A town called Malice

Today’s gospel (Luke 13:10-17) shows Jesus affirming a certain way of interpreting the moral law. He heals a woman on the Sabbath. To some, the fact that this action was a miracle appears to be irrelevant; for them, He was wrong to heal on the day of rest. Should we see this as a peculiar blindness in those committed to a strict legal framework? Not necessarily.

It would be a mistake to imagine that Jesus’ action is an overturning of the law. The healing of the woman is not a lawless action. In fact, in some ways it is as strictly legal as the interpretation of the sabbatarians. After all, the law that Jesus observes as He cures the woman is the law of mercy by which a lower law gives way to a higher law. Moreover, Jesus himself points out that even his critics would have watered their animals on the Sabbath day.

We might say, therefore, that the real problem in this gospel is not the legalism of Jesus' critics but their hypocritical malice; they condemn in Him an action that they would have permitted themselves. In other words, theirs is a fake accusation, an insincere indictment.

Jesus’ command not to judge others seems to urge us to blame all wrongdoing on ignorance or error in the mind. In an endeavour to be charitable, we prefer to think that it is an exaggerated legalism that leads Jesus’ critics down the wrong path. Yet, it seems rather that their criticism arises from simple bad will. They were not being high minded. They were actually being perverse.

We have to consider this carefully. Human malice and hypocrisy are real factors in the shaping of our lives and the shaping of the lives of others. They are real and present dangers for the human heart, tethered to this earth by jealousy, pride, self-regard, anger, or the unregulated neediness that turns neighbour into an idol and makes a fetish of the fashionable.

What we need in this case is the healing touch of the merciful Lord, coming to our aid even after many years of our slavery. Our salvation lies neither in legalism, nor in some form of deluded largesse about observing the law, but in embracing the eternal law of divine love which alone can cure us of our malice, heal us of our sins, cast the mighty from their thrones, and raise the lowly.