Speaking Evil

Nearly every Sunday, there are things in my sermon that really move me. Sometimes they are the main ideas, and sometimes they are a sidelight that doesn’t get much air time on Sunday morning. This week, it didn’t get much air time.

In Mark 3, Jesus confronts Pharisees about their legalism. He does so by healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.

A withered hand would have meant desperate poverty for the afflicted man. He would have been ignored by a society that didn’t have any appreciation for people with handicaps. His life was very difficult.

The Pharisees are waiting and watching to see if Jesus will heal on the Sabbath so they can accuse Him of breaking the Law. Jesus knows it.

He calls the man with the withered hand forward and, with him standing there, asks, “Is it Lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to heal or to kill?” It is this question that grabs me.

Jesus is asking the Pharisees to say with their lips, “I think this man should live another day with his disability.” Jesus wants them to actually voice their cruel theology. It is like we who espouse following Jesus, but really think the poor deserve to be poor and the sick deserve to be sick and the sinners deserve to go to Hell. I wonder if Jesus, upon seeing the poor, sick or sinner, would call them forward and ask us to say, “We think they deserve what they have.” before He heals them.

I wonder if the sin of hating people is greater than the sin of breaking the Sabbath. I wonder if the sin of hating people is greater than the sin of enabling the poor with food, or rewarding the bad habits of the sick with health, or granting grace to the sinner.

Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand and he was made whole.

About shepherd

I am a pastor at a local church.
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One Response to Speaking Evil

  1. Brian says:

    Great observations! I’m humbled because it points not only to our tendency to hate, but to the extremes of adding to our religious culture to keep the people we hate out.

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