Wondering about my Wanderings

The man with the withered hand

Learning about God can be exciting. I have two books that are lighting my fire at present. One of the books is very philosophical. It talks about knowing who to listen to in the places of untruth, meaning that there is truth to be discovered. The book begins with the story of creation and God's pronouncement of creation being good. God creates Adam who becomes God's prophet messenger. At that point God talks about the fact that Adam's aloneness not being good. Adam names all the animals and then Eve comes into the picture WOW! He knows what it means to be connected. He no longer feels alone. Along the way comes a serpent prophet who deceives Adam and Eve into thinking that God is keeping something from them by telling them they can not have. Their choice becomes an occasion for needing to sort out for themselves what truth means. They are in exile, taken out of the garden to find out what it means to reconnect with the only own who can give a life giving voice. Who do you listen to becomes the question. It is not about the signs. It is about learning with people like Moses what it means to hear God's voice and get to know who God really is and who they are.

This brings me to the other cause for celebration. I was reading a book about an approach to a text that involved the reading of passages of Mark by the mentally ill who provide points of empathy with the main characters. The author looks at modern scholarship and then is willing to get their hands dirty. The question becomes what is really going on here. In commentaries and such, Jesus is painted as the good guy trying to prove his mettle, the Pharisees the bad guys and the a person with the withering hand the mere passive recipient who is along for the ride. As t he various mentally ill people get into the text there is this movement of recognizing that there is more to this man than someone waiting to get healed. The only thing that can be ascertained for sure is that he is different. God sees the man on the same level as the Pharisees and Jesus. We see the so-called withering hand man in a different light. He is at the synagogue, which may mean that he is a man of prayer looking for someone who can take away a sense of being defective. Lots of people call him names or treat him as he does not exist. The story happens on the Sabbath. Again we might think that on this day this man is looking for God because he is on God's turf. Jesus goes to the Pharisees and invites them to dialogue. They move away in silence. There are no doubt other people looking on. Jesus is offering a look at the Sabbath that is radically different than the religious authorities of the time. After the invitation to dialogue with the Pharisees he moves toward the man with the withered hand. The withered man has been waiting for someone who has a different way of looking at him. He longs to work and having a withered hand in Jesus time meant that he could not work and in a sense as one in the image of God, God was not able to work. It was for this reason that people like him were outcasts and not allowed in the temple. The word for withering in Psalm 1 means soulless when talking about trees that withered revealing God is not there.

Jesus turns everything around in a moment of looking at truth in the playground of untruth. If things remain the same there will be no work done on the Sabbath and a lot of hopeless persons like the man with the withered hand will flourish. Jesus sees something totally different and the man participates in the dialogue. He is told to stretch out his hand.
This meant a lot for the Israelite of the time. Stretching out one's hand on the Sabbath meant that there was a celebration of God deliverance out of the Exodus. The scripture is replete with references to the power of God seen in the stretching out of a hand. The man stretches out his hand and in that moment his hand becomes God's hand, a hand that God can use. A hand that others looked down on even to the degree of saying the man and others like him were bad. Jesus reveals why he is the truth. While others look on Jesus sees the healing of the man's hand on the Sabbath. There is a revealing of truth that others can not miss. Jesus is asking for others to decide what the event of dialogue is all about. Jesus is saying to this man that others saw as worthless. How would you like to join my team. I believe he says this to all that are gathered at that moment in the playground of life. The Pharisees response to the opportunity for dialogue is seen shortly thereafter. They conspire to kill him. I stretch out my hand knowing what God can do and celebrate that I want to be on the side of truth. Will you join the team?!!