There are a series of miracles recorded in the gospels . . .
There are a
series of miracles recorded in the gospels in which Jesus is depicted as
healing someone on the Sabbath, and thereby bringing upon himself the swift
criticism of the Pharisees and scribes.
However, to understand how healing on the Sabbath came to be viewed as
such an offensive act, you need to go back about 1,300 years before Jesus was
born.
Originally,
the Jewish Law consisted of what eventually became the first five books of the
Bible (i.e., the Torah). The centerpiece
of the Torah was the Ten Commandments—“Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not.” So far, so good—except that the Jewish people
kept running into situations that were not specifically addressed in the
Torah. Thus, there arose a group whose sole
job it was to study the Torah and to extrapolate from it rules and regulations
for every conceivable circumstance. What
they came up with was known as the Mishnah; and if you can believe this, by the
time of Jesus, the Mishnah was 800 pages long!
To give you
an example: one of the kinds of work that was prohibited on the Sabbath was
carrying a burden. But what exactly
defines “a burden”? Well, that depends,
argued the Pharisees and scribes. If you
are talking about food, then a burden will be defined as anything equal in
weight to a single dried fig. If you are
talking about milk, then a burden will be defined as the equivalent of one
swallow. If you are talking about
parchment, then it can be no larger than would be necessary to write “Hear, O
Israel.” If you are talking about ink,
enough to write two letters of the alphabet.
If you mean water, enough to moisten one eye-salve. And on and on and on it went. They literally created a rule for every
imaginable item that a person might carry.
The
requirements regarding healing on the Sabbath were equally specific. For instance, you were permitted to assist
someone whose life was in imminent danger, but you were prohibited from doing
anything that might improve the person’s condition. Hence, a broken limb could be made more
comfortable, but not set. A plain
bandage could be applied to a cut, but not a medicated one. If you had an ache or pain, you could anoint
your body with oil, since that was the daily practice. However, you were forbidden from using rose-oil,
since that reportedly had curative properties.
Suffice to
say, Jesus believed that all of this was absolutely absurd. If you are really interested in honoring the
Sabbath, said Jesus, then you will be less concerned with slavishly obeying the
rules and regulations, and more concerned with doing what you can to help a
brother or sister in need.
Thankfully,
as Christians, we no longer feel obligated to observe the Jewish Mishnah. However, when the Church gets bogged down in
bureaucracy, when we endlessly debate policies and procedures, when we insist
on maintaining the status quo simply because that’s the way we’ve always done
things, then we run the risk of making the same mistake that the Pharisees and
scribes did. Rules and regulations are
important, to be sure. But our call as
Christians is not to create more rules; it’s to create deeper
relationships—both with one another and with God!
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