The Man with the Shrivelled Hand

The scene in Mark 3:1-6 is charged before anyone speaks. Jesus is in a synagogue on the Sabbath. A man with a shrivelled hand is there. Some of those present are watching closely, not to see whether Jesus will help him, but to see whether he will break the Sabbath by doing so, so they can accuse him. The man has become a test case.

Jesus does not avoid the trap. He tells the man to stand up in front of everyone. Then he asks the room a question: which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? Nobody answers. Mark says that Jesus looked around at them in anger, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts. He tells the man to stretch out his hand, and it is restored.

Three lessons follow. First, Jesus refuses to let a person become a pawn in a religious argument; he sees the man, not the controversy. Second, silence in the face of an obvious good is not neutral. Third, Jesus is angry, and his anger is grief. The passage ends with the Pharisees leaving to plot with the Herodians how to kill him. Mercy on a Sabbath was enough to start that.