In this reading we see three different attitudes toward Jesus, three different meetings with God. Confident in their own virtue, the people's religious teachers, the Pharisees, feel not just irritation but hatred toward Jesus, and they plan to kill Him because He violated religious rules, or more precisely, because He placed the need of a living human being above the letter of the law. It is incomprehensible: the teachers of God's law do not recognize God! The demons, by contrast, recognize God very well and, when they meet Him, fall before Him in fear; they clearly would like to be farther away. Their attitude toward Jesus is fear.

But a great multitude of tormented, sick people presses around Him, trying to touch Him. To touch God means to believe; only by faith can one touch Christ and enter into a personal relationship with Him. And we see God's answer to people's faith: power goes out from Him and heals everyone, as it says in the parallel reading in Luke 6:19.

At times Jesus' behavior looks frankly provocative. Why, one asks, did He need to heal a man with a withered hand specifically on Shabbat and specifically in the synagogue? This was a direct and obvious challenge not only to the Pharisees in particular, but also in general to the ideas already established by that time about the norms and rules of Shabbat, and in particular about the ritual prohibitions connected with it.

The usual rule was this: help to a person on Shabbat, including medical help, was given in the form and to the extent necessary for vital indications. If, for example, the healed man's withered hand had directly threatened his life, no one would have reproached Jesus for the healing.

If, however, there was no direct and immediate threat to life, treatment was not performed on Shabbat and was postponed until it ended. It is worth noting, by the way, that in medical institutions in Israel, for example, these rules are still followed today: on Shabbat only necessary planned medical procedures are carried out, and emergency help necessary for vital indications is provided.

The situation with the man healed by Jesus was clearly different: the presence of a withered hand in no way threatened his life, and the healing therefore could have been postponed until the end of Shabbat. But Jesus, as we see, does not do this and heals the man specifically on Shabbat. At first glance such a healing can look like a demonstrative and therefore provocative violation of Shabbat.

In reality, however, the situation is exactly the opposite. In this case the matter is not medical help, but healing: the manifestation of the Kingdom and its power. That is, the very thing for which Shabbat as such exists. In Gospel times there was much debate about the ritual norms and prescriptions connected with Shabbat, and amid the restrictions people often forgot the main thing: Shabbat is not a day of ritual prohibitions, but a day to be spent in God's presence.

Jesus is precisely striving to return Shabbat to its true meaning. Indeed, where can Shabbat be more itself, not in form but in essence, than in the Kingdom? To enter the Kingdom means to enter the rest of Shabbat, and in a fullness that is unthinkable anywhere else. This is exactly what Jesus offers those who witnessed the healing He performed: in fact, all of them, as many as were there, found themselves on the threshold of the Kingdom. But many of those present did not notice the Kingdom at all; instead, they noticed very clearly a violation of the religious prescriptions connected with Shabbat. This emphasis on the external at the expense of the essential, on religion at the expense of the Kingdom, was the chief obstacle on the way into the Kingdom for religious people. It was an obstacle that had to be overcome, or else one had to abandon the way into the Kingdom altogether. Here each person chooses his own. And bears all the consequences of his choice.

Continuing the theme of the Messiah's high-priestly ministry, the author of the epistle draws attention to the new meaning contained in it, a meaning that did not and could not exist in the ministry of the former high priests. The Messiah is the true high priest not only because He fully corresponds to the ideal of the high priest, who was called to become a perfect instrument for the sanctification of the people. He is the true high priest above all because He Himself shares in that fullness of the Kingdom which is the source of all sanctification. It is in this sense that the author of the epistle speaks of the "true tabernacle" and of the sanctuary created not by human beings, but by God Himself (vv. 1-2). Such a High Priest cannot remain on earth in the sense in which every person remains here, for then He would be no different from an ordinary human being, remaining wholly under the power of the laws of our world, which has not yet been transfigured (vv. 4-5).

But in order to sanctify the people, who still remain entirely and completely in the untransfigured world, the Messiah-High Priest had to become part of it without being subject to its laws, at least insofar as they reflect the corruption of the fallen world caused by its sinfulness. Only what is clean can be sanctified, and only one who is clean can sanctify: such is the principle of Old Testament priesthood. Of course, the cleanness was relative and the sanctification incomplete, but in the fallen world nothing more could be achieved. With the coming of Christ, the situation changed radically; but even Christ Himself could cleanse and sanctify His faithful only insofar as He became part of our world. The Messiah-High Priest, like every high priest in general, had to have something to offer, while at the same time remaining near those for whom He made His offering (v. 3). The offering was not of this world, but those for whom it was made still remained under the power of this world. Thus the new, messianic union-covenant was born, and its founder was the One who became for the faithful the new High Priest, opening for them the way no longer into an earthly sanctuary, but to the altar of the Kingdom (v. 6).