When the heart hardens, it is immune to the needs of others. When it persists in this condition long enough, kindness dies, and only self-interest remains. To challenge it then, is to invite a wrath that is content to kill to avoid having to listen. A simple test for you, when the advertisements for St. Jude’s, Shriners, or the one with abused animals comes on the TV, do you watch? Those ads are relentless. They do not just appear once, they are recast over and over and over again. They nag at the part of you that still has conscience. Maybe you already donate. Maybe you have donated for a long time. But even then, are you able to watch? Can you stomach watching them every time they come on TV? Or, perhaps, have they become “white noise” to you now, just another advertisement you are fully able to ignore, like the one for milk before it, and the one for Toyota’s after it? Do you find the ones with healthy puppies and kittens more “entertaining”? Sure beats watching one with trembling kitties, or broken spirited puppies, or children missing limbs. There is only so much the heart can take right?
So lucky for us the heart is not complete stone yet. But is it on its way there? One small change the introduction of Jesus into the heart has, is a resetting of the need to arrive. It is a small thing, but I find a more common thing. Changed hearts (those that surrender to Jesus and are in the process of transformation from Him), often lose the desire to rush everywhere. They are able to slow down, because they worry less, and trust more, and realize that unplanned delays may actually be part of a bigger plan that is more important than to-the-second arrival accuracy. It’s not about being late, or being irresponsible to the needs of others, but it is about trust in the journey itself. Someone about the relinquishing of control, comes with it a relinquishing of worry and stress, and in its place, the noticing of others who we had become blind by choice to before.
You sit in a food court having lunch. But because of Jesus’ work in your heart, your food is not the most important thing in front of you. Now, the teenager on the verge of tears a few tables away, staring blankly into her cell phone that appears intent on publishing only news that brings her dismay, becomes more important to you than the food you went there to eat. Grabbing a “quick lunch” is now lost, in trying to figure out, “how do I help a stranger, a teenager?” How do I tell her, that whatever this is, it will pass, and that life is so much bigger than this, and over time will become so much better than whatever thing her phone has just informed her of? The mystery of now wanting to help, completely overrides, the previous intent to eat. You do not even miss the food. And you cannot keep eating, only wondering, how could I help?
The person who stands in the street at a red light, trolling from window to window. Do you see him as a panhandler, a sophisticated beggar who probably makes more money doing this job than you do? Or is he one of the less fortunate, that “there by the grace of God” would be you, instead of him? Or worse, do you not see him at all, choosing to focus on the light turning green, and your need to speed away to get wherever you are going obsessed with not being late? All three perspectives have merit, and are true. But in two of them, kindness dies. You will surely be late to wherever you are going if you stop for every beggar in the street. If you really make time to help one of them, or more of them, you might miss your appointment altogether. And what will happen then? What will you lose, or those who requested your presence lose? Would they understand if they knew you were really trying to change the path of a person’s life? Would they want to help you, to join your cause, or not? If not, I hope you were not heading to church.
Panhandlers are real. They are sophisticated. They know how to play the game of sympathy for dolts who give money every time they see them. That perspective is true and real and cannot be argued for facts. Though the math is a little shaky. Average 5 cars at a stop light, one gives a dollar. Average stoplights per hour is 15, average hourly income $15 per hour, average annual income $30k cash. Except, in-climate weather slows down both the willingness to roll down the window, as well as the stamina to stand there in either scorching heat, freezing cold, or pouring rain, or high winds, or thunderstorm. $30k now gets reduced by the number of bad days due to weather, perhaps 30% average, taking the annual pay down to ~$20K. The point is simply that working at McDonalds would likely offer a higher and more steady income than standing at a street corner. If this is about easy money, the panhandler has picked one of the hardest physical professions to achieve it.
But whether you see the one who asks - as a panhandler, or as an unfortunate (that could have easily been you, without the mercy of God), is about perspective of how your heart reacts to the pain of others. And church folk, are no different than regular folk. Not in any time, not in any age. Matthew writes of a man who had a withered hand. This kind of debility made it especially hard to work in the days of Christ. There were no ADA laws at that time. There was no ADA equipment unless perhaps you were friends with a blacksmith, or artisan, who took pity upon your cause. In a time, when your income depended upon your health, and even that was no guarantee; having a disability and more specifically a withered hand made you a liability to your family and a pariah to the society of which you were a member. But this man, went to church, or rather to synagogue, every Sabbath.
The membership knew who he was. They felt sorry for him, but outside of perhaps throwing a few coins his way every so often there was “nothing” they could do for him … right? I mean, what can a group of believers do for someone who has a deformity? God allowed it right? God must have some purpose for it, there is nothing we can do. And with that, white noise begins to develop around the eyes and ears. The man with the withered hand does not even have a name in scripture, he is only known by his deformity. The membership have come to know him that way, and the most they can muster, is pity, at least from time to time. And where the membership has become content to fail this man, the leadership has set an even worse example. The leadership does not know his name either. The leadership has not taken up his cause to God, rallying the entire church, perhaps the entire region to fast and pray for the healing of this man. Because after all, God allowed it. It must be part of some bigger plan God has in mind, what can we do, but accept it, and move on. And this situation were it not written about by Matthew in the days of Christ, could be written about by any Christian church in modern America today, down to the motives of those involved.
But things were in motion. Christ was in motion. He had just exited a corn field where He rebuked the Pharisees over their notions of Sabbath keeping. And He went straight into their local synagogue where it was only going to get more interesting. Matthew picks up in his twelfth chapter in verse 9 saying … “And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue: [verse 10] And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him.” So as Jesus enters the Synagogue, He first encounters the man with the withered hand sitting in the back, hoping to remain in obscurity. The seats of honor in the front of the gathering were not reserved for one such as himself. The eyes of Jesus meet his, and he is captivated by the love he sees in them for one like him. Never a man loved such as this Man loved. Something was about to be different. His picture of who God is was about to be different. His understanding of what God allows, and what God wills are about to be different.
But not the heart of the Pharisees, for vain obedience to the law, has driven kindness out completely. Instead of forming a cheering section to applaud when Jesus is done healing this man, instead of at least being silently happy the man will be healed. They are not. They are actually planning to use this man’s pain as a way to accuse the Son of God of loving too much. They know Jesus heals. There is too much evidence not to believe that. And they know the healings come from a heart that loves, arguably too much love. So they intend to trap Jesus in one of His usual healings, because it is the Sabbath day, where “work” is not allowed to be performed. In their mind, in their version of obedience, even if this man could be healed on Sabbath, he must wait until sundown in order for it to be lawful. That is the God they serve, or rather the extent to which vanity drives their version of obedience. That is the picture of God they share in their minds, that God would prefer we suffer from pain and disease during Sabbath, so that the law can be maintained. They value the law over the people, over the love, over the pain of this man, and kindness is dead and gone within them, only a reflection of who they are remains.
Oh if it were only different today. While there are no official Pharisees anymore in our churches, there are spiritual Pharisees among us all. We value arriving at church on time now, and have no time therefore to help the homeless that clutter our roads along the way. We value our clothing we don on Sabbaths to go to church and therefore do not wish to risk getting them dirty with the dirt of those we find in need. If perchance a homeless person makes it through the doors of our services, we reserve for them seats in the back, as far from the rest of us with seats of honor as we can get. The smell of those who have not bathed, is too offensive in the nostrils of those with soap, deodorant, make-up, and the pretentions of knowing Jesus. Should those homeless be diseased in either body or mind, we offer them sympathy, not the power of God to heal what Jesus ALWAYS longs to heal. We accept their debilitations as we accept our own, failing to see or to employ the power of a God who wishes for none of us to live the way we do. But it is Sabbath after all, we have a schedule to meet, and a sequence of activities to observe; there can be no time for the disruptions of those in greater need. And we read the scriptures with disdain for those in them, while never examining the mirrors into our own hearts.
Matthew records the answer of Jesus to His accusers in verse 11 saying … “And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? [verse 12] How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.” Jesus calls out to them, their hypocrisy once again. If they owned but one sheep and it fell in a pit, they would lift it out and save it. Why? Not just because they felt sympathy for an animal in pain, but because it is the “one” sheep they owned. Without it, there will be no more wool, or wool to trade. Without what the sheep can do for them, they themselves will suffer. So the sheep must be saved. Jesus however, sees the man with the withered hand as the “one” sheep of His, who is suffering in the pit of this synagogue. The man suffers because the other sheep do not pray for his healing, they accept his infirmities as some sort of twisted plan of God’s. They accept this man’s pain as they accept their own. When Jesus is publicly stating this is NOT THE WILL OF GOD. God wants to end the pain of each of us, and of all of us. That is what redemption and salvation are all about.
Doing well on Sabbath days, is not just about applying the medical remedies our science has come to create or discover. It is about employing the power of our God to undo the damage of sin, whether that is secret sin, or public. It is about employing the power of our God to undo the infirmities for which there is no scientific remedy, to demonstrate to all around that only God can do what God has done. And it is God’s will to do it, not our blighted perception of God that would allow us to accept it. Doing well on Sabbath days is showing mercy, and showing love to those who need it, to the dirty ones, to the ones trapped in the sins we would like to forget we ever shared. Sin is a dirty business. The salvation of mankind will not be done in pristine places where filth no longer exists. It will be love extended to those like the man with the withered hand to offer hope and healing to those who long abandoned the idea of seeing either.
Matthew continues in verse 13 saying … “Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.” Jesus employs the power of God to heal what otherwise cannot be healed. Jesus demonstrates for that man, for that membership, and for us, what the will of God truly is. Not to accept the pain we have become complacent with, but to know there is something much much better. To have mercy, to show love, to do well unto others is lawful, is within the spirit of the law and even within the day of Sabbath observance.
And what do we do with these texts? We translate them into medical careers to avoid the “conflict” of working on Sabbath. We become doctors, and medical practitioners of all varieties, so that we “can” work on Sabbath without violating the law. We treat the day as no different than any other. Our time is spent how it always is. Until we request weekend shifts because the pay differentials are better than working “regular” days. Sabbath becomes something of no special regard, and the only good we do for others is in the application of what medicine can provide. Thus we lose all faith in something more than medicine can provide, again trusting to the wisdom of our sciences, and not in the power of the God we might otherwise employ. Treating the sick is not about ignoring medicine, it is about offering help beyond what medicine can do, and hope that it is the clear will of God to do so.
What we offer the homeless is a statement about us, not about them. The changed heart burns so intensely with love for others, it just cannot sit down and stay still, while need exists in the pews next to us, or in the streets on the ways to the churches we are supposed to worship in. Worship itself becomes the act of bringing people to Jesus, of introducing them to the source of power that changes hearts and makes lives worth living in the here and the now. Who cares what songs we sing, and what genre’s they come from, while only the “saved” can hear the melodies? If you want to re-charge your spiritual batteries, introduce someone new to Jesus, and watch the meter on your heart go bing, bing, bing. No sermon will ever equal that, no praise and worship session will ever even get close to it. We praise and sing because of actions like the introduction of a new soul to Jesus, not for routine, or empty emotional highs.
But to challenge the unchanged heart with a comparison of what it might be, results in only two responses. The heart who will surrender to Jesus will find what that experience is like. The heart who has decided to reject Jesus does not want to ever see that comparison. It wants to be left alone. It wants silence. It wants to be able to do what it sees fit, how it sees fit. No Jesus, should ever offer any alternative to how “I” want to do something. The Pharisees did not want these words. They did not want the council of God, to be told they were incorrect, to be shown what love really looks like. They did not rejoice at the healing of this man. It did not inspire faith in them. It inspired anger. It was a clear demonstration of what the heart of God looks like, and what was in their own, an in ours perhaps. They did, what all sin will someday lead us to do, if we are not saved from ourselves by Jesus.
Matthew records in verse 14 saying … “Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.” The Pharisees began formal planning on how they might kill Jesus. We read this, and think it is only them, never us. We would never do such a thing. But really? What happens to our hearts as we continually shut them off from the transformation Jesus offers. We become cold, and calloused. We begin to present an image of our God, as being the same as we are, cold and apathetic. We kill our God, by showing Him to the world, as blank reflections of who we are. Unchanged. Unreformed. Not in harmony with His law, because there is little mercy or love in us. What is there is focused only on our families and ourselves. This is NOT the picture of Jesus, that the world so longs to see. It is our enemies who need to see Jesus the most in who we are. It is the destitute who need Jesus, the ones trapped in sins they cannot ever break free from (just like you and I). It is the people dealing with deformity who have no hope to ever see it gone, that in fact could see it gone, if “we” but had the faith to employ the power of our God.
Where kindness may have died in past and prologue, it did NOT die in Jesus. There would be more to come on His ideas of Sabbath observance …
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