Missionary Renegade: The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Tuesday, 07 June 2016 - “Is it legal on the Sabbath to save life?”

Thursday, June 9, 2016

The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Tuesday, 07 June 2016 - “Is it legal on the Sabbath to save life?”

The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Tuesday, 07 June 2016 - “Is it legal on the Sabbath to save life?”
Daily Scripture: Luke 6:6 On another Shabbat, when Yeshua had gone into the synagogue and was teaching, a man was there who had a shriveled hand. 7 The Torah-teachers and P’rushim watched Yeshua carefully to see if he would heal on Shabbat, so that they could accuse him of something. 8 But he knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Come up and stand where we can see you!” He got up and stood there. 9 Then Yeshua said to them, “I ask you now: what is permitted on Shabbat? Doing good or doing evil? Saving life or destroying it?” 10 Then, after looking around at all of them, he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” As he held it out, his hand was restored. 11 But the others were filled with fury and began discussing with each other what they could do to Yeshua.
Reflection Questions:
One rabbinic rule said it was permissible to do something on the Sabbath to keep a sick or injured person from getting worse, but it broke the day’s holiness to help a sick person get well. (A hard line to draw!) But Jesus action and question said it was foolish to try to draw a line like that at all. His probing question left his enemies speechless. Despite their many rules, they weren’t willing to say openly that it was wrong to “do good” on the Sabbath.

Verses 6 and 7 suggest strongly that Jesus' enemies either “planted” the crippled man in the synagogue, or watched closely because they knew Jesus was inclined to heal people. In a situation where his enemies were obviously watching, why do you think Jesus chose to make the healing public (verse 8), rather than asking the man to meet him in a private place after the service?
Verse 11 points to the tragic irony of Jesus' ministry, one we see in many different stories. His enemies had no good answer to his question (“Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”), yet all they saw in his question and his healing action was a threat to their cherished positions and traditions. What does it take for you to value Jesus' saving and healing actions, even if they challenge you to change ideas or actions you have valued?

Today’s Prayer:
Lord Jesus, help me to keep my eyes, ears and heart open for those times when you do something new and powerful “in front of everyone.” Help me to value tradition without worshiping it. Amen.Insights from Brandon Gregory

Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at the Vibe, West, and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
I knew a guy back when I was working at Wycliffe Bible Translators, helping to manage their online community of students, among other things. We’ll call him Dave. The guy was insanely smart, and knew the Bible far better than I did. Although he worked in another department, he took to the student message boards and put together little essays on his thoughts on theology, hoping to set the students straight in their ways on the path to doing God’s work.
The thing was, as smart as Dave was, he totally missed the point. His essay topics included why mental illness was a consequence of unconfessed sin, why forming relationships was totally unnecessary for sharing your faith, and why a very specific method of baptism was a hard requirement for salvation, among other things. Wycliffe Bible Translators did literacy work focused on reaching people who had never heard the gospel before. We also maintained good relationships with a wide variety of churches and Christian organizations. So Dave’s essays were entirely off-topic, counterproductive, divisive, and, frankly, offensive.
Eventually, after some emails back and forth, I took Dave out to lunch and had to politely ask him to stop posting in our community. I wasn’t able to convince him of the error of his ways, or even provide to him a reason he felt was satisfactory–but his posts were really hurting our online community, and I had to stop it, for the sake of the greater good.
If you’re not familiar with John Wesley’s three general rules of faith, here they are:
1. Do no harm.
2. Do all the good you can.
3. Stay in love with God.
There’s a good reason rule number one is rule number one: It’s very possible to follow the other two rules in a way that does hurt others. Dave did it. The Pharisees did it. At times, we’re probably all guilty of this–when we demand that true Christians all fall on one side of an issue, or vote for the same political leaders as we do, or worship the same way that we do. That’s not to say that there aren’t issues that are black and white–but when we focus on them so much that we hurt and push away others, drawing lines in the sand that we dare people to step over so we can judge them, we’ve entirely missed the point.
There’s a quote in the cleverly-written (but also wildly inappropriate) movie, The Big Lebowski, that I think applies here: “You’re not wrong. You’re just a jerk.” In faith and human relationships, being factually correct is only half of the assignment. If we’re not also paying attention to John Wesley’s first rule, we run the risk of completely missing the point of our theological ventures.