What do you find in church? Faith or stubbornness?

Many of us go to church every Sunday--or to synagogue every Saturday (Sabbath). What and who do we find there? Jesus went to a synagogue every week. One week, when he was at the height of his popularity, he noticed a man with a withered hand. He also noticed the synagogue leaders staring at him.

The particular sect, denomination if you will, of Judaism that operated the synagogues was the Pharisees. By almost any account, not only their own, they were the holiest people in society. They knew and revered God's law and strove to follow it to the letter. After all, in the law of Moses, God gave the blueprint for what a godly life looked at. The Pharisees, one and all, wanted their own lives to look like that.

Unfortunately, they neglected to look at the parts of the law that described the inward appearance of a godly person. So they looked with approval at their own considerable hard work to live up to the law. They looked with disapproval of anyone whose own life didn't testify to the same hard work. The law requires love and compassion for other people, but the Pharisees devoted so much attention to ritual purity that they failed to notice or even care if their love and compassion fell short.

These, then, were the stubborn people in the synagogue. They all probably knew the man with the withered hand. He had probably attended that synagogue frequently, if not every week. But his condition may have looked like a curse from God. Whether or not the Pharisees thought he must have some hidden sin in his life that had withered his hand, they had no compassion.

How can I say that? Because one day Jesus came in. The Pharisees all knew him by reputation. They all knew how enthusiastically crowds followed him, but those crowds comprised lots of sinners, that is, lots of people who made no attempt to follow the law as closely as the Pharisees did. They viewed Jesus' popularity among sinners with suspicion. They knew Jesus worked miracles. They had heard that he sometimes worked them on the Sabbath. One of the Ten Commandments is to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. No Pharisee, no even nominally observant Jew worked on the Sabbath. How dare Jesus profane the Sabbath with miracles? Why couldn't he wait till the next day?

These Pharisees, generally acknowledged as the holiest men in the community, lay in wait to accuse Jesus. They had so much regard for their own holiness that they lost track of God. They forgot that God valued love and compassion. They forgot that God looks on the heart and not the outward appearance of things. Jesus, God manifest in flesh, stood among them and not one of them recognized  him. Jesus gazed at them with both anger and grief. Then he healed the man's hand.

Do you see stubbornness or faith in your church? Do people expect to meet God and to watch him in action? Or do they simply expect one service to run smoothly much like all the others? Don't answer that for anyone else but yourself! Jesus requires righteousness greater than anything the Pharisees had. And they only way to get it is to accept it from him by faith, just as the man with the withered hand accepted his healing.