The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge us to examine how we might stubbornly insist that the Way of God is the way we have always done things.
Examine our way
The reading from the First Book of Samuel relates how David Challenges Goliath.
* [17:12–31] Here the final editor begins an alternative account of David’s encounter with the Philistine hero, which continues in vv. 50–51 and concludes in 17:55–18:5. * [17:41–47] The two combatants trade theological taunts. God uses the most unlikely opponent to destroy Goliath.1
Psalm 144 is a prayer for national deliverance and security.
* [Psalm 144] The Psalm may reflect a ceremony in which the king, as leader of the army, asked God’s help (Ps 144:1–8). In Ps 144:9 the poem shifts abruptly from pleading to thanksgiving, and (except for Ps 144:11) shifts again to prayer for the people. The first section (Ps 144:1–2) is a prayer of thanks for victory; the second (Ps 144:3–7a), a humble acknowledgment of human nothingness and a supplication that God show forth saving power; the third (Ps 144:9–11), a promise of future thanksgiving; the fourth (Ps 144:12–15), a wish for prosperity and peace. A prayer for deliverance from treacherous foes serves as a refrain after the second and third sections (Ps 144:7b–8, 11). Except for its final section, the Psalm is made up almost entirely of verses from other Psalms.2
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus heals the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.
* [3:1–5] Here Jesus is again depicted in conflict with his adversaries over the question of sabbath-day observance. His opponents were already ill disposed toward him because they regarded Jesus as a violator of the sabbath. Jesus’ question Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil? places the matter in the broader theological context outside the casuistry of the scribes. The answer is obvious. Jesus heals the man with the withered hand in the sight of all and reduces his opponents to silence; cf. Jn 5:17–18.3
Eileen Burke-Sullivan (in 2006) comments that Jesus faces his own form of a Goliath in the hardheartedness of the leaders of the people. He invites these experts in the Torah to respond to the problem of doing what is good for a wounded person on the Sabbath. Since the purpose of the Sabbath is to worship and honor God, the source of all good, how could exercising real goodness toward one of God’s people be contrary to the intention and meaning of the Sabbath?
These scholars and teachers are not really interested in the genuine meaning of the Sabbath, however, as much as they are interested in their own way of doing things, or worse, their own power. The fact that they would go out of the Synagogue and conspire with representatives of imperial power (Herod’s party) – their own most hated enemies – shows how hardhearted they have become. Such intransigence is worthy of the rock of God’s presence to smash it – and Jesus does, by way of healing the sufferer with his gift of compassion.4
Don Schwager quotes “The tender compassion of the Lord,” by John Chrysostom, 547-407 A.D.
"Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, 'Come here.' Then he challenged the Pharisees as to whether it would be lawful to do good on the sabbath. Note the tender compassion of the Lord when he deliberately brought the man with the withered hand right into their presence (Luke 6:8). He hoped that the mere sight of the misfortune might soften them, that they might become a little less spiteful by seeing the affliction, and perhaps out of sorrow mend their own ways. But they remained callous and unfeeling. They preferred to do harm to the name of Christ than to see this poor man made whole. They betrayed their wickedness not only by their hostility to Christ, but also by their doing so with such contentiousness that they treated with disdain his mercies to others." (excerpt from THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, HOMILY 40.1)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Mark 3:1-6 comments that we should pay attention to the Pharisees and Herodians. Even worse than the man’s condition, you might say that they suffered from “withered hearts.” Nobody’s heart gets withered overnight. Like these men, we also can resist God’s ways and slowly close ourselves off to God. Through lack of contact with the Lord and by listening only to our own desires and to worldly philosophies, we allow our hearts to grow callous and cold. We can even do all the “right” things and yet wither away inside. Our hardened hearts distort our empathy for people who are suffering and move us to reject God’s efforts to heal them—and us.
Whether it is our hands or hearts that are withered, God wants to bring us love and healing. And the good news is that Jesus has authority over this and every other part of our lives. He can restore us to freedom and wholeness. “Change my heart, O God.”6
Friar Jude Winkler sees God strengthening those who are weak in battle between a young boy in service to Saul and a Philistine giant. St. John Paul II spoke of the Sabbath as a day to do good and visit and help the needy. Friar Jude reminds us of how we resist challenges to our systems of control and thereby miss the freedom of the Spirit.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, recalls a nature documentary [1] that he watched which revealed the perils and promises of our connected universe. Now the example he cites might seem like such a simple, unimportant thing. And yet a spiritual seer, one we would call a mystic, would recognize that God did not create horseshoe crabs or red knots for no reason. They are a part of the entire ecology or spiritual plan. Fr. Richard offers this as one little example of the ecologically-interconnected and interpenetrating world that we’re all a part of. But we have to be curious to see it!
This is a differently-shaped universe than many of us thought—and leads to a very differently-shaped spirituality. As Bill Plotkin says, spirituality becomes a “sinking back into the source of everything.” [2] We’re already there, but we haven’t been trained to see ourselves there. This is in fact the “new cosmology” through which we have to be retrained to see the world. Suddenly we realize, of course, that God is not “out there,” but God is in all, through all, and with all (1 Corinthians 15:28).7
The week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an opportunity to contemplate what needs review in our system of control that is preventing us from responding to the Spirit that calls us to be one in Christ.
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