Stretch Out Your Hand (June 2, 2024)
Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Psalm 81:1-10; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6 (Second Sunday After Pentecost, Year B)
[Jesus] looked around at [the Pharisees] with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
Did you notice? There is something of a tension in our Scripture readings today. In the first reading from Deuteronomy, we read from the Ten Commandments — the one commandment about the Sabbath. And this commandment is not presented as a duty but rather as a gift. Remember that once, you were slaves in Egypt. Your time was not your own. Your life, your dignity, your relationships – none of that was important to Pharoah. Pharoah only cared about how many bricks you made – but God is not like that, and the life in the Promised Land to which God calls you will not be like that. In the life God has called you to, you are going to get time to rest. Time to stop working and just be, just be in the presence of God and in the presence of your family and your neighbors, and this is is a good thing.
The Psalm hits the same notes. God has delivered us and so our response is to give thanks and celebrate on this day that the Lord has set aside for us to just be in God’s presence. Listen to me, God says, and I’ll lead you to a place and a life that will be worthy of celebration. Open your mouth and I will fill it – like a baby bird being fed by its mother, receiving nourishment not because it worked for it but as a gift, as something for which our response is joy and gratitude.
And yet in the Gospel reading, the Sabbath comes across quite differently. As a cramped, legalistic anxiety that gets in the way of healing and grace, that Jesus rightly resists. So which is it? How do we reconcile these two visions of the Sabbath and what it means?
Too often in church history, we’ve taken the easy way to reconcile them. And that it to say the Old Testament is all about law and wrath, but the New Testament is about freedom and grace and isn’t it great that we’re free and redeemed Christians and stuck-in-the-mud legalists like the Jews. But I think that approach wrong, and not just because it’s slanderous to our Jewish friends and neighbors – which it is, and that would be reason enough to reject it. But it’s simply not what the texts are saying. There is nothing “legalistic” about our Old Testament passages today – they are filled with grace, with an awareness that God has done wonderful things for us and God has promised to do even more wonderful things in the future, and the Sabbath is one of the ways God gives us as a gift so we participate in that blessing and that grace and that promise.
On this point, as on many others, I find that classical, old-fashioned Lutheran theology is extremely helpful in understanding what these Scripture passages are trying to tell us. Martin Luther taught that the Old Testament and the New Testament alike contain both law and gospel, both commandments and promises. And Luther taught that when we hear God’s Word as Law, the Holy Spirit uses that law in two main ways. (Possibly a third as well, but let’s save that for another day.)
The first way the Holy Spirit uses the law is to tell us what God’s will is for us human beings – and this will of God is always something that we can recognize as good and true and beautiful. The law of the Sabbath teaches us that human beings are not made to work – we are made to enjoy the presence of God and to enjoy our communion with God and one another, which we do not work for and do not earn but receive as a gift. When we get to heaven we will not work, because in heaven everything that must be done will already have been done, and there will be nothing left but to enjoy communion with God and one another. In this world, we do still have work to do – but on a regular basis, at least once a week, God wants us to have one day where we experience just being with God and one another. And where we give that space and that freedom to all our neighbors too. Because it’s what God wants for us and what God wants for our neighbors too. And that’s good, and true, and beautiful, and we can thank God for showing us God’s will in this way.
But even as I say this I feel something else – and maybe you do too. Yes, in principle I can see we aren’t defined by our work and the best thing in life is simply to be with God and ourselves and others. But in saying that I have to be honest: This is not how I live my life. Just sitting in silence and being and not doing anything – well, this makes me nervous. If I have even a free moment – let alone a whole day once a week – I do not say “Wonderful, a moment when I can just be” – No. I grab my phone and check the latest news, which rarely is something that brings me peace and happiness. I am quite attached to my work and making sure people know what I have done and what I have accomplished because deep down I believe that what I do is the source of my value as a person. The more I hear about the beautiful vision of a life where we get to just be with God and others, the more I realize how far I am from living according to that vision.
This is what Luther called the second use of the Law – the way the Holy Spirit uses the Law not only to show us God’s beautiful will for our lives, but also to show us that we do not fulfill God’s Law, and that our frantic efforts to live by it are in reality just us digging the hole deeper and deeper. And this is of God, because it is only to the extent that we realize how poorly we are living up to the Law that we can recognize the gospel as truly good news – that God loves us anyway, that our value and worth as persons is based not on our accomplishments in observing the Law but on the goodness and grace of God, and that our only task is to believe this good news and put our trust solely in the goodness of God and not at all in our works (which are not working).
Now, if we accept this understanding of these two main ways that the Holy Spirit uses the Law, and with this understanding we turn back to the gospel text, we notice a couple of things. The first thing that I notice, at least, is that the Pharisees are not using the Law of the sabbath in either of these two ways.
When the Pharisees see the disciples of Jesus harvesting grain on the Sabbath and eating it, they do not remind the disciples that God invites them to do something even better on this day than to work to feed themselves. Nor do they help the disciples to see how their short-sightedness – if that’s what it is – is showing them their need for grace. No, the Pharisees do not speak to the disciples at all. Instead they say to Jesus, “Why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And when Jesus tries to debate them about whether the requirements of the Law are as clear as they think – after all, the disciples are hungry, and the Scripture itself teaches sometimes there are things more important than Sabbath-type laws – the Pharisees are not interested in any such discussion. As far as they’re concerned, the Bible said it, that settles it, they believe it. Don’t try to confuse me.
And then we read, “Again [Jesus] entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.”
The Pharisees, in other words, are using the Law to accuse Jesus and his disciples. You may remember the Hebrew word for “accuser” is the “satan,” Satan. The way Satan uses the Law is not to show us the good and beautiful will of God for us, nor to convince us our desperate need for the good news of God’s grace. Satan uses the Law to accuse, to blame, to label others as law-breakers and unworthy, to cause shame and fear and anxiety.
It would be so easy for me to stand here and say, “The problem with people these days is they all schedule their kids to play soccer on Sunday mornings and so nobody comes to church any more.” So easy to use the law to accuse somebody else, to accuse the people who aren’t here this morning. But it’s important to recognize where the urge to accuse comes from, and that it doesn’t come from God.
So in the face of those who use the Law as Satan does and not how the Holy Spirit does, what does our gospel passage show us that Jesus does to respond? I see Jesus doing three things.
First, we read that Jesus points out the man with a withered hand and asks his accusers a question: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” Notice that Jesus returns here to the two uses that God makes of the Law. Doesn’t the Law of the Sabbath call us to celebrate the liberating and healing and restoring power of God in our lives, to dwell in the healing and wholeness that God offers us? Isn’t that the beautiful and true vision of God’s goodness that the Sabbath commandment shows us? (First use of the Law.) And does the Law of the Sabbath have room for the work of having meetings of a conspiracy to accuse and bring down the One who is bringing that wholeness and healing to light on the Sabbath? (Not an accusation, but an invitation to his accusers to reflect on themselves and their own compliance with the Law. Second use of the Law.) Jesus is not drawn into the Accuser’s game. Jesus remains centered in who he is and in what the Law was always meant to do in us. He’s not knocked off his game in the slightest.
Second, we read that when the accusers did not answer his question, Jesus “looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart.” Using the Law for Satan’s purposes, to accuse and not to enlighten or to prepare for the hearing of the gospel, makes Jesus angry. And full of grief. Jesus feels deeply the harm that the accusers are doing to themselves and to those whom they accuse, how fast they are running away from the wholeness and healing that God wants for everyone, including themselves. It saddens him and makes him angry.
And so, finally, he acts – and this, my friends, is the good news – Jesus “said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.” So Jesus, knowing full well that his accusers would label him as a law-breaker and seek to destroy him, Jesus insists on bringing the healing and the wholeness that he came to bring. Regardless of the cost to himself. And so Jesus invites the man with the withered hand to trust him. To stretch out his hand, and believe that Jesus would do what he came to do, and that by believing and trusting Jesus he would come to receive what Jesus was doing for him.
Jesus was willing to face the wrath of his accusers to heal and make whole the man who reached out his hand to Jesus in faith. And Jesus is willing to do exactly the same thing for you. And for me. Regardless of the cost or the shame. He is even willing to do exactly the same thing for his accusers – “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
So he will certainly do it for you. So you can know healing and wholeness. So you can just be in God’s presence, free from all your anxieties and worries and your felt need to justify yourself. All you have to do is stretch out your hand and believe that this promise is for you. That, whatever it may cost Jesus and whatever it may cost God, this day of rest and gladness was made for you. So stretch out your hand. And believe.