Jesus cleverly notes this by pointing out that the regulations against working on the Sabbath could not be taken absolutely literally. Clearly God would not condemn someone for healing another on the Sabbath or, as Jesus points out, pulling a child out of a well on the Sabbath. How absurd it would be to say to someone in that situation: “Sorry, we’ll just have to wait until sundown to pull you out.” I think Jesus’ overarching message here is that we can’t use human constructs as a way to blind ourselves to God’s higher law and calling. I have visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. several times. One of the most chilling things to me is reviewing the systematic way in which the Nazi regime used the construct of human law to gradually isolate, dehumanize and then kill many of the Jews, Gypsies and other disfavored groups. The increasingly complicated and restrictive regulations on who could do business with whom, where one could live, who was to be counted as a Jew and so on were demonically clever devices to blind many to the overall reality of what was happening. Many ordinary people were drawn into this evil web of oppression simply because the oppression could be justified by these inhuman decrees masquerading as law. Jesus reminds us that we always have to step back and ask ourselves what God wants. |