A Reflection for Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
The Gospel today is short and sweet:
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking, "Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?" But they kept silent; so he took the man and, after he had healed him, dismissed him. Then he said to them "Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?" But they were unable to answer his question.
There are at least three other passages in the Gospels where the Pharisees try to trip Jesus up by setting traps for him or posing questions they think will incriminate him. But this time, fully aware of their game, he does an end run and asks them before they can ask him: “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?” They’re not willing to commit, because that wasn't the point of having Jesus as a guest; the point was to get him in trouble. So Jesus goes ahead and cures the man, and then he asks them a question much more sincere and pertinent than the one they intended to ask him:
“Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”
Obeying God is rarely complicated. It’s not easy, but it’s usually simple. And that's how you get healed.
In other words, asking “s it lawful?” is the wrong question. It’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is the things we already know, and that's what Jesus quietly drops in the Pharisees’ laps. They already know, even if they’re not willing to say out loud, that of course they would rescue a son or an ox if it needed rescuing. They wouldn’t stop and think about what day it was. They already know that someone who needs healing needs healing, period. The only thing that’s keeping them from admitting it is an unwillingness to commit. They’d rather play games and pretend that there is some other consideration that's more important than what they already know to be true.
So this is what Jesus does: He drops the plain, simple truth in their laps. He doesn’t answer their questions; instead, he says, “You already know the answer.” He doesn't give an elaborate justification; instead, he reminds them, “This is simple.” He doesn”t enter into their games where morality is some kind of arcane, scholarly pursuit; instead, he asks , “What would you do?”
The one thing Jesus consistently does, whether he’s talking to Pharisees or his friends, or his mother, or some stranger at a well, or to us through the Gospels 2,000 years later, is to drop these matters directly in our laps. He is not satisfied with moral issues that remain in the realm of scholarship or abstraction. He wants us to take it personally. He wants us to think about what we, ourselves, would do; and he wants us to consider that, when we’re struggling the hardest with some ethical problem, we probably already know what the answer is. It’s just a matter of saying it out loud and following through.
Obeying God is rarely complicated. It’s not easy, but it’s usually simple. And that's how you get healed.
