Matthew and Luke both include the story of Jesus taking time one Sabbath day to heal a man with a withered hand (see Matthew 12:6-14 and Luke 6:6-11). Like the previous situation in which the disciples picked and then ate kernels of grain as they walked through a certain field on the Sabbath, Pharisees were on hand to point their fingers and accuse. "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" they asked.
Jesus responded by appealing to a well-known exemption to the requirement to rest on the Sabbath, a requirement that actually was based in the law itself.
All told there were at least two well-known exemptions to the requirement to rest on the Sabbath. First, every positive commandment superseded the prohibition against doing any work. An example of this might be the positive commandments given to the priests to offer sacrifices on the Sabbath. Second, danger to life also superseded the command to rest.
It was to this second category of exemptions that Jesus appealed when the Pharisees objected to his healing of the man with the withered hand: "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?" (Matthew 12:11). Luke's account features Jesus asking this rhetorical question: "I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?"
There are indeed many examples in the law of the value placed on life in general, and on human life in particular. These examples go beyond the prohibition against murder. In other words, the value placed on human life was worked out in other ways besides simply not going around and killing people. For instance, if a person owned an ox that was known to have gored someone in the past, that person was responsible to see to it that the ox never gored anyone ever again. If they didn't, they were subject themselves to the death penalty (see Exodus 21).
Beyond examples like this the law generally called for everyone to love their neighbor as their positive responsibility no matter what else was at stake (see Leviticus 19:18). Interestingly enough, Jesus elsewhere clearly stated that the positive responsibility to love others summarized all that was in the law regarding every aspect of interpersonal relationships (see Matthew 22:37-40).
So when Jesus called attention to this principle in the case of the man with the withered hand, once again he was attempting to focus the attention of the Pharisees on that which mattered most, the meaning and intent of the Sabbath along with everything else in the law.
I'm going to wrap this up by putting it in a little different way. The most important thing about the Sabbath was not rest. Rest was a means to an end. Rest represented obedience, service, and worship to God; which, in turn, underscored the overarching value of being properly related to him as the Creator. If someone is properly related to God, they will pay attention, not just to him, but also to their relationships with others. Someone properly related to God will be concerned for the life and well-being of others (whole-hearted love for God can never be separated away legitimately from love for other human beings). Thus, it was perfectly acceptable for Jesus to heal the withered hand of a man on the Sabbath. His so doing was a clear demonstration of the overarching significance of the day as God intended it to be.
More tomorrow as we begin to look forward to Resurrection Sunday...
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