who cares deeply
for you.
