It's interesting to note here
in Luke 14:1-6, that Jesus was once again in the house of a Pharisee and having
a meal. But what's uncomfortable about the setting is that they had laid a trap
for Jesus. We are told
explicitly that this was a Sabbath. A better translation for the phrase in
verse 2: "they were watching Him closely" would be, "they were lurking
and watching Him". They were actually looking out to trap Him. This was a
set-up.
Verse 2 in the ESV puts it
this way, "And behold, there was a man before Him who had dropsy."
What is dropsy? The modern term is oedema. It is the pooling of excessive fluid
in the soft tissues of the feet. It is not a sickness but the symptom of a very
serious sickness. This symptom usually reflects that a person is suffering from
congestive heart failure. The word, behold, suggests that he was planted there.
He did not just stroll in. He was brought in. The timing and the presence of
that sick man presented a dilemma for Jesus. To heal or not to heal. Healing
him would mean being accused of breaking the Sabbath. But not to heal him would
appear being uncompassionate.
Jesus decided to turn the
table on them. He asked, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” They
were put in a fix. To say "You can't heal him" would be
uncompassionate. To say, "Heal him" would break their own rigid
religious regulation. So they took the best course of action. Keep silent. The
Lord knew what He wanted to do, Sabbath or not. His compassion and mercy would
not allow a tangible need of a person to go unmet. So He healed him. Then He
put the Pharisees further on the defensive by asking, "Which one of you
will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him
out on a Sabbath day?” Answering either way they would be trapped. Unlike
Jesus, they did not know what the priority is. So they kept uncomfortably
silent and resentfully quiet and uneasy.
Luke's whole intention was to
show that God's authority, power and presence reside in Jesus our Lord. No
wonder Paul in his Colossians Epistle said that the fullness of God dwells
bodily in our Lord and we are complete in Him. Jesus is the epitome of God's
compassion and mercy. Even on the rest day, His compassion never ceases. We are
called to love God and to love our neighbour. How can we love God, Whom our
eyes cannot see, if we cannot love our brethren whom our eyes can see? The
question is, where then is the love of God? Let's not be governed by our rigid
religious obsession till we occlude the compassion of God from a needy world.
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