Word to the Wise
Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - Wednesday in the 2nd Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Sam 17:32-33, 37, 40-51 and Mark 3:1-6]"Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?" But they remained silent. Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, Jesus said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death. [Mark]
One of the universal ways of telling an exciting story is to couch it in terms of "good vs. evil" and personify it in terms of "the good guys vs. the bad guys!" In the old cowboy movies of my boyhood, it was "white hats vs. black hats." Mark the evangelist seems to shape his story of Jesus in this way. Jesus seems to allude to this universal story in his question to the Pharisees in today's gospel: "Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil.....?" But the conflict is made clear in the "hardness of heart" that Jesus confronts, followed by the plotting of the religious and political forces represented by the Pharisees and the Herodians. Like young David in the first scripture today, Jesus confronts a Goliath over which he will ultimately triumph, but not in the way that David did.
As we move through the story of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel According to Mark, we learn the truth of the saying, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." But as we listen to Jesus' teachings, are there some that meet resistance inside us? Why? Does he ask of us things that conflict with our personal religious and political attitudes and behavior? Do we share a bit of hardness of heart with the "bad guys" in the story? AMEN