Well, I’m back! We all have moved and settled in here at Sewanee, TN. I’ll be transitioning back to posting to this website more regularly, but please bear with me as I find a new routine here at the University of the South.
With that said, let’s take a look at the gospel passage for this coming Sunday. I just love passages like this one during the “long green season” of Pentecost. It has everything! Tragedy, wonder, miracles, a very obvious moral — it’s all there. We can see from passages like this one why Jesus is called “The Great Physician.” The Pharisees perform admirably as the “foil” of Jesus in the story. Honestly, in my mind, they are twirling their mustaches and tying the poor, crippled woman to the train tracks. Now, of course, that’s not exactly how it happened.
In fact, they are standing up for the “right” in the story. They are following the rules and regulations. They are standing up for tradition and the mores of their society and religion. Also, on the surface, are they even really saying something so bad? If we are not biased against them in this passage, couldn’t they just be saying that Jesus should do this miracle tomorrow? Perhaps, though, there is something very deep in this passage for all of us.
Perhaps, this weekend, we could meditate on this passage from the perspective of different characters in the story (the Pharisees, the crippled woman, Jesus, the crowd, etc.) on how the “right” could be become the enemy of the “good.” Oh Lord, save us from being so concerned with being right that we forget to be good…
That’s interesting, at your funeral would you rather have someone say that you were right, or that you were good; or perhaps some third thing like you were joyful?
Most of all, I think that I might like for them to say that I was kind 🙂