Jump Start # 188 

Mark 3:5 “After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, ‘Stretch our your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.” 

  Our passage today is one of the many miracles of Jesus. This is the healing of the man with the withered hand. Sometimes Luke gives us little insights into what happened, such as a person was crippled from birth or the bent over woman suffered from a spirit. We’re not told here. Born that way? Work injury? Luke doesn’t say. The very words, “withered”  has always seemed strange to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a withered hand. I’ve known folks who lost some fingers. I read about a man in our area whose severed hand was reattached through a series of surgeries. But withered?

  The context of this healing mirrors the healing of the bent over woman. Jesus is in a synagogue. It is another Sabbath day. There will be an argument about healing on the Sabbath. The setting of this miracle seems more staged than the bent over woman. Luke says, “they were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.” They anticipated and even expected Jesus to heal this withered hand. In many ways, the critics of Jesus were starting to figure Him out. Jesus had a heart for the hurting. They knew that He couldn’t pass on the opportunity to heal this man’s hand.

  What they failed to see was that Jesus knew what they were up to. He knew it was a trap. He knew that they were using people to get to Jesus. It doesn’t seem that they really cared much about the man with the withered hand. He was bait to trap Jesus.

  In a most unusual passage, Luke says Jesus “looked at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart…” An angry Jesus? Many have never thought of that. This was not the only occasion. Remember, when Jesus turned the tables over in the temple and drove out the money changers? I don’t think He had a smile on His face when this happened.

  Paul told the Ephesians to “be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.” I’d thought he’d say, “Do NOT be angry.” But he didn’t. He said, “BE angry…BUT.” It’s what anger does to you that makes the difference. It’s hard for us to be angry and not say things we wish later on we hadn’t said. It’s hard not to be angry and give someone a piece of our mind. Anger can make us boil on the inside until we “blow up.” Then trouble comes. The nasty phone call. The chewing out. The road rage. The invitations to Satan to use our anger to lead us to sin.

  Jesus was angry but He never sinned. He never had to apologize for saying the wrong thing. He never returned the next day and had to say that He lost his cool and was sorry for that. Not Jesus. Not once.

  And since we’re on this, did you ever notice what made Jesus angry? It wasn’t that He had to wait for supper or that the store was closed or that there was a long line waiting to get on a boat or the zillion of things that fire us up. Rather, the lack of faith angered Jesus. People using people angered Jesus. Misusing the Temple and taking advantage of others angered Jesus. His was a righteous anger. Often mine is a selfish anger. I get mad at the way I’m treated. Those are not the same. And, when I get angry I get in a sour mood. I pout. I threaten to do this or that. I get bothered. I don’t see that in Jesus. On this occasion, He used the healing as yet another attempt to open the closed minds of his opponents. His anger led Him to construction ways to change things.

  You can learn a lot from anger. You learn even more from Jesus.

Roger