FROM THE ARCHIVES: UNTHINKABLE:

Good News: Jesus Is Not Nice: The chaos of grace and the grace of chaos. (Mark Galli, 9/29/2011, Christianity Today)

Many examples can be given, but one in particular (Luke 6:6-11) reveals Jesus at his destabilizing best. One Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. In addition to the congregation, Luke notes that "scribes and Pharisees" were also present, as was a man whose right hand was withered. The religious leaders had come to catch Jesus breaking religious law, in particular, healing on the Sabbath.

Now, Jesus had a lot of ways to avoid a confrontation, and he'd have known these if he had read How to Win Friends and Influence People. First, the man with the withered hand does not actually ask for healing. Jesus is not backed into a no-win situation, where he either has to deny the request to heal or flaunt religious custom. Since the man never asked to be healed, Jesus could simply have done nothing.

Further, even if he felt compelled to heal the man, there is no reason Jesus could not have waited just a few hours, until the sun set. Then the Sabbath would be over, and the healing would be perfectly legal. The man had likely lived with this impediment for years, if not decades. He certainly could have waited a few hours to be healed. Jesus could have avoided working on the Sabbath, healed the man, and dodged controversy with religious leaders--a win-win-win! What ministry leader wouldn't strive for that?

But Jesus is not interested in maintaining a social or religious order that thwarts the dynamic work of God. So he calls the man forward in the middle of the service, in the middle of the day, before God and everybody right on the Sabbath, and heals him. Jesus deliberately provokes. Jesus initiates controversy. Jesus destabilizes the situation.

It is this sort of behavior, of course, that eventually gets him into trouble. But not before he manages to upset every expectation about God and his Messiah and the religious life. He says God is not so much enamored with the pious and the religious, but more with the poor, the sad, the meek, the hungry. No, the rich have not been blessed by God, Jesus says, but are an object of God's deepest concern for the state of their souls. He says that rather than retaliating, one should forgive. Rather than hating enemies, one should love them. Rather than keeping what is rightfully yours, you should give it away.

A man who goes about challenging such political, religious, and moral sensibilities could be mistaken for a revolutionary. And he was--and he was killed for it. We like to move through that part of the story as quickly as possible, and get on to something more hopeful, like the Resurrection. But disorder and confusion abound when we come to this part of the story as well.

Which the author just did himself, rather than pause to reflect upon the chaos on the Cross, where Christ despairs of Himself.

[originally posted: 9/29/11]

Posted by oj at April 20, 2014 12:49 AM
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