Wednesday, Second Week in Ordinary Time
In the gospel reading, when Jesus walked into a synagogue, he seems to have walked into a trap. It was the Sabbath day. A man with a withered hand was there and the Pharisees were waiting to see if Jesus would cure him, thereby breaking the Sabbath law. There is a suggestion that he was placed there by those who wanted to catch Jesus out. Using a vulnerable person to catch out and bring down someone clearly doing God’s good work has to be one of the darker arts in human relationships. The human tendency to use others for our own personal gain is always with us. On this occasion, it evoked two strong emotions in Jesus, he ‘grieved’ and ‘looked angrily round’ at the hardness of heart of these religious leaders. The presence of such strong emotions within us is often a sign that something is not right with the world. Jesus directed his strong feelings into the healing of the man’s hand. We can sometimes struggle to use our strong emotions in the service of the well-being of others. All of our emotions, even the most potentially destructive, can empower us ‘to do good’ and ‘to save life’, in the words of the gospel reading. If that is to happen, we may need to call upon the Spirit of the Lord to help us harness these emotions in the service of the coming of God’s kingdom. There was no aspect of Jesus’ humanity that did not serve God’s life-giving purpose. He shows us what a fully human life looks like.