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!