Watching Jesus

​2nd Sunday after Pentecost – B (Proper 4)                                                     LSB #’s 527, 524, 848
Text – Mark 3:2
 
And they watched Jesus, to see whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. 
 
WATCHING JESUS
 
 
Many people   around my age  spent time watching Wile-E-Coyote & the Roadrunner facing off  each Saturday morning  for our entertainment.   Throughout the series of cartoons, we laughed,  as Wile-E-Coyote was constantly foiled in his attempts  to catch  the super-fast  & super sly  Roadrunner.  
Time & again, Coyote’s efforts & plotting  came back to bite him,  as he blows himself up,  plunges off of cliffs,  or gets pounded by boulders.   Every trick up his sleeve backfired,  & he never once caught the Roadrunner!  (Beep, beep).   We laughed   & we also  may have recognized in both of the characters  something of ourselves.  
Any kind of comedy,  cartoon or otherwise,  does best when  we catch a glimpse of some of the worst in ourselves as human beings.  Honestly looking at “ourselves” & laughing is one way we learn to recognize & to ‘own’  some of our less attractive human qualities.  
In the beloved cartoon, both Roadrunner & Coyote appear gleeful when the other  runs into harm’s way.  How often do we feel the same  yet hide those crude instincts under a facade of goodwill?   Hopefully,  we do learn while laughing at them,  that our attempts to take joy in the destruction or the maladies of others  will always backfire upon us  in one way or another.
Although the life of Jesus is anything but a cartoon,  we also see  some of the same forces at work in Holy Scripture.  In the Gospel reading from Mark,  we find the Pharisees setting a trap for Jesus.  They aim to blow up His campaign  to spread the Good News of God’s love.   When Jesus foils their carefully contrived plan, “The Pharisees went out & immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him,  how to destroy Him.”  (Mark 3:6 ESV)    Like Wile-E-Coyote,  no matter how many times they fail,  they never give up in their efforts to destroy Jesus.   
One thing to notice  is that Mark did not write, “how to kill Him.”   He wrote, “how to destroy Him.”    The Pharisees did not  simply want to get rid of Jesus.   They wanted to shame Him & totally destroy  His reputation.    They wanted to completely discredit Him  because He had time & again embarrassed them by revealing the hypocrisy  of their laws. 
For example, consider their law against healing on the Sabbath.  Years before Jesus came to earth, the intentions were noble.  The Pharisees wanted to obey the OT reading  that you & I heard earlier from Deuteronomy:
“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.  Six days you shall labor & do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.  On it  you shall not do any work,  you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant & your female servant may rest   as well as you.”  (5:12-14 ESV) 
 
God had ordered the keeping of the Sabbath to be a blessing to His people.   He knew that greed, or merely the survival instinct, would tempt them to work every day of the week.   He also knew that enslaved peoples would be commanded to work all seven days.   Jesus summarized it by saying, “The Sabbath was made for man,  not man for the Sabbath.”  (Mark 2:27 ESV) 
The Pharisees, by forbidding healing on the Sabbath, were working exactly counter to the intentions of God.  They were enslaving people to the Sabbath instead of blessing them with it.  At its foundational level,  God intended the Sabbath to be for man’s wholistic benefit.   It wasn’t merely for physical rest & recovery,  but for spiritual rest & recovery as well. 
Sin is what lies at the root of all physical ailments & exhaustion.  That’s why Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor & are heavy laden, & I  will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, & learn from me, for I am gentle & lowly in heart, & you will find rest for your souls.”  (Matthew 11:28-29 ESV)   The healing Jesus performed on the Sabbath can be seen as an inbreaking of the new age   that will be fully implemented at the resurrection!  For the man healed of his withered hand,  it was a piece of heaven arriving here on earth.  However, this eventful healing wasn’t all stress free for him either. 
As someone with a lame hand, he was considered unclean by the Jewish people.   He would normally  never be allowed in the synagogue,  but on this day, here he is waiting,  as bait, in the synagogue  for Jesus to appear: “And [the Pharisees] watched Jesus, to see whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.”  (Mark 3:2 ESV) 
Did the man with the withered hand sense their evil intent?   Was he forced into the synagogue against his will?   With the end result being their plotting to destroy Jesus, the irony could not be richer.  The Pharisees were worried that Jesus’ life-restoring, healing activity would break the Sabbath,  yet they begin plans  to actually destroy someone’s life  on that very Sabbath. 
Isn’t that often  how it goes?  Our good intentions to ‘save someone’  often lead us down the path of evil  instead.   We overstep our bounds & make our hypocrisy clear to those we’re trying to save.  It’s a difficult reality to face head on.  Revealing that with comedy can make it easier to swallow;  not that Wile-E-Coyote or Roadrunner were ever trying to save the other. 
In the Gospel of Mark, the healing of the withered hand is the fifth in a series of conflict narratives  between Jesus & the Jewish leaders.  It also serves as an introduction to a new section that focuses on the open & growing hostility to Jesus – from His enemies  & from those closest to Him, including His family. 
Chapter 3 sets the tone for the rest of the Gospel.  To use current terminology, “Why do so many people suffer from Jesus derangement syndrome?”   After verse 2 stated that His enemies were watching Him, verse 6 concludes that His enemies are now plotting to destroy Jesus.  They don’t simply want to get Him out of the way.  They wanted to entirely destroy His reputation.  As King Solomon wrote, “What has been is what will be,   & what has been done is what will be done,   & there is nothing new   under the sun.”  (Ecclesiastes 1:9 ESV) 
The Pharisees had set a trap for Jesus so they could frame Him for breaking the Sabbath.  When, as expected,  Jesus disregarded their unloving focus on legalism,  they plotted to destroy Him.  By healing the man, Jesus demonstrates what God’s intention is for the Sabbath.  However, that also reveals that the evil  leaders of God’s people had rejected His intentions. 
Luke 13:14 makes that very clear: “But the ruler of the synagogue,  indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, ‘There are six days in which work ought to be done.  Come on those days & be healed,   & not  on the Sabbath day.’” 
God shows mercy to His creation by giving the Sabbath.  In turn,  Christians have mercy on others.   Our struggle against sin & Satan  can bring a hard edge  to our thoughts, words & deeds.  God gave a Sabbath rest so the Holy Spirit can remove that edge of hardness. 
As the busyness of our weeks goes by, we often miss the fact that we do not want to let go of that hardness of heart.  The Pharisees had become insensitive to the purposes of God & to the sufferings of people.  In rejecting Jesus as God,  they rejected life & redemption & their own restoration.   That rejection left them prey to the devil,  distress  & death. 
That is the bitter fruit of their hardness of heart which provoked in Jesus both anger & godly sorrow.  As Mark wrote: “He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart…”  (3:5a ESV)  Although Jesus realized that doing so would lead the Pharisees to plot His destruction, He does the right thing nevertheless:
“…[Jesus] said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’  He stretched it out, & his hand was restored.  ”  (Mark 3:5b ESV)   With their hardness of heart being put on full display again, “The Pharisees went out & immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him, how to destroy Him.”  (Mark 3:6 ESV)      Repentance would have been the life-giving response.    Instead,  the Pharisees chose to double down on their hardness of heart.  They had been watching Jesus in order to accuse Him.  The proper way to watch Jesus is for the purpose of receiving Him. 
We can clearly see the results by looking at the text from Mark.  Jesus said to the Pharisees, “‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’  But they were silent.”  Then, Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, “‘Stretch out your hand.’   He stretched it out, & his hand was restored.” 
The Pharisees did not respond to Jesus’ instruction.  They were silent & they were not healed.  The man with the withered hand obeyed Jesus,  & in stretching out his hand  Jesus restored it.  Do you recall the opening words,  of the opening hymn?  “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds...”  Do you recall the next four words?  “In a believer’s ear!”  (LSB 524:1) 
The Pharisees were not believers,  so their hardness of heart remained.  Yet, Jesus did not allow His anger at their hardness of heart  to harden His own heart  into hatred.  He never sought to destroy the Pharisees.  Instead, “He grieved at their hardness of heart.”  (Mark 3:5a ESV) 
Many people in our culture  are watching Christians  in order to accuse us.  We need the Sabbath now,  more than ever,  so that our anger turns to grief for them  rather than hatred of them.  The edge of hardness that at times helps us to resist sin is not God’s design.  Rather, He knows that repentance & forgiveness are the tools to combat our sinful desires. 
God’s children watch Jesus  in order to receive those tools each day.  Amen. 
 
 
 
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds  in a believer’s ear!  It soothes our sorrows,  heals our wounds,  & drives away our fear.      It makes the wounded spirit whole  & calms the heart’s unrest;  ’tis manna to the hungry soul  & to the weary,  rest.  Amen.  LSB 524:1-2.