Withered Hands and Stretched-Out Faith

January 11, 1987

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Scripture: Mark 3:1-6 

If you could have been present, physically present, for any one brief period of time, say 15 minutes, during the life of Jesus, what period of time would you choose? If by some miracle of time warp, like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, or Kathleen Turner in Peggy Sue Got Married, or, better yet, the crew of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek IV, you could go back in history and be a literal witness to any scene recorded for us in the Biblical account, what quarter hour period would you most like to see for yourself? 

Well, I don’t know about you. I don’t know that I could stomach a moment of watching the Crucifixion. I’ve tried to put myself in that setting, and I’m not sure I could take it. 

The moment of the Transfiguration would be impressive, there on the mountaintop...So would the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday, perhaps the single happiest brief of time in Jesus’ life..... Any of these would be a simply breath-taking experience to witness. 

I think, though, if I really could pick, rather than selecting a spectacular event, I’d rather be present at some more intimate moment, when I could see for myself, up close and personal, as they say, how he dealt with one person and how his very being there brought wholeness and life. Wouldn’t you like to have watched him heal? 

The synagogue was crowded. It was always crowded on the Sabbath, but this time there was more excitement. Jesus was in trouble again. The Pharisees were huffy because he failed to show the respect THEY thought he should show for sabbath observance. Remember? He had worked on the Lord’s Day. Actually, all he’d done was pluck a few ears of corn from somebody’s field for a Corn Boil, just like the Berean Class does here every year. 

BUT HE DID IT ON THE SABBATH, AND THAT WAS ENOUGH. That was working.... “If he’s loose about that, what else will he be loose about?”, they murmured superciliously. 

So they were watching him, ready for him, the next time he pulled something. Can you picture them in your imagination, the following sabbath, posed there on the front row, craning their arthritic necks around, and peeking at him intently over their hymn books as he came in the front door....No movement he made escaped their attention. 

I don’t think he even noticed them...not at first. I don’t think he cared a lot what they thought---HE SAW A MAN UP AHEAD IN THE SANCTUARY WHO WAS PARALYZED....a withered hand. The service hadn’t started...The choir was still in the robing room. The ushers were still scooting around seating people.... 

Here was a chance to do something worthwhile and there was an obvious need. He strode down the aisle to the man, and maybe only then realized that every eye in the house was glued on him. 

WHAT WOULD HE DO? Sabbath day, special day, holy day, God’s day.............human hurt, human need, pain, uselessness......tradition...........emergency, ritual................ compassion, orthodox observance............orthopedic opportunity. YOU KNOW GOOD AND WELL WHICH ONE HE CHOSE. 

“Come here”, he said, and I don’t think he stuttered when he said it. “Come here. Come to me. Maybe I’ll be able to help you.” 

I bet you could have heard a pin drop in that synagogue right then. That’s when I’d like to have been there. The Pharisees on the front row leaned forward to take it in...Somebody had a note pad to keep a record. The Capernaum Notary Public got his stamp ready..... “He’s gonna do it. Watch him. He’s gonna break the sabbath again.” 

Suddenly, Jesus turned and faced them. I don’t know how long but it must have seemed like an hour. He looked intently into their petty, contorted faces. Here was the real problem. What could he say? 

What could he do to shake them out of their composure just once in their lives and give them a new vision of God’s priorities? They glared at him and he glared back. The air must have been so thick you could cut it with a knife. 

Finally, he slashed, so smoothly they almost didn’t know what hit them... a disarmingly simple question. “Is it lawful, on the sabbath, my brothers, to do good or to do harm? To save life, or to kill?” 

That is, what’s the sabbath for anyway? Whose sabbath is it? Whom do we honor when we observe it? Do we bless God best by keeping a bunch of technical regulations, or by reflecting his love, and care, and concern for his creation? 

It was, as in the old joke, the first time anyone had ever really explained it to them. The Record says, “they were silent.” I should think so. That may be the most hopeful thing written about them in the Gospels. They were silent. At least for that long, for that instant, for that priceless, self-revelatory moment they recognized the vulnerability of their value system. I like to think, I hope, some of them blushed, or at the very minimum averted his eyes as he stared at them in righteous fury. 

I wish I could have been there to see their expressions. 

Then, quickly, back to work. The man with the withered hand, All the time he’d been standing there, hopeful, nervous, not knowing what to expect. Jesus spoke to him again,---not in the tone of voice he had used with the ecclesiastics---a gentle voice this time, a tender voice, yet still commanding.... “Stretch out your hand.” 

What was that? What did he say? Stretch out my hand? The man gulped. I’m sure he must have. He didn’t know if he COULD stretch out his hand. He didn’t know if he was capable of it. All this time, he’d been simply protecting it, carrying it around as a burden, as a lifeless appendage. He wasn’t sure he could obey this order for the Man standing tall before him. BUT HE KNEW HE MUST TRY. 

So slowly, carefully, hesitantly, shyly, perhaps painfully, he extended that useless claw toward the Master until he touched Him, and when he pulled the hand back, it was whole. I wish I could have seen his face, too. 

Now, that’s the story as Mark records it, only slightly elaborated upon. Well, almost all the story. There is a final footnote. The temporary sanity of the Pharisees was exactly that---temporary. It didn’t take long for their old colors to come back. They quickly returned to their previous cock-eyed priorities. 

After Church, that very day, even before the kickoff of the play off game, they paraded out to huddle with the Herodians, the local secular politicians, and in a scruffy alliance of church and state, fueled by a mixture of frustration and desperation, probably in a smoke-filled room in the back of the courthouse, THEY PLOTTED HOW, ONCE AND FOR ALL, THEY MIGHT GET RID OF THIS BRAZEN CARPENTER. 

Well, is it simply history, this graphic little vignette from 2,000 years ago? Does reading it and thinking about it give us nothing more than just a better understanding of the type of opposition Jesus faced, or the depth of his compassion for people? That would be something, of course, but does that exhaust it? DOES IT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH US? 

Is there anything more in the story for us than simple admiration for something that happened once, way back there, a long time ago? 

Well, if there isn’t, I’m through right now, and I’m not, so don’t get your hopes up. It’s that man with the withered hand I want us to center on a little closer. Will you look at him with me?

He doesn’t utter a word in the story. 

He’s the pawn of event, in a sense, a minor character in the drama, the inadvertent focus of a whole host of swirling dynamics for which he’s not in the least responsible. 

BUT ISN’T HE, in spite of the distance and time difference, one with whom we, too, can identify? I know I sure can. I know that guy. I recognize him. I think I see him every day, in the mirror, when I’m shaving. 

Talk about wanting to go back in history to see a Biblical scene in the 1st person. I don’t have to go back for this one. We’re already contemporaries. 

The HAND, you see...that withered hand. That’s my problem, too. Is it for any of the rest of you? 

I’ve jumped from biology to theology now, let me warn you. From fact to metaphor.....I’m using hand as a symbol for DOING. I know more good than I’m putting into practice in my Christian life...My knowledge far exceeds my performance. 

It’s not my head that’s keeping me from growing in spiritual maturity, it’s my HAND. It’s not what I believe, it’s what I DO about what I believe. 

I know right from wrong, almost always....I know what I ought to do, what I ought not to do. I have a good conscience, sometimes too good. It prods me when I get out of line, pokes me when I’m tempted to waver, or slip, or covet, or wander..... 

There’s nothing basically askew with my education, my training, my theology.... nothing radically askew. 

I KNOW WHAT I OUGHT TO DO. My problem in being Christian is not the head, it’s that withered hand, doing what I know, carrying out what I believe, putting into practice what I profess. 

I can’t accomplish what I set out to accomplish. I can’t perform what I intend. Sometimes I go to bed at night, and realize I didn’t see Ms. Smith today, and I needed to. 

I didn’t get that letter written.....Why did I say what I said to Jim? What in the world was I thinking of? I was careless here, neglectful there, arrogant here, greedy there....... I didn’t mean to, but there it is. 

Am I alone in this? The Apostle Paul dealt with it in the 7th Chapter of Romans. The man with the withered hand could serve as the perfect symbol for that chapter. Remember? “For even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. I don’t do the good I want to do, and the very evil I don’t want to do, that’s what I end up doing.” 

Oh, Paul. That’s it. Frustration of intent...withered hands. How can Paul know me so well? 

Don’t all of us fight this battle? The answer to it is not more will power, not better New Year’s resolutions, not a fiercer determination to get better organized, though each of those has its rewards. THEY DON’T GO DEEP ENOUGH, THOUGH. CHRISTIANITY HAS ALWAYS SAID THAT. 

The cure for the “withered hand”, in the sense of bringing dreams and deeds more closely together is essentially a heart issue, a relationship issue, a matter of giving up the old center so a new center can come in and take over one’s life. 

For some it takes radical surgery for this to happen. I think one of the great movements for good in our society today is the movement known as Alcoholics Anonymous. That program may have turned more lives around in the 20th Century than the Church itself. I don’t know the figures, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised. 

I’m convinced Alcoholics Anonymous is of God. It has to be inspired for it couldn’t have done the work it’s done. 

A.A., if I understand it, says to the person with a drinking problem, “Don’t even bother to come to us if you’re still thinking in terms of reform, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, solving this thing by yourself. YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO IT. 

Will power alone won’t cut it. 

You’ve got to admit what you are before you can get help. You must say YES, I do have a withered hand. I do need help, from a Power beyond myself, from a Power greater than myself, before my life can be turned around. 

When the person does say that, he opens himself, or herself, BY THAT VERY ADMISSION, to the accepting, transforming grace of God. 

I wonder how many people there are, even on our church rolls, who, while not battling alcoholism necessarily, are battling the same kind of inner dynamics alcoholics fight—the tyranny of the “ought”, the slavery of the “should”, the final futile attempt to prove themselves, make themselves worthy, earn their salvation, as the old theologians used to put it. 

The Gospel says the answer is not sweat.... it’s surrender, not action, but acquiescence, not trying harder, but giving up, and admitting that God knows best. 

The withered hand is cured when the heart is captured. 

Now, may I take it one more step.... to the corporate level. That man with the withered hand can represent not only some of us as individuals, He can also be an embarrassingly pertinent symbol of the modern Church. I don’t say that flippantly. I say it with a heavy heart. We, too, as the Body of Christ, know a great deal more than we’re putting into practice. 

Nothing wrong with our doctrines....Nothing wrong with our beliefs...our heritage is rich and glowing. 

We do believe in justice and mercy and compassion. We do believe the hungry should be fed, the naked should be clothed. We do believe in racial equality. 

We believe in the 2nd mile, the shared cloak, in doing unto others.... impeccable theology. 

We believe God loves a cheerful giver. YET THE RECORD OF THE CHURCH, ALMOST ANY CHURCH, IN DOING, in giving for others in relation to spending on itself, suggests we don’t really believe it at all. Withered hands. “Lord, we meant to do better. Really we did.” THE PERFORMANCE JUST NEVER CAUGHT UP WITH THE INTENT. 

When Dwight L. Moody preached one night in a little mission church in London, a young man slipped into the service to hear the American evangelist. A single sentence Mr. Moody spoke that night stabbed him awake with challenge: “The world has yet to see what might happen if one man gave himself totally and completely to the will of God.” 

The young man couldn’t get those words out of his heart. He went home and wrestled with them. He fought with them. He argued with them. He tried to run away from them. Finally, he surrendered to them. “The world has yet to see what might happen if one man gave himself totally and completely to the will of God.” I determined, he said, “to be that man.” 

Do you know his name? Wilfred Grenfell. Sir Wilfred Grenfell, he became. He went to Greenland as a missionary and before his death, almost single-handedly, converted that whole vast island to Jesus Christ. 

The world has yet to see what might happen if one CHURCH gave itself totally and completely to the will of God. 

What if we determined to be that Church? I pray the withered hand will not be our legacy to the next generation. 

Now one final thing and I’m done. We’ve talked about the healed man...Let’s talk about the HEALER. 

Don’t ask me to explain the scientific basis of the healing recorded in Mark. I’m not able to do that. I’ve been spiritualizing it most of the sermon, using the hand as a symbol, a metaphor for failure to do, for the rupture between desire and performance. We’re all caught up in that. 

I think Jesus healed a real man that day, a real man with a real paralysis, though I can’t tell you the mechanics of how he did it. 

Some scholars suggest that it was a psychosomatic thing, that the man wasn’t really crippled, only believed himself to be, but even that kind of healing requires new belief... 

Something special has to happen to change the situation. Psychosomatic cures are no less cures than any others. 

THIS I FEEL SURE OF....and I don’t know anything I’m prouder to say...No withering, of any kind, real, imagined, metaphorical...no withering whatsoever is a match for the healing power of Jesus Christ. 

The cure for withered hands is found right there in the text.... in the life-giving command of the Master Healer: “Come here. Stretch out your hand.” 

I want you to be healed. I want that more than you’ll ever know. I want you to know wholeness, fulfillment,...life. 

I want you to know peace and productivity and purpose. I want your life to count for something positive. I want you to know JOY. 

Draw near to Me, without worrying about the bookkeeping of it, whether you deserve it, how much it’ll cost you in pride and reputation. 

Just reach out, with as much faith as you have now, and let me take it from there. 

I wish I could have been there to see it happen in that man long ago. How much more exciting to see it happen right here. 

The world has yet to see what might happen if one man, one woman, one youth, one child, one Church gave itself totally and completely to the will of God. 

Stretch out your hand, and touch HIM.