Stretch Out Your Hand

17Jan
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
-Mark 3:1-5


Imagine a setting like the great cathedral in Mexico City; an agitated mix of tourists, perfunctory worshippers, souvenir hawkers, government security with inappropriately large weapons, preening priests, and clusters of devouts, seeking rest and release from the struggle. As Jesus entered he did not seek to blend into the buzz. One imagines he moved gracefully, with divine assurance, feeling the hot glances of conspiratorial rage directed at him. He moved in a way we would notice.


Taking clues from the festering paradox all about him, Jesus reaches out to a deformed man who squatted in the dusty shadows, praying to be whole, praying to be fed. Signaling his intentions to heal the man, Jesus asks rhetorically, is there ever a time or place where it is off-season for one human being to heal or give life to another human being?


The silence that follows pricks Jesus’ swelling anger. Jesus turns his palms to the heavens and reaches forward to the man with the withered hand. “Stretch out your hand...” he says to the man. 


With anger in his voice and a gentle certainty of action, Jesus says to us, all the time, “Stretch out your hand...”


He says, “Put down your inappropriately large weapons: your smart-phone, your labels for those you fear (Progressive, Republican, Black, white, privileged, Illegal alien, red-neck, abortion-monger, ...). Put down your fear that you won’t get what you want, or that you will lose what you have. See the forgotten squatting in dusty corners; embody Me, and Stretch out your hand!”


Musical Reflection - In the Stillness by Sally Beamish - VOCES8


Jesus, it is so much easier to see ourselves as incomplete and to seek your completeness, than it is to see ourselves as complete, with all your power. We would rather not be confronted by your anger that we waste that which you have given us. Forgive me for choosing small over the divinely given, enormous power to heal. Amen.

Healing

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