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On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
and the people there were observing him carefully.
Jesus knew that they were looking for an excuse to criticize him. But rather than taking a pragmatic approach, and trying to build on what points of agreement may have existed between them, he went directly and intentionally to a point of disagreement. He did not downplay or obscure the significant differences between the common worldview of the Pharisees and that of the Kingdom. In any event, they certainly wouldn't have been content until something for which they could condemn him came to the surface. So Jesus got right to the heart of the matter. By the end it would be obvious that, although they ate and drank in his company, they never really knew one another.
"Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?"
Were the prohibitions against labor on the sabbath so rigid that one could not even engage in life-giving acts of mercy? The Pharisees seemed to think that only absolute abstention from work would be enough to appease the demands of God. They seemed to see the commandment to keep the sabbath as merely an arbitrary test of whether or not they would obey the letter of the law. But their attitude about fastidious obedience to the letter of the law made the Spirit of the law invisible and inaccessible to them. They were not able to realize that the purpose of the sabbath was to be a time of communion, especially with the Lord. Thus the could not understand the problem with helping someone when their son or ox falls into a cistern but not helping someone in need of healing. All that mattered to them was that one was explicitly allowed, the other not. It might have been clear from the larger context of Scripture that the twin commandments of love of God and love of neighbor were meant to inform how all of the rest were applied. But the criteria of these Pharisees was less about love and more about pride. It was more about supplying criteria for performance so that they could achieve and be identified for greatness. But one could not truly honor God's intentions for the sabbath while at the same time neglecting to care for those created in his image.
"Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?"
The reason that the Pharisees did not correctly interpret the sabbath stemmed from the same hardness of heart that would cause them endorse the decent of the innocent son of God into the pit of death. Yet no one that rejected Jesus was immediately thereby disqualified from repenting, obtaining mercy, and coming to eternal life. The children of Israel in particular, though they by and large rejected Jesus during his first coming, still possessed "the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises". By saying this Paul was suggesting, among other things, that we ought not give up on them since God himself clearly has not. After all, none of us began from a state of innocence. Christ died for us while we were yet enemies of God. The only thing that can finally prevent us from obtaining mercy, the only truly unforgivable sin, is an obstinate refusal to surrender until the last fleeting moment of consciousness. Until that last spark goes, out God himself will avail himself of every opportunity to bring us all home to him. And he is more than capable. Even those people who seem to be so distant as to be irredeemable may yet be brought home by a twitch upon the thread.
I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.
- Brideshead Revisited
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