Mark 3:1-6
Stretch Out Your Hand
1Once again Jesus entered the synagogue, and a man with a withered hand was there.
2In order to accuse Jesus, they were watching to see if He would heal on the Sabbath.
3Then Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, “Stand up among us.”
4And He asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” But they were silent.
5Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.
6At this, the Pharisees went out and began plotting with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
Berean Standard Bible
There is a man in the synagogue with a withered hand, and there are other people in the synagogue as well. Mark tells us what those other people came for before anything happens.
In order to accuse Jesus, they were watching to see if He would heal on the Sabbath.
A man in that room cannot use his hand, and he is not what anybody is looking at. Mark puts their purpose on the page ahead of the story, so that we spend the scene watching the watchers.
Jesus does not go about this quietly. He tells the man to get up and stand where everyone can see him.
He could have waited. One more day would have changed nothing about that hand, and he could have done it after sunset with nobody there. Instead he sets the man in the middle of the floor, where nobody in the building can pretend to be looking somewhere else, and then he turns the trap around and hands it back as a question.
Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?
The silence afterward is the hinge of the whole scene. No answer was available that would have helped them. Agree that doing good is lawful and the healing goes ahead. Say the other thing out loud, in a room with that man standing in the middle of it, and hear how it sounds coming out of your mouth.
Then Mark writes down how Jesus looked at them. Anger, and sorrow at the hardness of their hearts, in one sentence and in the same moment.
Anger is not a word we are comfortable finding here, so it helps to be exact about what he was angry at. Not the Sabbath, and not the law. He was angry at people who could look at a crippled man and feel nothing except the hope of catching somebody out. Mark sets the sorrow right beside the anger, because in him the two were not opposites.
Stretch out your hand.
The man stretches it out, and it is whole again. Jesus never touched him. He said nothing over him. Everything that could be weighed against the rule about work comes to one sentence spoken and a man moving his own arm.
It made no difference to them. Mark closes the scene with the Pharisees going out and beginning to plan a killing, and doing it alongside the Herodians. He healed a hand, and men started arranging his death.
How We Know
Verse 6 names two groups acting together: Pharisees and Herodians. Mark gives no explanation of who the Herodians were, assumes his readers know, and brings the same pairing back at 12:13.
A name used twice and never defined fits Mark drawing on information from inside the period rather than assembling a cast from later memory. On its own it does not weigh in favor of that against any other explanation.
What the passage does not say is what the plot amounted to at this stage. Verse 6 reports the discussion, and Mark does not return to it until Jerusalem.
Questions
1 Mark tells us why the watchers were there before the story even starts. What were they waiting to see?
AnswerWhether Jesus would heal on the Sabbath, so that they could accuse him. There was a man with a ruined hand standing in the room, and he was not the thing they had come to look at.
2 Jesus could have healed him quietly after dark. Why do you think he called the man out into the middle of the room instead?
AnswerThe text does not give his reason, and it is better not to invent one. What can be seen is the effect. Nobody in that building got to look away, and the question he asked next had to be answered in front of everybody.
3 Nobody answered the question he asked. Why not?
AnswerBecause no answer helped them. Agreeing that it is lawful to do good lets the healing go ahead. Saying the opposite out loud, with that man standing there, would have sounded like exactly what it was.
4 When were you last so busy being right that you stopped looking at the person in front of you? Mark says Jesus was angry here. What was he angry at?
AnswerHard hearts. Not the Sabbath, not the law, and not the man. He was angry at people who could see somebody suffering and feel nothing but the hope of catching him out. Mark puts sorrow in the same sentence, which says something about the kind of anger it was.
What This Means for Us
There is a way of caring about being right that makes a person stop seeing people.
Everyone in that room agreed the Sabbath mattered, and they were not wrong about that. Somewhere in the middle of being right, though, a man with a ruined hand had stopped being a person and become the equipment in a test.
It can happen to anyone who cares about the truth, which is to say it can happen to us. It rarely announces itself. It gets quietly easier to win an argument than to look at whoever is standing in the middle of it.
So partway through the next disagreement, stop and ask yourself who the person here is, and whether you have looked at them lately. Then look.
Prayer
Father, thank you that you were angry about the right things, and sad at the same time. Keep our hearts soft. Do not let us get so attached to being right that we walk past people who are hurting. And where we have already done that, forgive us. Amen.