Gospel for March 19, 2023

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 9:1-41 
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus is presented with a serious question about suffering and the problem of evil when his disciples ask him why a man was born blind.

This passage takes the dialectical method of Jesus — the “point/counterpoint” dialogue — to a new level.

• There is the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples.
• There is the dialogue between Jesus and the blind man.
• The blind man interacts with the crowd and the Pharisees.
• The Pharisees interrogate the blind man’s parents.
• The Pharisees confront Jesus.

The effect that this dialogue creates is almost like theater — except that it is real.

The first and most important question is posed by the disciples about the blind man:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus, as always, surprises.  He assesses no blame — the blindness is not because of guilt. This repudiates the familiar notion at the time that suffering was always the consequence of sin.  However, Jesus does proclaim that even suffering may be a means of glorifying God:

that the works of God might be revealed in him.

Jesus reminds the disciples of his purpose for coming into the world — to overcome the effects of darkness:

I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

This is a reminder of the pressures of time that Jesus is experiencing.  He brings light, but the darkness of betrayal and the cross is coming.  So there is a sense of urgency to his ministry. He has no time to waste.  For now, he offers his light while he can.

Jesus makes a paste of mud with saliva and anoints the man’s eyes.  A seemingly very mundane recipe — but one offered by the Lord of Life himself. He then instructs the blind man to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, along the southern wall in the older section where King David’s citadel had been located.

John the evangelist adds the interpretation of the meaning of Siloam, which is one of several pools of water in the city used as reservoirs.  Siloam means Sent.  This is appropriate for one sent by Jesus to receive healing.

The description of the healing itself almost seems mundane — the blind man washes away the mud — but the reaction of the people around him is more dramatic.

First, his neighbors, who knew he was blind from birth, were astonished and looked for alternate explanations:

He looks like him.

The blind man confirms his own identity, and explains the procedure Jesus used to give him sight.  Immediately the neighbors ask for Jesus; and when the formerly blind man can’t produce Jesus, they drag the man before the Pharisees.

Now, to quote the cliche, the plot thickens.  The Pharisees have already proven their hostility to Jesus, and even attempted to have him arrested in John 7:32.  So this new development adds to the tension.

The legal problem presented here is that this was a Sabbath day when Jesus did this healing “work.”  The Pharisees’ strict interpretation of the law forbade any semblance of work on the Sabbath.  Jesus is elsewhere critical of their legalism. Although he observed the Sabbath by attending synagogue services, the practical needs of preparing food and works of mercy superseded the legalistic demands of the law.  He says in the Gospel of Mark:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Therefore the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27-28).

The ex-blind man must again repeat the entire account of his healing for the Pharisees, some of whom immediately declare:

This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.

Now we begin to see that that the Pharisees are not always unified in lockstep with one another.

Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” There was division among them.

We will see this division develop later when Nicodemus, also a Pharisee, argues that Jesus should have the right to defend himself in the face of charges (John 7:50-51).

What ensues is an intense interrogation that turns into a debate between the Pharisees and the ex-blind man.  The Pharisees ask the blind man what he thinks of Jesus.  The blind man has no doubt about this much:

He is a prophet.

The Pharisees attempt another tactic.  They try to undermine the credibility of the miracle by casting doubt on the man’s blindness.  They summon his parents — almost a kind of subpoena! — and question whether the man was really born blind.

The parents are terrified — they state what they know, that he was born blind, but they deflect the questions back to their son:

He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.

The parents aren’t afraid of physical harm, but spiritual harm.  The Jewish leadership had decreed that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, would be excommunicated.  The life of a Jew was centered in the religious community and the life of the temple and the synagogue.  To be put out of the synagogue would be to become a social and religious pariah.

So the Pharisees continue their interrogation of the ex-blind man again.  They demand that if he acknowledges God, he must testify that Jesus is a sinner.

What follows is dialogue worthy of the theater.  To appreciate the verbal repartee, I recommend that it be read aloud from verses 25-34.

The ex-blind man is honest, and very blunt.  When told to confess that Jesus is a sinner, he knows what he doesn’t know, but also what he does know:    

 I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.

The Pharisees won’t let up.  When they ask again how it happened, the ex-blind man almost seems a little impertinent:

He answered them, “I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?”

The ex-blind man almost seems to be taunting them.  Certainly he is astute enough to realize that most of the Pharisees are implacable enemies of Jesus.  Naturally, they are offended, and they begin to lose their composure:

 They insulted him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.”

They accuse the ex-blind man of already being Jesus’s disciple, and proudly proclaim their own allegiance to Moses.  This is a false dichotomy — Jesus isn’t opposed to the law of Moses, but to the accretions and traditions that the Pharisees have added to the law of Moses.

The ex-blind man increases his taunts:

 The man answered them, “How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.”

Now, he turns the tables.  He begins to testify to what God has done in his own life through Jesus:

 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him.

The ex-blind man quotes Scripture to confirm the fact that Jesus must not be a sinner, therefore this healing is from God.  He cites Psalms 66:18:

If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened.

And also:

Yahweh is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous (Proverbs 15:29).

After invoking the authority of Scripture, the ex-blind man then cites human history — suggesting that this is an unprecedented event:

Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind.

He adds these two factors together — the claims of Scripture that God doesn’t hear the wicked, and the fact that he has been healed by Jesus — and he comes up with what seems undeniable as the sum — Jesus must be from God:

 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

The Pharisees are outraged:

“You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?” They threw him out.

When they threw him out, what that suggests is that he is excommunicated from the synagogue.  He has gained his eyesight, and lost his community.

But not for long.  Jesus learns that the man he has healed has been thrown out of the synagogue, and seeks him out.  Again, there is another dialogue.  Jesus asks him:

Do you believe in the Son of God?

This is a leading question. In a sense the ex-blind man has already affirmed that Jesus must be from God, otherwise he couldn’t do the works that he has done.  The ex-blind man’s answer seems innocent:

Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?

This suggests that the ex-blind man is definitely leaning toward faith.  All that is required is for Jesus to provide substance.  And so he does:

You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you.

Once again, Jesus has revealed himself to an unlikely person — not the famous or the powerful or the pious or the wise.  Instead, he reveals himself to a poor blind man.

The response of the ex-blind man is appropriate:

 “Lord, I believe!” and he worshiped him.

He trusts in Jesus; but even more he worships him.  This provides the substance. It is only appropriate to worship God. The Son of God is the only begotten Son of God, the Word made flesh, God incarnate.

There is yet one more short dialogue in this passage.  Jesus makes a declarative statement about his purpose and mission:

I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.

This reminds us of the definition of judgment from John 3:

He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.  This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.  (John 3:18-19).

Once again, the Pharisees are offended when they hear this:

 Are we also blind?

The answer of Jesus is worthy of the dialectics of Socrates, or the enigma of a Zen koan:

If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.

This is the paradox — that the Pharisees claim to see, and yet they fail to recognize that the Son of God, the Christ, the Lord of Life, is in their midst.  How tragic.  To think that they are the enlightened ones, and yet they walk in darkness.

APPLY:  

The motif of spiritual darkness and light returns again in the Gospel of John, and finds a literal application in the blindness of the man healed by Jesus.  This is a powerful spiritual application for us.  The darkness of the soul is far greater than the darkness of physical blindness.   And the darkness of religious Pharisees, who presume superiority to others, may be the deepest darkness of all.

There is an old saying that is still relevant today:

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

Those who have the faith to see Jesus, as does the blind man, have true vision; whereas those whose religion has been reduced to mere rules and rituals, without relationship with God, are in darkness.

RESPOND: 

This is a fascinating encounter recorded in dialogue worthy of Shakespeare, or of the dialectical method of Plato’s dialogues.  We find ourselves swept along in the drama of this blind man who discovers the Light with his new vision; while those who “see” are blind to the Light that shines in their midst.

There is another aspect of this account that fascinates me, though.  It is almost a mere footnote to the story. The disciples see this blind man as the account begins, and they ask Jesus:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

They begin with an assumption — that if there is a congenital physical defect, it must be the result of sin. This principle could be expanded to nearly any physical malaise.  This seems a classic example of “blaming the victim.”

This is also the principle behind the Eastern concept of karma — that people must continue to pay for their sins in successive lives through cycles of suffering until they have been purified.

Jesus repudiates this notion.  The problem of suffering cannot be reduced to the consequences of sin, and cannot be expiated by karma. 

The roots of suffering are complex — but we cannot simplistically blame the sufferer for their own suffering.  In the end, Jesus transforms suffering into good:

that the works of God might be revealed….

Lord, you have come to bring Light and Sight to those who have the eyes of faith to see you.  Open my eyes to see you.  And enable me to work the works that you send me to accomplish as well, while it is day.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The most deluded people” uses this photo:
“Blindfold chess exhibition game” by Poek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for August 21, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 13:10-17
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings.  However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.

The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed.  But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.

Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).

Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.

It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that.  But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone.  This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.

What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees.  The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well.  So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory calls triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that.  What Jesus does is called de-triangling.  He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:

“You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest.  He himself observed the Sabbath.  However, he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.

It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!

Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).

And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).

Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

APPLY:  

We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace.  The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing.  Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.

Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.

The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian.  Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.

But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.

The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath.  A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.

Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings.  The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.

RESPOND: 

This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable.  Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.

After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street.  Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean.  Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop.  The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.

The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert.  As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory.  But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.

Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him.  In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life.  But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim, Valjean.  Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable and drowns himself in the Seine River.

That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.

Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow.  I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Orthodoxy" by timchallies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for March 22, 2020

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 9:1-41 
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus is presented with a serious question about suffering and the problem of evil when his disciples ask him why a man was born blind.

This passage takes the dialectical method of Jesus — the “point/counterpoint” dialogue — to a new level. There is the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples; between Jesus and the blind man; the blind man interacts with the crowd and the Pharisees; the Pharisees interrogate the blind man’s parents; and the Pharisees confront Jesus.  The effect that this dialogue creates is almost like theater — except that it is real.

The first and most important question is posed by the disciples about the blind man:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus, as always, surprises.  He assesses no blame — the blindness is not because of guilt. This repudiates the familiar notion at the time that suffering was always the consequence of sin.  However, Jesus does proclaim that even suffering may be a means of glorifying God:

that the works of God might be revealed in him.

Jesus reminds the disciples of his purpose for coming into the world — to overcome the effects of darkness:

I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

This is a reminder of the pressures of time that Jesus is experiencing.  He brings light, but the darkness of betrayal and the cross is coming.  So there is a sense of urgency to his ministry. He has no time to waste.  For now, he offers his light while he can.

Jesus makes a paste of mud with saliva and anoints the man’s eyes.  A seemingly very mundane recipe — but one offered by the Lord of Life himself. He then instructs the blind man to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, along the southern wall in the older section where King David’s citadel had been located.

John the evangelist adds the interpretation of the meaning of Siloam, which is one of several pools of water in the city used as reservoirs.  Siloam  means Sent.  This is appropriate for one sent by Jesus to receive healing.

The description of the healing itself almost seems mundane — the blind man washes away the mud — but the reaction of the people around him is more dramatic.

First, his neighbors, who knew he was blind from birth, were astonished and looked for alternate explanations:

He looks like him.

The blind man confirms his own identity, and explains the procedure Jesus used to give him sight.  Immediately the neighbors ask for Jesus; and when the formerly blind man can’t produce Jesus, they drag the man before the Pharisees.

Now, to quote the cliche, the plot thickens.  The Pharisees have already proven their hostility to Jesus, and even attempted to have him arrested in John 7:32.  So this new development adds to the tension.

The legal problem presented here is that this was a Sabbath day when Jesus did this healing  “work.”  The Pharisees’ strict interpretation of the law forbade any semblance of work on the Sabbath.  Jesus is elsewhere critical of their legalism. Although he observed the Sabbath by attending synagogue services,  the practical needs of preparing food and works of mercy superseded the legalistic demands of the law.  He says in the Gospel of Mark:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Therefore the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.(Mark 2:27-28).

The ex-blind man must again repeat the entire account of his healing for the Pharisees, some of  whom  immediately declare:

This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.

Now we begin to see that that the Pharisees are not always unified in lock-step with one another.

Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” There was division among them.

We will see this division develop later when Nicodemus, also a Pharisee, argues that Jesus should have the right to defend himself in the face of charges (John 7:50-51).

What ensues is an intense interrogation that turns into a debate between the Pharisees and the ex-blind man.  The Pharisees ask the blind man what he thinks of Jesus.  The blind man has no doubt about this much:

He is a prophet.

The Pharisees attempt another tactic.  They try to undermine the credibility of the miracle by casting doubt on the man’s blindness.  They summon his parents — almost a kind of subpoena! — and question whether the man was really born blind.

The parents are terrified — they state what they know, that he was born blind, but they deflect the questions back to their son:

He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.

The parents aren’t afraid of physical harm, but spiritual harm.  The Jewish leadership had decreed that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, would be excommunicated.  The life of a Jew was centered in the religious community and the life of the temple and the synagogue.  To be put out of the synagogue would be to become a social and religious pariah.

So the Pharisees continue their interrogation of the ex-blind man again.  They demand that if he acknowledges God, he must testify that Jesus is a sinner.

What follows is dialogue worthy of the theater.  To appreciate the verbal repartee, I recommend that it be read aloud from verses 25-34.

The ex-blind man is honest, and very blunt.  When told to confess that Jesus is a sinner, he knows what he doesn’t know, but also what he does know:    

 I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.

The Pharisees won’t let up.  When they ask again how it happened, the ex-blind man almost seems a little impertinent:

He answered them, “I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?”

The ex-blind man almost seems to be taunting them.  Certainly he is astute enough to realize that most of the Pharisees are implacable enemies of Jesus.  Naturally, they are offended, and they begin to lose their composure:

 They insulted him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.”

They accuse the ex-blind man of already being Jesus’s disciple, and proudly proclaim their own allegiance to Moses.  This is a false dichotomy — Jesus isn’t opposed to the law of Moses, but to the accretions and traditions that the Pharisees have added to the law of Moses.

The ex-blind man increases his taunts:

 The man answered them, “How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.”

Now, he turns the tables.  He begins to testify to what God has done in his own life through Jesus:

 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him.

The ex-blind man quotes Scripture to confirm the fact that Jesus must not be a sinner, therefore this healing is from God.  He cites Psalms 66:18:

If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened.

And also:

Yahweh is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous (Proverbs 15:29).

After invoking the authority of Scripture, the ex-blind man then cites human history — suggesting that this is an unprecedented event:

Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind.

He adds these two factors together — the claims of Scripture that God doesn’t hear the wicked, and the fact that he has been healed by Jesus — and he comes up with what seems undeniable as the sum — Jesus must be from God:

 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

The Pharisees are outraged:

“You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?” They threw him out.

When they threw him out, what that suggests is that he is excommunicated from the synagogue.  He has gained his eyesight, and lost his community.

But not for long.  Jesus learns that the man he has healed has been thrown out of the synagogue, and seeks him out.  Again, there is another dialogue.  Jesus asks him:

Do you believe in the Son of God?

This is a leading question. In a sense the ex-blind man has already affirmed that Jesus must be from God, otherwise he couldn’t do the works that he has done.  The ex-blind man’s answer seems innocent:

Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?

This suggests that the ex-blind man is definitely leaning toward faith.  All that is required is for Jesus to provide substance.  And so he does:

You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you.

Once again, Jesus has revealed himself to an unlikely person — not the famous or the powerful or the pious or the wise.  Instead, he reveals himself to a poor blind man.

The response of the ex-blind man is appropriate:

 “Lord, I believe!” and he worshiped him.

He trusts in Jesus; but even more he worships him.  This provides the substance. It is only appropriate to worship God. The Son of God is the only begotten Son of God, the Word made flesh, God incarnate.

There is yet one more short dialogue in this passage.  Jesus makes a declarative statement about his purpose and mission:

I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.

This reminds us of the definition of judgment from John 3:

He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.  This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.  (John 3:18-19).

Once again, the Pharisees are offended when they hear this:

 Are we also blind?

The answer of Jesus is worthy of the dialectics of Socrates, or the enigma of a Zen koan:

If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.

This is the paradox — that the Pharisees claim to see, and yet they fail to recognize that the Son of God, the Christ, the Lord of Life, is in their midst.  How tragic.  To think that they are the enlightened ones, and yet they walk in darkness.

APPLY:  

The motif of spiritual darkness and light returns again in the Gospel of John, and finds a literal application in the blindness of the man healed by Jesus.  This is a powerful spiritual application for us.  The  darkness of the soul is far greater than the darkness of physical blindness.   And the darkness of religious Pharisees, who presume superiority to others, may be the deepest darkness of all.

There is an old saying that is still relevant today:

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

Those who have the faith to see Jesus, as does the blind man, have true vision; whereas those whose religion has been reduced to mere rules and rituals, without relationship with God, are in darkness.

RESPOND: 

This is a fascinating encounter recorded in dialogue worthy of Shakespeare, or of the dialectical method of Plato’s dialogues.  We find ourselves swept along in the drama of this blind man who discovers the Light with his new vision; while those who “see” are blind to the Light that shines in their midst.

There is another aspect of this account that fascinates me, though.  It is almost a mere footnote to the story. The disciples see this blind man as the account begins, and they ask Jesus:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

They begin with an assumption — that if there is a congenital physical defect, it must be the result of sin. This principle could be expanded to nearly any physical malaise.  This seems a classic example of “blaming the victim.”

This is also the principle behind the Eastern concept of karma — that people must continue to pay for their sins in successive lives through cycles of suffering until they have been purified.

Jesus repudiates this notion.  The problem of suffering cannot be reduced to the consequences of sin, and cannot be expiated by karma. 

The roots of suffering are complex — but we cannot simplistically blame the sufferer for their own suffering.  In the end, Jesus transforms suffering into good:

that the works of God might be revealed….

Lord, you have come to bring Light and Sight to those who have the eyes of faith to see you.  Open my eyes to see you.  And enable me to work the works that you send me to accomplish as well, while it is day.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The most deluded people” uses this photo:
“Blindfold chess exhibition game” by Poek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for August 25, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 13:10-17
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings.  However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.

The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed.  But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.

Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).

Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that  a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.

It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that.  But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone.  This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.

What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees.  The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well.  So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory calls triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that.  What Jesus does is called de-triangling.  He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:

“You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest.  He himself observed the Sabbath.  However,  he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.

It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!

Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).

And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).

Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

APPLY:  

We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace.  The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing.  Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.

Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.

The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian.  Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.

But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.

The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath.  A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.

Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings.  The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.

RESPOND: 

This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable.  Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.

After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street.  Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean.  Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop.  The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.

The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert.  As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of  a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory.  But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.

Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him.  In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life.  But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim,  Valjean.  Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable  and drowns himself in the Seine River.

That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.

Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow.  I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Orthodoxy" by timchallies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for March 26, 2017

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

John 9:1-41 

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus is presented with a serious question about suffering and the problem of evil when his disciples ask him why a man was born blind.

This passage takes the dialectical method of Jesus — the “point/counterpoint” dialogue — to a new level. There is the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples; between Jesus and the blind man; the blind man interacts with the crowd and the Pharisees; the Pharisees interrogate the blind man’s parents; and the Pharisees confront Jesus.  The effect that this dialogue creates is almost like theater — except that it is real.

The first and most important question is posed by the disciples about the blind man:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus, as always, surprises.  He assesses no blame — the blindness is not because of guilt. This repudiates the familiar notion at the time that suffering was always the consequence of sin.  However, Jesus does proclaim that even suffering may be a means of glorifying God:

that the works of God might be revealed in him.

Jesus reminds the disciples of his purpose for coming into the world — to overcome the effects of darkness:

I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

This is a reminder of the pressures of time that Jesus is experiencing.  He brings light, but the darkness of betrayal  and the cross is coming.  So there is a sense of urgency to his ministry. He has no time to waste.  For now, he offers his light while he can.

Jesus makes a paste of mud with saliva and anoints the man’s eyes.  A seemingly very mundane recipe — but one offered by the Lord of Life himself. He then instructs the blind man to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, along the southern wall in the older section where King David’s citadel had been located.

John the evangelist adds the interpretation of the meaning of Siloam, which is one of several pools of water in the city used as reservoirs.  Siloam  means Sent.  This is appropriate for one sent by Jesus to receive healing.

The description of the healing itself almost seems mundane — the blind man washes away the mud — but the reaction of the people around him is more dramatic.

First, his neighbors, who knew he was blind from birth, were astonished and looked for alternate explanations:

He looks like him.

The blind man confirms his own identity, and explains the procedure Jesus used to give him sight.  Immediately the neighbors ask for Jesus; and when the formerly blind man can’t produce Jesus, they drag the man before the Pharisees.

Now, to quote the cliche, the plot thickens.  The Pharisees have already proven their hostility to Jesus, and even attempted to have him arrested in John 7:32.  So this new development adds to the tension.

The legal problem presented here is that this was a Sabbath day when Jesus did this healing  “work.”  The Pharisees’ strict interpretation of the law forbade any semblance of work on the Sabbath.  Jesus is elsewhere critical of their legalism. Although he observed the Sabbath by attending synagogue services,  the practical needs of preparing food and works of mercy superseded the legalistic demands of the law.  He says in the Gospel of Mark:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Therefore the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.(Mark 2:27-28).

The ex-blind man must again repeat the entire account of his healing for the Pharisees, some of  whom  immediately declare:

This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.

Now we begin to see that that the Pharisees are not always unified in lock-step with one another.

Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” There was division among them.

We will see this division develop later when Nicodemus, also a Pharisee, argues that Jesus should have the right to defend himself in the face of charges (John 7:50-51).

What ensues is an intense interrogation that turns into a debate between the Pharisees and the ex-blind man.  The Pharisees ask the blind man what he thinks of Jesus.  The blind man has no doubt about this much:

He is a prophet.

The Pharisees attempt another tactic.  They try to undermine the credibility of the miracle by casting doubt on the man’s blindness.  They summon his parents — almost a kind of subpoena! — and question whether the man was really born blind.

The parents are terrified — they state what they know, that he was born blind, but they deflect the questions back to their son:

He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.

The parents aren’t afraid of physical harm, but spiritual harm.  The Jewish leadership had decreed that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, would be excommunicated.  The life of a Jew was centered in the religious community and the life of the temple and the synagogue.  To be put out of the synagogue would be to become a social and religious pariah.

So the Pharisees continue their interrogation of the ex-blind man again.  They demand that if he acknowledges God, he must testify that Jesus is a sinner.

What follows is dialogue worthy of the theater.  To appreciate the verbal repartee, I recommend that it be read aloud from verses 25-34.

The ex-blind man is honest, and very blunt.  When told to confess that Jesus is a sinner, he knows what he doesn’t know, but also what he does know:    

 I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.

The Pharisees won’t let up.  When they ask again how it happened, the ex-blind man almost seems a little impertinent:

He answered them, “I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?”

The ex-blind man almost seems to be taunting them.  Certainly he is astute enough to realize that most of the Pharisees are implacable enemies of Jesus.  Naturally, they are offended, and they begin to lose their composure:

 They insulted him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.”

They accuse the ex-blind man of already being Jesus’s disciple, and proudly proclaim their own allegiance to Moses.  This is a false dichotomy — Jesus isn’t opposed to the law of Moses, but to the accretions and traditions that the Pharisees have added to the law of Moses.

The ex-blind man increases his taunts:

 The man answered them, “How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.”

Now, he turns the tables.  He begins to testify to what God has done in his own life through Jesus:

 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him.

The ex-blind man quotes Scripture to confirm the fact that Jesus must not be a sinner, therefore this healing is from God.  He cites Psalms 66:18:

If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened.

And also:

Yahweh is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous (Proverbs 15:29).

After invoking the authority of Scripture, the ex-blind man then cites human history — suggesting that this is an unprecedented event:

Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind.

He adds these two factors together — the claims of Scripture that God doesn’t hear the wicked, and the fact that he has been healed by Jesus — and he comes up with what seems undeniable as the sum — Jesus must be from God:

 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

The Pharisees are outraged:

“You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?” They threw him out.

When they threw him out, what that suggests is that he is excommunicated from the synagogue.  He has gained his eyesight, and lost his community.

But not for long.  Jesus learns that the man he has healed has been thrown out of the synagogue, and seeks him out.  Again, there is another dialogue.  Jesus asks him:

Do you believe in the Son of God?

This is a leading question. In a sense the ex-blind man has already affirmed that Jesus must be from God, otherwise he couldn’t do the works that he has done.  The ex-blind man’s answer seems innocent:

Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?

This suggests that the ex-blind man is definitely leaning toward faith.  All that is required is for Jesus to provide substance.  And so he does:

You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you.

Once again, Jesus has revealed himself to an unlikely person — not the famous or the powerful or the pious or the wise.  Instead, he reveals himself to a poor blind man.

The response of the ex-blind man is appropriate:

 “Lord, I believe!” and he worshiped him.

He trusts in Jesus; but even more he worships him.  This provides the substance. It is only appropriate to worship God. The Son of God is the only begotten Son of God, the Word made flesh, God incarnate.

There is yet one more short dialogue in this passage.  Jesus makes a declarative statement about his purpose and mission:

I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.

This reminds us of the definition of judgment from John 3:

He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.  This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.  (John 3:18-19).

Once again, the Pharisees are offended when they hear this:

 Are we also blind?

The answer of Jesus is worthy of the dialectics of Socrates, or the enigma of a Zen koan:

If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.

This is the paradox — that the Pharisees claim to see, and yet they fail to recognize that the Son of God, the Christ, the Lord of Life, is in their midst.  How tragic.  To think that they are the enlightened ones, and yet they walk in darkness.

APPLY:  

The motif of spiritual darkness and light returns again in the Gospel of John, and finds a literal application in the blindness of the man healed by Jesus.  This is a powerful spiritual application for us.  The  darkness of the soul is far greater than the darkness of physical blindness.   And the darkness of religious Pharisees, who presume superiority to others, may be the deepest darkness of all.

There is an old saying that is still relevant today:

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

Those who have the faith to see Jesus, as does the blind man, have true vision; whereas those whose religion has been reduced to mere rules and rituals, without relationship with God, are in darkness.

RESPOND: 

This is a fascinating encounter recorded in dialogue worthy of a Shakespeare, or of the dialectical method of Plato’s dialogues.  We find ourselves swept along in the drama of this blind man who discovers the Light with his new vision; while those who “see” are blind to the Light that shines in their midst.

There is another aspect of this account that fascinates me, though.  It is almost a mere a footnote to the story. The disciples see this blind man as the account begins, and they ask Jesus:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

They begin with an assumption — that if there is a congenital physical defect, it must be the result of sin. This principle could be expanded to nearly any physical malaise.  This seems a classic example of “blaming the victim.”

This is also the principle behind the Eastern concept of karma — that people must continue to pay for their sins in successive lives through cycles of suffering until they have been purified.

Jesus repudiates this notion.  The problem of suffering cannot be reduced to the consequences of sin, and cannot be expiated by karma. 

The roots of suffering are complex — but we cannot simplistically blame the sufferer for their own suffering.  In the end, Jesus transforms suffering into good:

that the works of God might be revealed….

Lord, you have come to bring Light and Sight to those who have the eyes of faith to see you.  Open my eyes to see you.  And enable me to work the works that you send me to accomplish as well, while it is day.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The most deluded people” uses this photo:
“Blindfold chess exhibition game” by Poek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for August 21, 2016

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Luke 13:10-17

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This account of a sabbath’s day in a synagogue is inserted amongst seemingly unrelated teachings and healings.  However, we also detect a subtle and steady increase in the level of tension between Jesus and the authorities.

The town in which the synagogue is located is unnamed.  But we know that Jesus is drawing closer and closer, at least psychologically, to confrontation in Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

We see the storm clouds of that coming confrontation already gathering here in Luke 13.

Jesus has already established himself early in his ministry as a healer and an exorcist — casting out demons even on the Sabbath (Luke 5:31-37).

Given his previous ministry, it comes as no surprise that  a crippled woman should approach Jesus, even on the Sabbath in the synagogue.  Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this affliction that causes her to be bent and unable to straighten up has a demonic source.

It is important to note that she doesn’t ask Jesus to heal her — he is proactive, and takes the initiative when he sees her misery:

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

If the story had ended here, we might simply have said that this was another example of Jesus’ healing power and left it at that.  But the leader of the synagogue couldn’t leave well enough alone.  This person was likely either a lay leader or a professional rabbi who was sympathetic to the concerns of the priests and the scribes who insisted on strict Sabbath observance.

What happens next illustrates the growing tension between Jesus and the priests, scribes, and Pharisees.  The leader of the synagogue is indignant toward Jesus, but he scolds the crowd, rather than Jesus for gathering to seek healing on the Sabbath day:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”

Obviously, he is annoyed at Jesus, but perhaps the religious authorities have begun to figure out that confronting Jesus directly doesn’t work all that well.  So this leader of the synagogue does something that Family Systems Theory callsl triangling. He takes his wrath out on the crowd instead of on Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t let him get by with that.  What Jesus does is called de-triangling.  He confronts the leader, and in so doing also addresses the priests, scribes and Pharisees who might be muttering to one another. Jesus says to them:

“You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Jesus isn’t necessarily denying the importance of the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest.  He himself observed the Sabbath.  However,  he is criticizing the preposterous interpretation that would prevent acts of compassion.

It would be illogical and inhumane not to lead an animal to water to drink on the Sabbath day; how much more not to heal this fellow Jew (a daughter of Abraham) who had been in bondage to Satan for 18 years!

Jesus had already addressed their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath earlier in his ministry, declaring to them that:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5).

And when he healed a man whose hand was withered he asked the pointed question:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?(Luke 6:9).

Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus’ eloquent perspective on the proper use of the law, which is meant to benefit human beings, not enslave or oppress them:

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

It is clear that Jesus won this round — as he does every round:

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

APPLY:  

We Christians need to get past the false opposition between law and grace.  The law is never described in the New Testament as an evil thing.  Legalism, which is the effort to attain salvation by one’s own obsessive-compulsive ritual righteousness instead of relying on God’s grace, is the problem.

Salvation is not a human achievement of any kind — through works, the law, or spiritual discipline. Salvation is a gift of God for the sake of Christ.

The law doesn’t save, and the law never trumps love and compassion. However, the moral law, used properly under the auspices of the law of love, can provide moral guidance to the Christian.  Jesus observed the law by resting and worshiping on the Sabbath because of his love for his Father.

But when law becomes legalism, and morality becomes moralism, then the law becomes a bludgeon instead of a tool for spiritual growth.

The obsessive-compulsive rigidity of the leader of the synagogue misses the whole point of the law of the Sabbath.  A day that is created for rest and renewal becomes instead a day of rigid rules that increase religious anxiety and guilt, and neglects those who are suffering.

Jesus reminds us that the law at its best is for the spiritual growth and benefit of human beings.  The law at its best can be an extension of his loving grace rather than a source of oppression.

RESPOND: 

This passage makes me think of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserable.  Jean Valjean, the protagonist, has been imprisoned because he broke the law — he stole a loaf of bread for his starving family.  The law is strict and rigid concerning theft.

After he is released — 19 years later — he is offered hospitality by a kindly bishop who finds him shivering and homeless on the street.  Valjean tries to steal the bishop’s silver, but when he is arrested the bishop insists to the authorities that he had given the silverware to Valjean.  Valjean goes free, a much richer man because of the grace of the bishop.  The bishop tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God’s sake, and he should use the silver to make a better man of himself.

The major complication of the novel is the character of Inspector Javert.  As the plot develops, Valjean has become the compassionate, generous mayor of  a French city, and a wealthy and just owner of a factory.  But Javert becomes suspicious — he begins to remember Valjean from years before when Javert was a prison guard, and learns that Valjean has been accused of another crime.

Javert makes it his life’s mission to obsessively hunt Valjean and arrest him.  In a moment of dramatic irony, Javert falls into the hands of revolutionaries, and Valjean contrives to spare his life.  But Javert cannot live with the conflict of his rigid devotion to the law and the merciful goodness of his intended victim,  Valjean.  Because of his intense inner conflict, he finds the contradictions irreconcilable  and drowns himself in the Seine River.

That is a rather elaborate illustration of the principle that there is a spiritual law of grace and love that always trumps the rigid law of legalism.

Lord, I love your law — but it is the law of love that I seek to follow.  I pray that you will give me a healthy respect and obedience to your law, but always illumined by your love and compassion.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Orthodoxy" by timchallies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.