Scripture Daily

Context No. 330 of 4322 · Mark

Context · Reflection

Mark 3:1-6: in context

1He entered again into the synagogue, and there was a man there whose hand was withered. 2They watched him, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might accuse him. 3He said to the man whose hand was withered, “Stand up.” 4He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do harm? To save a life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5When he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their hearts, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored as healthy as the other. 6The Pharisees went out, and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

Jesus walks into the synagogue and there is a man there with a withered hand. But the man is not really the center of the scene at first; the watchers are. People are watching Jesus closely, the text says, to see whether he will heal on the Sabbath, so that they can accuse him. A suffering man has become bait in a trap. Jesus refuses to play it quietly. He calls the man to stand up in the middle of everyone, and then he asks the room a question that leaves no room to hide: is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good, or to do harm, to save a life, or to kill? There is no neutral option in his framing. To have the power to do good and refuse it is itself a kind of harm.

They say nothing. And here Mark records something he rarely does, the inner state of Jesus. He looked around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. The two feelings come together in one sentence, and that pairing is the thing to notice. His anger is not cold contempt. It is fused with grief. He is angry at the hardness precisely because he is grieved for the people it is crushing, the man with the useless hand and the men with the useless hearts alike. Then he heals the man, and the response of the hard-hearted is to walk out and start plotting his death, answering a work of healing with a plan to kill, exactly as his question had exposed.

The model worth keeping is the shape of Jesus' anger. It is real, and it is grieved, born out of love for what the hardness is destroying, not out of wanting to win. When I am angry at someone's hardness or wrong, is my anger grieved like his, aching for the people involved, or is it just cold and superior, more interested in being right than in what the hardness is costing?

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