NOTES for Mar 3:1-12
How can the behavior of the Pharisees in this passage be explained? — that is the first question. Parallel to it is the second: how can Jesus' behavior be explained? For a modern reader of the Gospel, raised on the values of humanism, it is easy to see the Pharisees as a kind of "spawn of hell." We ourselves are unreservedly on Jesus' side — and does that not mean that we are far better than they are, even if in daily life we do not remember God especially often? Let us think about it...
The Pharisees were a religious party with a tradition based on a scrupulous study of the Law of Moses. Many things seemed self-evident to them, for example, that a man with a withered hand had been punished by God for something. To accept the fact that spirituality could come from some other source was equivalent to losing everything. And if the miracle of healing on the Sabbath was plain to see, it was the fruit of some "other" spirituality... perhaps even satanic?
Now let us look once more at our episode. Here I am, a witness of an obvious miracle... It breaks into my habitually explainable world and destroys it. What is easier for me: in the exultation of my heart to bow before what has happened with meek gratitude, or to turn away, muttering that the miracle was performed "by the power of Beelzebul"?
On the other hand, what would it have meant for the man with the withered hand, who had suffered for many years already, to wait one more day? What would it have cost Jesus to wait one more day and not put the Pharisees to the test? After all, truly, a delay of one day against the background of an entire life plays no role. But apparently that is not so for the love of God. Can an unexpected meeting be postponed? Can loving wait? Could the Physician and the sick man who met in this Gospel text have delayed opening themselves to each other? The point is not Jesus' revolutionary spirit, not the deliberately provocative nature of His behavior. The point is simply that His love is real.