Mark 3:1-6
I
was listening to Ravi Zacharius’ speak via YouTube yesterday. One of the
questions asked was about subjective moral truth and its consequences. The
answer was wonderful. People left to decide their own moral standards has
created a world where China and the former Soviet Union killed more of their
own people than all the wars throughout history. Left to our own direction we
get less loving and more vicious than if we have a unified moral standard.
What
people are unwilling to do on their own in correcting injustice and prejudice,
governments often try to do through regulation. The government becomes a tool
in the hands of the most powerful to primarily punish those whose moral
standard is different from the ruling powerful class. Take the Americans with Disability
Act (ADA). This law helps protect people with disabilities of many kinds from
certain, very narrowly defined acts of prejudice. The most obvious visible sign
of this act are the ramps that lead to building entrances.
But
if we treated all people with dignity, then the law would have been
unnecessary. We would have built the ramps on our own, without the pressure
from the government. The problem remains that the ADA was supposed to fix. Individuals
still don’t treat all people with the dignity they deserve as people created in
the image of God.
Our
text tells the story of one such individual. He had a hand that did not
function. We are not told if this was a birth defect, or whether it was the
result of an injury or sickness. All we know is that he had limited function of
his hand. No matter which hand was injured, it would have been a life-limiting
condition.
Like
many cultures even today, toilet paper was not used. The left hand and water
served the purpose. No matter which hand it was, his toilet hand also served as
his eating hand. Socially this would have isolated him even more than our
imaginations took us just a moment ago.
Mark
includes this miracle here in his Gospel as the way to prove the legitimate
claim of being Lord of the Sabbath mentioned in the teaching which Mark
included directly before this passage. Jesus performs this act of kindness and
restoration as a way to prove who He claimed to be, God in the flesh. The
religious leaders hear that claim and the threat that makes to their own
authority and they act in line with their subjective moral values. They plot
with their secular friends how they might be able to eliminate Jesus. They plot
to kill their enemy. Godly behavior if I ever saw it!