Mark 3

¹ Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ² And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” ⁴ And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Some time back, our staff read through Eric Metaxas’ very interesting book Miracles as a devotional exercise. He begins his book with a most interesting quotation.

In a 2013 article in The New Yorker about faith and belief, Adam Gopnik wrote the following: “We know that…in the billions of years of the universe’s existence, there is no evidence of a single miraculous intercession (sic) with the laws of nature.”…In the article, Gopnik continues: “We need not imagine that there’s no Heaven; we know that there is none, and we will search for angels forever in vain.

Gopnik’s statement is astonishing in its apparent certainty. Metaxas, however, strongly disagrees with Gopnik and his book as an apologetic for the reality of miracles in the world. Metaxas defined the word “miracle” quite nicely as “when something outside time and space enters time and space, whether just to wink at us or poke at us briefly, or to come in and dwell among us for three decades.”[1]

That last phrase is well-said, for Jesus was indeed a miracle who came to “dwell among us for three decades.” And as the great miracles of God, Jesus did, much to Gopnik’s frustration, we may assume, perform many miracles. Our passage recounts only one such miracle, but though it was “small” by the standards of, say, the parting of the Red Sea, it was actually saying something profoundly significant!

The fruits of spiritual blindness can be seen in the Pharisees.

This miracle happens in the synagogue.

¹ Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ² And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” ⁴ And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Synagogues were important places within first century Judaism. They were places where Jews went to hear the scriptures read and explained. According to George Martin, we have located the site of this actual synagogue.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a few first-century synagogues. Such a synagogue consisted of a large room with one or two tiers of benches around the walls. In the center was a raised platform with a lectern for Scripture reading and teaching. Anything done in such a synagogue – such as Jesus’ healings and exorcisms – would have been visible to the whole congregation. Ruins of a third- or fourth-century synagogue built of limestone can be found in Capernaum today; beneath the ruins are what seem to be the remains of a first-century synagogue built on basalt blocks – apparently the synagogue in which Jesus taught and healed.[2]

This is helpful. It assists us in getting the right mental image before us: “a large room with one or two tiers of benches around the walls” with “a raised platform with a lectern for Scripture reading and teaching” which “would have been visible to the whole congregation.” We can imagine Jesus walking to this raised platform. He noticed the plotting Pharisees watching Him, scrutinizing Him, and then He noticed a man with a withered hand. “Some scholars suggest that the Greek word for withered indicates the result of an injury rather than a birth defect,” writes George Martin. “In any case, a crippled hand was s serious disability in a society where most men made their living through manual labor, such as in fishing and farming.”[3]

What happens next is curious. Jesus calls the man with the withered hand to come out and to approach him in the midst of the assembly. You cannot help wondering how the man himself felt about this. After all, there is no indication that he was actually seeking this attention or even seeking healing (though we may assume that he did desire to be healed).

Mark Galli sets the scene and the awkwardness vividly in his Christianity Today article, “Blessed are the Unoffended.”

Jesus recognizes that these religious leaders, the Pharisees, are playing “Gotcha,” trying to catch him breaking the Sabbath so they might have grounds to accuse him. And surely Jesus is aware of the simplest way to diffuse this volatile situation: Just wait until the sun sets, when the Sabbath is officially over, and then heal the man.

It isn’t as if the man with the withered hand needed to be healed immediately. There was nothing life threatening about his condition. He’d been living with his disability for decades. It’s not going to kill him to wait another few hours before getting healed. Just wait until sunset: The man gets healed, the Pharisees are not provoked, and God gets the glory—a win-win-win!

Even more interesting is this: the man with the withered hand has not even asked for healing. Maybe he’s just come to the service for a little peace and quiet at the end of a trying week. Maybe he doesn’t like to draw attention to himself or his handicap. Maybe he is mortified that Jesus is singling him out for attention! That’s all speculation, of course, but what’s clear is that he hasn’t asked for healing. Jesus just points to him in the congregation and says, “Come up here.”

Jesus clearly is exploiting the moment to humiliate the Pharisees. He could have simply healed the man and moved the service on to the next hymn—or better, the offering! The Pharisees are smart men; a simple demonstration of Jesus’ power would have been enough to make his point: that he is Lord of the Sabbath. But no, Jesus not only sticks the knife into their pride, but turns it: He asks them, in front of God and everybody, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?”

This is trick question, of course, intended to back the Pharisees into a corner—let’s face it, to make them look like fools. Well, it works, because, as Mark notes, “They were silent.” They weren’t about to say that the Sabbath was designed by God to bring death. And they weren’t going to say the obvious—that God made it to bless life—because this would just play into Jesus’ hands.

Their obstinacy just makes Jesus angry, at which point, Mark notes, Jesus turns to the man and heals him. Is it any wonder that Mark concludes this episode by noting, “The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3:6).

A simple reading of this story, and a few others, suggests that the gentle Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, could have used a few lessons in how to communicate without being denigrating or inflammatory![4]

In our sensitive times, perhaps that would be the assumption, but Jesus knew precisely what he was doing, eyebrow-raising though it may be to more delicate sensibilities. We will consider what happens with the man in just a moment, but for our purposes at this point, note the mentality and dispositions of the Pharisees. In this episode, the Pharisees reveal the fruits of spiritual blindness. We will approach this with a consideration of the four fruits of spiritual blindness.

Fruit 1: A morbid desire to find fault and critique, even in the sacred places of God.

The scriptures first reveal to us the pernicious motives of the Pharisees.

² And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.

The spiritually blind do not approach the works of God with hearts open to His movements or His work. The spiritually blind either miss the work of God because of their inability to see it or react with hostility because of what they perceive the presence of God would mean to their own lives, egos, and worldviews.

How about you? How do we approach, say, worship together? What motivations do you bring with you? Do you come with an open heart to see and receive what God is doing, disruptive though it may be to your own agenda?

Fruit 2: An inability to admit fault when in the wrong.

The spiritually blind are also incapable of admitting fault. Jesus asked them a most important question: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” This question was important because it got to the heart of the matter. If it is lawful to do good or save life on the Sabbath then that means what Jesus was doing was lawful. So if they answered “yes” then they were admitting innocence for Jesus. If, however, they answered “no” they were claiming that one should not do good or save life on the Sabbath, which is absurd.

Their reaction was telling.

^4c But they were silent.

Caught on the horns of a dilemma, the Pharisees, unable to admit that they were mistaken in their operating assumptions, simply refused to speak. Some have pointed out that the silence of the Pharisees mentioned in verse 4 is structurally central to this passage and that Mark is intentionally drawing attention to it in the way he wrote this. Mark did this, it has been argued, by writing these verses as a chiasm.

A chiasm, as defined by Scott Duvall and Danny Hays of Ouachita Baptist University, “is a list of items, ideas, or events…structured in such a manner that the first item parallels the last item, the second item parallels the next to the last item, and so forth.” Furthermore, “frequently in chiastic structures, if the middle event does not have a parallel, it functions as the main point or the focal point of the chiasm” though “often…there is no middle event in chiasm.” If there is a central statement in the chiasm, it functions as “the central event…and focal point.”[5]

Peter Leithart points out that the structure of Mark 3:1-6 is basically chiastic and that there is a central event and focal point.

A. Jesus’ entry to synagogue

B. man with withered hand

C. heal on Sabbath?

D. Jesus to man [“Come here.”]

E. Jesus to Pharisees

F. Silence

E’. Jesus angry and grieved at Pharisees

D’. Jesus to man [“Stretch out your hand.”]

C’. ??

B’. restored hand

A’. Pharisees consult with Herodians about how to destroy him[6]

The central event and focal point is therefore silence. The silence of the Pharisees before Jesus’ very clear and, frankly, very easy question was deafening. Rather than admitting fault, they simply refused to speak. Here is one of the bitter fruits of spiritual blindness!

Fruit 3: Hard heartedness.

An inability to admit fault walks hand-in-hand with and emanates from hard heartedness. Jesus saw this and His reaction was most telling.

^5a-b And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.

Jesus was angry and Jesus grieved over their hardness of heart.

It is a descriptive image, “hardness of heart.” Eugene LaVerdiere has offered an interesting observation about this.

This is the first time Mark refers to “hardness of heart” (porosis tes kardias, see 6:52; 8:17)…Later, Mark will use an alternative expression, “the sclerosis of the heart” (sklerokardia, 10:5; see also 16:14). The expression recalls on Old Testament exhortation: Oh, that today you would hear his voice: Do not harden your hearts (me sklerynete tas kardias hymon) as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the desert (Ps 95:8 [LXX 94:8]).[7]

It is fascinating that in the quoted psalm the psalmist links hardness of heart with an ability to hear the voice of God. A hard heart cannot hear God’s voice. A heart softened by grace can. To be hard of heart is to be closed off to the truth of what God is saying as a matter of principle, to have the soil of one’s heart so hardened that one cannot even receive the word of God. This both grieves and angers the Lord, for the word of God is life and His offer of it is grace and mercy!

Fruit 4: A desire to destroy Jesus and His work.

The ultimate fruit of spiritual blindness, however, is a desire to destroy Jesus and His work. That is precisely what happens in our text.

⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, wrote:

³ Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

The desire of the Pharisees and Herodians “to destroy him” is therefore satanic and evil, for the statement “Jesus is accursed!” could never come from the Spirit of God. If it does not come from the Spirit of God it comes from the devil himself. The Spirit of God testifies, “Jesus is Lord,” Paul says, but the devil detests the Lord Jesus. As such, the Pharisees and Herodians, under the sway of demonic forces, seek to destroy Jesus. Why? Because they love their religiosity more than they love the truth of God.

Behold, then, the fruits of spiritual blindness!

Jesus healed one hand but made a huge statement in doing so!

What was most devastating about this spiritual blindness was that it kept the Pharisees from truly seeing the wondrous work that were before them! This work of God was very specific: it focused on the withered hand of a suffering man. Yet, it was so much more. In fact, a great deal more is happening in this miracle story than the healing of a hand.

Let us return to Eric Metaxas’ book Miracles for a moment. In it, he notes that the word for “miracle” is the Greek word simaios which means “signs.” Miracles, then, are signs pointing to something. Metaxas argues that “the essential meaning of miracles, then, is to point us to the God behind the miracles.” Furthermore, since God clearly could have chosen to communicate truths about Himself through means other than specific miracles He performs, His use of miracles is intended “to speak to us about himself” in very unique and specific ways.[8] This is what is happening in our text. Listen again closely to our passage.

¹ Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ² And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” ⁴ And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

In Kurt Queller’s absolutely fascinating Journal of Biblical Literature article, “‘Stretch Out Your Hand!’ Echo and Metalepsis in Mark’s Sabbath Healing Controversy,” he makes the provocative observation that Mark tells this story in such a way as to evoke by the strategic and intentional use of key words and phrases the story of Israel’s exodus out of bondage in Egypt. Among his observations in support of this idea are included the following:

• 1a – “Again he entered”: Mark begins this story by saying that Jesus “entered in again” the synagogue, a phrase very similar to the phrase “into the midst of the sea” that appears thrice in the Red Sea episode (Exodus 14:16,22,23 LXX). More than that, “the same formula also recurs throughout the preceding plague cycle, introducing episodes in which Moses and Aarom “go in” before Pharaoh to demand the people’s release (5:1; 6:11; 7:10; 8:1; 9:1; 10:1,3 LXX).” While the verb Mark uses “is not the only one available for expressing the sense of ‘going in,’” it is the verb used in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament that would have been used in Jesus’ day. Mark normally uses the other verb for “going in,” but here, in this conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, “Mark uses language that for Hellenistic Jews and Christians would evoke the dramatic confrontation scenes of Exodus.”

• 3b – “Come here.”: “The phrase ‘in(to) the midst of the sea’ recurs insistently in the exodus story (…[Exod 14:16, 22, 23 LXX]). Mark’s storytelling exploits this topos as well: Jesus’ challenge to the man reads literally ‘arise into the midst’…Commentators often note the awkwardness of this formulation…But its very awkwardness (even in Greek) highlights its allusive significance.”

• 5b – “their hardness of heart”: In verse 5, Mark speaks of the Pharisees’ hardness of heart. The same image is applied to Pharaoh in Exodus 9;12.

• 5c – “Stretch out your hand.”: Jesus’ command to the man with the withered hand (“stretch out your hand” ((Mark 3:[5]))) “is the same as in the divine command of Exod 14:16 LXX [“Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.”].”

• 5c – “Stretch out your hand.”: Jesus’ command “stretch out your hand” “also recalls the preceding Exodus plague cycle.” Moses and Pharaoh receive this command repeatedly from God and “their compliance each time [spells] doom for Pharaoh’s servants.”

• 5d – “and his hand was restored”: “The man does stretch out the hand, and it is ‘restored’…This wording resonates with the LXX account [“So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared.” Exodus 14:27] of the climactic moment in the [Red] Sea narrative: ‘So Moyses stretched out the hand over the sea, and the water returned near day to its place […lit., ‘the water was restored’].”

Queller concludes that “such a reading metaphorically casts Jesus’ Pharisaic adversaries as minions of Pharaoh, engaged in a last-ditch effort to thwart God’s liberative project.” He continues:

Jesus’ “going in again” before them typologically reiterates Moses’ repeated “going in” before Pharaoh to demand the people’s deliverance, while his challenge to “stretch out [the] hand” reflects the divine command to Moses at [the Red Sea], which had resulted in the waters’ parting and their subsequent restoration…This implies salvation for the threatened people. For the adversaries, however, it spells doom…[9]

Again, this is a fascinating proposal, and one that is worthy of serious (though not uncritical) consideration. I would point out further that we have seen already in Mark’s gospel a penchant for wording and phrasing that evokes epic moments in Israel’s history, specifically in their wilderness wandering after the Exodus. What is more, immediately preceding this episode we saw Jesus appealing to David and his men eating the showbread as they fled King Saul.

What is more, this proposal helps us make sense of the perplexing nature of Jesus’ original question to the Pharisees.

⁴ And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.

What is perplexing about this question is the second phrase, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath…to save life or to kill?” In asking this, Jesus was nodding toward something that the Pharisees and the others in the synagogue knew perfectly well: that it was indeed lawful to save somebody’s life on the Sabbath. It was lawful to give medical attention or care to somebody who was dying but not to somebody who was merely injured or had a non-lethal physical problem.

A withered hand is not life-threatening.

Why then does Jesus raise that specific criterion? By alluding to the commonly agreed upon idea that you could save a life on the Sabbath to explain His healing of a man’s hand, was Jesus not defeating His own argument? Could not the Pharisees have rightly said, “Well, yes, you can save a life on the Sabbath, but healing a hand is not saving a life”?

They could have but they did not because it is most possible that even they understood the provocative pageantry of what was happening here: it was not just about the man’s hand. No, couching His wording and imagery in the language of the Exodus Jesus was making the point that He did not come merely as a healer but He came as the second and greater Moses, the Savior of Israel, the anointed Liberator of the people of God. Therefore, be it a hand or a heart, what Jesus was doing was indeed a matter of life and death!

This story was only partially about a hand. It was moreso about a Savior. No wonder then that they immediately plot to destroy Jesus! You do not plot to destroy a mere hand-healer…but a man claiming to be the new and greater Moses who has come to lead us through the Red Sea of sin and death out of the hell of our enslavement in spiritual Egypt? Well. That is a dangerous man indeed if one is hoping to protect the old orthodoxies and religion of the past.

In this synagogue, on this day, in this act, Jesus, the God-man, the Savior, the King of Kings, demonstrated through the miracle of the hand the reality of the Kingdom. The miracle was focused specifically but it shouted loudly, and what it said was, “God has come! God is here! The Lord of heaven and earth is now among His people!”

The Pharisees seethe at such a gospel…but the Church says, “Amen!”

 

[1] Eric Metaxas, Miracles. (New York, NY: Dutton, 2014), p.3,16,11-12.

[2] George Martin, Bringing the Gospel of Mark to Life. Opening the Scriptures https://books.google.com/books?id=rW78CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT70&dq=Jesus+synagogue+withered+hand&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX0Pecmb3NAhXr7IMKHXNWByk4FBDoAQgrMAM#v=onepage&q=Jesus%20synagogue%20withered%20hand&f=false

[3] George Martin, Bringing the Gospel of Mark to Life. Opening the Scriptures https://books.google.com/books?id=rW78CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT70&dq=Jesus+synagogue+withered+hand&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX0Pecmb3NAhXr7IMKHXNWByk4FBDoAQgrMAM#v=onepage&q=Jesus%20synagogue%20withered%20hand&f=false

[4] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/novemberweb-only/55-41.0.html?start=2

[5] J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hayes, Grasping God’s Word. Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), p.100,102.

[6] https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2008/08/mark

[7] Eugene LaVerdiere, The Beginning of the Gospel. Vol. 1 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999), p.90.

[8] Eric Metaxas, Miracles. (New York, NY: Dutton, 2014), p.16-17,20.

[9] Kurt Queller, “‘Stretch Out Your Hand!’ Echo and Metalepsis in Mark’s Sabbath Healing Controversy.” Journal of Biblical Literature. 129, no.4 (2010), p.739-742.