NOTES for Mar 3:1-6

In today's story Jesus touches on the very meaning of the Sabbath commandment. It was given to God's people in order to teach them to dedicate their life to God. To begin with - one day a week. In this connection the Lord asks the Pharisees what this dedication means: simply doing nothing on the Sabbath (and sometimes inaction is evildoing), or doing good? This question is addressed directly to us as well. Having entered into the New Covenant with God, we have dedicated our whole life to Him - all our deeds, words, thoughts, and every aspect of our being. What, then, does this dedication mean? And what should it be like? And how can we make our life dedicated not to fulfilling the Sabbath commandment as we understand it, but to God Himself, who is love?

The Sabbath is a day dedicated to God, a day on which one is commanded not to do any work of one's own, but only the works of God. What is one's own work? Well, work, for example. And what is God's work, that is, work pleasing to God? To answer this question one must either ask Him Himself directly or know well what He is like. Of course, it is simpler not to work and in general to prohibit whatever resembles work. The Pharisaic interpretation of the law followed precisely this path, and therefore Jesus was constantly accused of violating the Sabbath commandment because of His healings. But He tries to turn people toward the living God. His question means: people, what is your God like? Is He good or evil? What is His will: salvation or destruction? Do you know your God? These same questions are addressed to us. The Pharisees were silent in response. And what will we answer?

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.

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.

Sometimes, as can be seen in today's reading, the evangelist paints for us a picture of the Kingdom moving across the earth together with Jesus, who has brought this Kingdom into the world. And the world reacts to a new reality unexpectedly opened to it, reacting without always realizing what and Whom it is dealing with. But always, whatever turn events take, one can see how the evil in which the world lies runs from the breath of the Kingdom. Before us again is a description of mass healings, and we see how even the spirits of darkness bear witness to the One who gives them no rest. But He does not need such testimony.

Indeed, why would Jesus need the fame of a wonderworker, a popular hero followed by a surging crowd of people thirsting for healing or for liberation from the power of dark forces? On the other hand there are those who do not need healing, or at least think they do not: the Pharisees and Herod's people, who want only one thing, that this Man who gives them no rest should disappear, even if they have to kill Him for that to happen. And between them is a crowd of people who understand little or understand nothing at all, who follow Jesus without always understanding who He is, but having learned from their own experience that He can heal and free them from the power of dark forces. And all of them somehow, each in their own way, see the Kingdom.

The spirits of darkness see it clearly, and the sight is torment for them: they understand Who is before them and want only one thing, for Him to go away. The Pharisees, deeply religious people, and the local politicians who side with the existing authorities agree with one another in nothing except one thing: they have no use for the kind of Kingdom to which this Man bears witness.

They may not understand very well what it is like, but they understand very well that neither earthly power nor absolutized religiosity is compatible with it or will stand before it. And they want to kill the One who threatens their power and their religious values. As for the crowd following Jesus, also perhaps not understanding very well what the Kingdom is, they nevertheless know one thing: whatever it is, and whoever Jesus is, He can help them, and therefore His Kingdom must be a good thing. Whatever this Kingdom may be, let it only help them be healed, be rid of sickness or of the power of dark forces, and then... then it will become clear whether it is worth following this unusual Preacher any farther. Meanwhile Jesus is drawing near to Jerusalem, where everything must be decided. And set in its proper place.