Reflecting on Mark's Gospel - Mark 3:1-6

It is fascinating how many of the incidents recorded in the early part of Mark’s Gospel happened on the Sabbath. It is almost as though Jesus deliberately sets himself against the religious authorities, though it might be that these were the incidents most noted and remembered because they were the controversial ones, and so became newsworthy.

The early part of Mark is certainly full of stories of healing and full of things that happened on the Sabbath. Here a man with a withered hand is healed by Jesus, and the event is accompanied by what is becoming the standard discussion around what is really permissible on the Sabbath.

As D. E. Nineham (Saint Mark) points out – “in this fifth conflict story, the last of the series, it is taken for granted by everyone that Jesus has the power to perform miracles of healing; the one question is whether he will exercise his power on the sabbath and so give ground for an official accusation, for healing was technically work and, as such, an infringement of God’s sabbath law.”

There was a lot of emotion in this situation, as is often the case when we are in a situation of conflict. Perhaps there is room, as we consider this incident, for reflecting on just how we handle conflict and whether we engage with it as constructively as we might. Jesus is described as both angry and grieved as he again confronts the question of whether it is right to offer healing, even though it is the Sabbath, or to delay that action in order to avoid breaching the rules against work. However, it emerges as a rhetorical question. Even his fiercest critics do not voice their opposition. The question is met with silence.

The reaction, then, is behind the scenes. Jesus has not won universal agreement. The plots begin. The point is that this healing could, arguably, have waited and raises the question of where you draw the line, a difficult question in many circumstances. As Nineham comments: if Jesus was justifying – “(all) kinds of benevolent work – on the sabbath …. the effect would have been to supersede the sabbath law entirely, for the prohibition on sabbath work would become simply a prohibition of evil and life-destroying activity on the sabbath, and that is forbidden on any day.”

So, healing is a given; but there are many questions about the Sabbath – and that may get us thinking as to what the ‘Sabbath’ means, and should mean, to us.