They thought this time they could catch him red-handed. Jesus would never be able to resist healing this poor man, even if they were in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And if he did, they’d have a case against him: Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so they might accuse him.
Jesus, who can read their hearts, knows what they’re up to: Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…
I wonder how it must have been for this man with the withered hand, to be the battleground on which Jesus and the Pharisees set to. These doctors of the Law seem uninterested in him or his fate; the Mosaic Law deemed people with defects to be ritually impure. Maybe they could not afford to care about him. Maybe it never occurred to these lovers of literal interpretations of the Law.
Jesus engages them before healing the man. He never gives up trying to open their hard hearts. He poses them a lawyerly question – is it lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? In another altercation with these leaders, he brings it closer to home – if their sheep fell into a well on the Sabbath, would they not rescue it? Why should he not exercise the power of God in love to restore a person to wholeness? But he doesn’t seem to have moved them, since we’re told,
The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
It seems they were so obsessed with bringing Jesus down, they see this man only as a means to their ends. This is where rule-bound legalism leads – to objectifying other people and created things, rendering them of lower value than the rules meant to assure their well-being. And when we see others as less than human we make ourselves less than human. For we were created in the image of the God who is Love, whose nature is to love at all costs. Any time we fall short of love, we tarnish our selves, and God’s Life becomes less discernible in us.
Can you think of a time when your adherence to a rule or principle caused you to overlook, even degrade the humanity of another? How does a story like this, and Jesus’ words and actions in it, play out in some of our national issues, such as how we treat immigrants, or those at risk of violence, or those mired in poverty due not to their own choices but to national policies that privilege the well-off?
In prayer today, we might place ourselves in that synagogue, watching this story unfold before us. How do you react? Where do your sympathies lie? What is God inviting you into?
The mission of God is about life, saving life, restoring life, upholding life. Life and love must govern how we wield the power of law.
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