The most inconvenient part of our faith isn’t having to gather here on Sundays or listen to me preach, tedious though that can be.  The most inconvenient part of our faith isn’t having to be kind, patient, and forgiving.  It isn’t even the being loving part.  The most inconvenient part of our faith is Jesus.  No matter how we try, he just won’t let us do faith our way.  He always points to himself, the Word of God, calling us to do faith that way, his way, God’s way.  Now, God is kind, but we can fall into a habitual way of thinking that makes kindness God.  Then, when we hear Jesus say or God do something in the Bible that doesn’t sound like kindness, we don’t know what to do with it except reject it or act as if it isn’t really there.

So, we’ve got to get rid of Jesus.  Oh, every church where I’ve ever been has had more than enough images of Jesus here and there, always sort of clean, radiant, and vaguely if somewhat effeminately handsome.  He’s almost always looking elsewhere, never inspecting us.  Often though not always, he’s doing Jesus things, like looking up or leaving the earth.  No images of Jesus healing cripples.  No paintings of Jesus giving sight to the blind or causing the deaf to hear or feeding the hungry.  Certainly no images of Jesus cleansing the Temple or rebuking the Pharisees or criticizing the unbelieving generation—nothing that might feel robust, energetic, that might break a sweat; nothing harsh or hard.  All gentle, so gentle, like falling asleep.

We might not think about this much, but the writers of the Gospels record that Jesus was very often in the synagogues, teaching, speaking, laboring.  Jesus spent a lot of time sitting with God’s people where they would gather to pray and hear the Word, be in the presence of the Word.  How appropriate, that Jesus spent so much time there.  How perfect, that it should be so!  Beloved, we’re fully convinced Jesus is at work when we go to serve our neighbors, do mission, hands-on ministry—faith in action!  Bracing stuff.  He may even be at work when we share fellowship, practicing our joy in and concern for one another—I fully believe he is present and at work in our fellowship.  In Reformed worship as we are experiencing here today, the belief has always been that Jesus also is at work in the reading, proclaiming, and hearing the Word: what we’re doing together in this very moment.  Indeed, the Reformed belief has always been that it is through this very reading, proclaiming, and hearing that people come to salvation and are built up in faith.  In a way only the Spirit can demonstrate, what I am doing and what you are doing is Christ at work in and among us.  Jesus just won’t leave us alone!  That’s not inconvenient: that’s blessed.  That’s God calling us into salvation life, life His way.

Salvation life looks like something.  This is what Jesus is demonstrating in what Mark told us today.  “Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there” (3:1).  I guess we can imagine a shriveled hand: useless.  That poor man probably had never had the use of that hand, certainly not full use.  Now, not everyone there in the synagogue that day or in that town would have regarded that shriveled hand as a sure sign of God’s judgment and curse upon that man, as if that man were somehow especially sinful, or a worse sinner than anyone else there that day, though he might have been.  Yet there he was, too, there in the synagogue.  Why?

Because he hoped.  Because he needed to be there, with God’s people, in the presence of God’s Word.  Learning under the authority of God’s Word: trustworthy authority, affectionate authority.  He was there with the people wanting to be shaped in the Potter’s hands; he wanted life God’s way.  He was there maybe even because he loved God.  Did he blame God, curse God, for this shriveled hand?  There may have been times in his life when he had, when he was feeling especially sorry for himself, or when others had ridiculed him until he wept and wanted to hide away in shame and anger.  But his life wasn’t constant pain or ridicule.  He was just another of the broken ones, like you could see everywhere, even in the synagogue, listening, hoping, waiting.  God’s Word was not an inconvenience to that man.  He wasn’t inclined to ignore it.  He felt no need to misread it to suit himself.  God’s Word didn’t get in the man’s way.  God comes to get His way into us, into that sin-hardened, stiff-necked, stubborn heart that wants to make kindness God rather than sit under the Word, learning God’s kindness.

Mark tells us—Peter could see it, knew it—that there were those in the synagogue that day “looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath” (3:2).  So, their focus wasn’t on the Word, the grace, the blessing.  The Sabbath, more than any other day, had become a day for showing how well you followed the rules, the meticulous, numerous rules.  When others could see how well you followed the rules, they knew how holy you were.  And if others saw that you were holy, why, then, that made you holy.  If it looks like a holy man, walks like a holy man, and talks like a holy man . . .

But there were those who knew that some were regarding Jesus as, maybe, holy.  And as everyone could see, Jesus didn’t follow the meticulous, numerous rules: eating with outcasts and—God forbid!—sinners, forgiving the sins of paralyzed people, driving out impure spirits . . . on the Sabbath.  If he didn’t follow the rules, how could he keep the law, do the law, live the law?  How could he be holy?  No, he was a hypocrite!  They had to do away with Jesus.  The logic was compelling; more importantly, the need was clear.

The need to be rid of Jesus was clear because there was that irksome little whisper, there in that neglected part of their hardened, stubborn hearts, that whisper, saying Jesus was from God, Jesus was speaking the Word of God, showing what life for God, life with God, really was.  Life God’s way.  Fellowship with God.  It was ridiculously simple.  So simple to live God’s law, and it didn’t bear much resemblance to following all the rules to the last dot.  As a matter of fact, what Jesus was doing made plain to anyone with sense enough to perceive it that following the rules had precious little to do with living God’s law.  We can get the rules in our heads; God wants His word in our hearts.  Oh!  That’s where the change happens, where the work is done and labor leads to birth, new birth, rebirth.

Jesus saw that another demonstration of God’s law was needed, that day, so he “said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone’” (3:3).  I suppose the last thing that man wanted, with his shriveled hand, was to be the center of attention.  He hadn’t come there to be called out but to find some hope, something to take with him, some morsel from God, some sip; if he was going to be really candid, he had come there that day, as he had every Sabbath, for healing.  He wasn’t all that concerned about his hand.  He had lived with that as long as he could remember!  He was looking for that something missing from his life, lost, maybe misplaced?  There was a hurt, a hole somehow, that he couldn’t name, didn’t know its name.  Maybe he had been thinking about it, again, when, suddenly, Jesus spoke directly to him.  Someone nudged him, Hey! He’s talking to you!

There were those looking to get rid of Jesus; there were those looking for what Jesus was offering, though they didn’t know Jesus was offering it.  Jesus wasn’t one to do or say in private what needed to be done in the open, with witnesses.  Jesus didn’t relish conflict; he came to reconcile!  Jesus did come to challenge; he came with authority—everyone noticed!  He came to ask a question: What is God’s law?  When and if people answered, they suddenly knew exactly where their heart was in relation to God: it broke some; others hated what they saw, what Jesus forced them to see.  For others, Jesus caused them to see the door of salvation suddenly, beautifully, graciously wide open, for them, already open.

“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’  But they remained silent” (3:4).  No one was going to say it was lawful on the Sabbath to do evil—it was never lawful to do evil.  But Jesus isn’t asking a rhetorical question.  He is challenging the entire apparatus of the traditions of the law—all the human additions ostensibly to help the people keep the law but that inevitably made living the law nearly impossible because the human additions—re-visions—altered the law.  The fundamental good is loving obedience, as Jesus demonstrates.  That makes the fundamental evil disobedience: Adam and Eve, anybody?  Those traditions, those human additions, explanations, and elaborations of the law, presented themselves as enabling obedience—we’re only here to help!—but they resulted in enshrining a fundamental disobedience.

That remains a problem, a perennially troubling problem, in the churches even today.  When we attempt to help God in what properly belongs to Him, we inevitably make a sorry mess of it.  Let us, rather, direct ourselves to helping one another as Christ teaches and shows us.  Let us listen to the Word, to do it.

Yes, of course it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath.  Where did that leave inaction?  Was doing nothing the same as doing good, or the same as doing evil?  If I can do something to help, but I don’t help . . .  Lawful—does that mean according to the rules, or according to the heart of God?  Many had forgotten there could be a difference.  Better not to think, than to make a mistake.  God said no work on the Sabbath.  Yes, the scribes had allowed for some exceptions—the livestock needed to be fed, after all.  Accidents happened, even on the Sabbath.  Was doing good working, then?  Was it labor?  Did God cease from all work, on the Sabbath?  We’re told God maintains the universe, moment by moment.  Does God just sort of let the universe go, on the Sabbath?  No, no!  Stop asking such questions!  I don’t want to think—no thinking, especially on the Sabbath!

Jesus is challenging them to answer: is it evil—disobedient, faithless—to decline to restore life, on the Sabbath?  If you have the opportunity, is it disobedient, even faithless, not to try to reach out to help?  Which best reflects the heart of God?  This isn’t academic: Jesus poses the same question in the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which men known to be God-fearing, God-honoring, God-serving, walk right by a man in the most urgent need.  Their excuse?  The rules that made them holy, righteous, with God.  If the parable didn’t track with the experiences of his listeners, it would have been dismissed as silly and unrealistic.  It wasn’t.

“But they remained silent” (3:4).  Oh, that doleful silence!  Maybe in one or two cases, the silence came from not knowing what to say or how to answer.  In a few cases, the silence came from fear, or shame.  Most, though, know but won’t say.  They’re taking the 5^th!

We rarely think of Jesus as angry.  Angry Jesus doesn’t work for us.  Angry Jesus isn’t in any of the nursery books or picture Bible stories that served as the early building blocks of our faith.  Jesus is always happy, sunny!  And if he must be angry, we know it’s always against the right people in the right way for the right reasons—Pharisees, money-changers—people like that.  But it isn’t always only those people with whom Jesus is angry.  Seeing, hearing that silence in the synagogue that morning, not one person there willing to speak the truth aloud, Jesus “looked around at them in anger” (3:5).  This is that most heartbroken anger, the anger of sorrow, and disappointment.  “[D]eeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, [Jesus] said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’  He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored” (3:5).

The miracle, again.  The miracle of healing, restoration, the hands of God lifting you from the heap of uselessness and putting you into the ranks of the useful.  And this, Jesus is telling them—showing them—is perfectly consistent with the Sabbath, the law of God.  On the Lord’s Day, we conscientiously make room for God to work, not by prohibiting work, but by praying particularly for the continuation of God’s work, in, among, and through us.  Worshipful living, growing connected to God, growing in the Word.

“Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus” (3:6).  They know they can’t let this continue.  To keep the way they knew to be right, this Jesus must die.