A Prelude to Blessing, Part 2

The great temptation of religious leaders is a skulking desire to control others. I don’t believe for a minute that temptation is limited to religious leaders, but since I am one, I will limit my comments to that profession. The desire to control is somewhat understandable. When we witness people making a wreck of their lives the offer of structure, of limits, of a “knock it off” is a logical and defensible choice. But as Christians we run up against this thing called grace and it appears to be designed to be quite messy. And while it is true that some have used grace as a license to do whatever they please it seems to be a wager that heaven is willing to risk. And one of the reasons that is so is because once rule-making is given its head, new restrictions multiply like rabbits. It is inevitable. Grace goes to war against this profligate progeny.

And so we left off with a bunch of religious leaders throwing a hissy fit because Jesus and his disciples decided to make a meal of a few grains of wheat on the Sabbath. In this, the Pharisees smelled the burning rubber of heresy. Luke immediately follows this story with an additional Sabbath breaking event: On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. ~Luke 6:6,7

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And so the Pharisees were zeroed in on just two things: Jesus and the Sabbath. Would this eater of grain on the holy day also break the union labor laws by performing a healing on the Sabbath? They didn’t have to wait all that long for an answer: Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. ~Luke 6:9,10

Juxtaposed now was the ultimate conflict between the curse and the blessing. The irony is that the religion of the day was at peace with people living out a diminished life under the bondage and indignity of the curse while at the same time showing hostility toward the blessing. Let’s fix that in our time and with these writings…