Daily Reflection Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Here at the beginning of Luke 14 is a healing miracle of Jesus’ that is found only in Luke, the healing of the man with dropsy. Dropsy is today called edema, an abnormal fluid retention that causes rather severe swelling in the body. While Jesus is dining on the sabbath at the house of one of the leading (though unnamed) Pharisees, somehow a man with dropsy appears. Where did someone like that come from in the home of a leading Pharisee? Luke says that, “People were observing him carefully.” Perhaps he was a plant to lure Jesus into healing him so they could attack him for healing on the sabbath? A very cynical plan by the Pharisees if it is true. 

Jesus asks his Pharisee host if it is lawful or not to cure on the sabbath? But neither he nor any of the others watching him carefully say anything. So, Jesus heals the man and confronts the Pharisees by asking them “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?” It is quite similar to the healing of the stooped over woman earlier in Luke 13:10. There, it is a synagogue official who objects to Jesus’ healing again on a sabbath. There, though first calling him a hypocrite, Jesus asks him the same question he asks the Pharisee in today’s reading.

These poor souls, the Pharisee and the synagogue official not the man with dropsy or the stooped over woman, were so enmeshed in their religion and its rules that they completely missed what Jesus would call the lessons of mercy (“Go and learn the meaning of the words I desire mercy not sacrifice!” Mt 9:13). Care and love for others comes before any religious law. Nothing should hinder us from showing love, especially to those in need who are suffering.  But we can also abuse religious understanding by letting it make us in any way more narrow-minded or judgmental toward others. We can never let religious beliefs cause us to look down on or even askance at anyone. That is judging, pure and simple and Jesus tells us not to do it.

Pride has a way of entering all religion and infecting it, luring it away from its one goal of humble spirituality seeking God’s love and will, toward selfish goals of self-righteousness and condemnation which ultimately bring an atmosphere of fear to something that ought to bring peace. Let us pray that we will always stay humble about our purely religious understandings and wear our religion like a light garment. For religion will not save us. Only the love of God, our faith in Jesus and our love of neighbor can bring that about. If something that we are doing is not leading us closer to completely trusting God, closer to loving and forgiving everyone, closer to peace and serenity, then we need to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing that?”