Concluding Mark #6 The Tragic Hardness of Heart
| Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone." Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. (Mark3:3-6) |
One of the saddest themes in Mark's Gospel is the ongoing hardness of people's hearts. This passage reveals it powerfully...
It's a Sabbath and the Pharisees are more concerned about observing the Sabbath than about the plight of a fellow human being. If the Law of Moses allowed one to get a cow out of a pit on the Sabbath, surely the healing of the precious human being would matter too?
Throughout Mark's Gospel we see people being helped by Jesus and trusting in Him:
- desperate people come to Him
- broken people trust Him
- outsiders welcome Him
- women follow faithfully
- children respond naturally
- sinners eat at His table
Their hearts are so hard, that the Pharisees and Herodians who were polar opposites theologically and idealogically, begin to plot murder. Strange bedfellows indeed.
What's striking in this passage is that Jesus' response to this hardness was not indignation or antipathy but deep distress. He is grieving with the hot angry grief that one feels when there is a sense of a life wasted. He sees the hardness of their hearts and it vexes Him.
Right into Holy Week Jesus interacts with Pharisees, Saducees, Herodians, Teachers of the Law. They continue to resist Him and He faces them with truth, logic, Scripture and even outright rebuke, but they refuse to see...
May we never harden our hearts in this way.
