A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. When Jesus came on a Sabbath to eat a meal in the house of one of the leading pharisees, they observed Jesus closely, not because they loved him, but to catch him, to trap him. Directly in front of Jesus was a man who suffered from leprosy, from dropsy. Jesus asked the lawyers and the pharisees, is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath or not? At this, they kept silent.
Then Jesus took the man and healed him and sent him on his way. And then Jesus himself said to them, if one of you has a son or an ox and he falls into a pit, will he not immediately rescue him even on the Sabbath day? This, they could not answer. And this is the good news of the the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. As I said, if you read, for example, some of the writers of the sixteenth century like Erasmus, Erasmus, you will find them referring to Judaism.
They use it as a synonym for legalism. That is for an overweening, for an exaggerated emphasis upon mere legality. And if you want to see a contemporary example of this, look look what's happened to our system of law. The difference between something being legal and just, the two things are totally different or can be totally different. Think of the Roper case.
It cries to high heaven for vengeance. So our blessed our blessed lord throws a question. Notice, he introduces it. He takes the initiative. He knows what they're thinking.
And we've seen a number of examples of the same thing. How do you treat the Sabbath? The law says, thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy. Well, what does that mean in fact? Well, after centuries of playing around with that idea, it had been reduced to the absurd.
When even if you touched even if you touched a tool, it was considered to make you unclean. And so our lord throws this problem at them. Now, I think the important thing here is that they didn't consider it. All they could do was to keep quiet. They couldn't answer it, so they said nothing.
Now, you see, there are certain there are plenty of situations in life when the best thing to do is to say nothing, to keep quiet. But there are other situations where we cannot afford to keep quiet, when we have to take a stand. And in many instances this involves principle. Where and remember principles are theoretical, principles are universal, Principles are not concrete. It's one thing to see a hungry child and to give them a give this particular child on this particular day a piece of bread or a loaf of bread or some money or whatever.
But when you say what is the responsibility of the state towards the poor? Who's the poor? So our blessed lord, you see, he pinpoints his doctrine. There's always principle behind our blessed Lord, but he con he makes it concrete. And he he he sees these people with their legalism and how they are overlooking the essence of justice, let us say, with because they are under the cloud of a law, of a law.
It's it's frightfully important in our own lives that we have this idea. I wanna go back to that first reading today. Because you see, if there's anything that all that many Christians I mean good, devout, sincere, God fearing, religious minded, and religious practicing Christians lack, is confidence in God's goodness, in his love. Now, in many instances, we have reason to doubt God's love. Someone says if if if if that's if God if that's the way you treat your friends, who needs enemies?
And so let's not be blind. Let's not play the part of an ostrich. Read the book of Job. Look at Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven, just to give you two instances. But in most instances, all we have to do is to remember our own lives.
And it apparently, sometimes there's evidence that God does not love me. He see he seems to be treating me horribly. Let's face it. Look how I treated Job. And you can quote psalm after psalm where this theme comes up.
God, if you be a god and if you love me, how can you be treating me this way? So let's not let's not overlook that, and let's not try to push it under the carpet or sweep it away. But the point I have to get through my hard head is that God loves me, and Saint Paul, you see, stresses that. And this is what is lacking in the legalism of the Jews of our Lord's time. They had lost contact with almighty, with God, and had were drowning, were being destroyed in their own man made regulations.
There weren't laws at all in any real sense of the word. Now this can happen to us. It can happen to anybody. It it goes back to the I I keep going back. I I know how bore you stiff, but Lewis, Clive Staple Lewis has a long parable metaphor allegory aware of of the dog and his master, and he develops this.
First he talks from the dog's point of view, how he is ill treated by his master. The food he wants to eat, his master says you can't have it. The automobile he wants to run after, the master says you can't run after that car. He's walking along and he wants to dash after a rabbit, and the first thing is the master yanks him back, he's got a chain on his neck. Lewis develops this quite at length, and it's a good example.
Sometimes we look at God as the dog looks at his master, and we can't do any better. All we see is what is the immediate present. And so without minimizing the faith we need at times, and we need it desperately, it it Christians should have it to the cup and overflowing. If we could only realize that God is running our lives, not a sparrow falls from the sky, not a hair from my head, That I can do nothing, Jesus said, without me, you can do nothing. And as I say, we keep trying to prove him wrong.
Let us throw ourselves on Jesus. He's running the show with confidence. This is remember, this is not playing the part of a Pollyanna. We're not we we are not being foolish. We are none we are not playing the roles of of Don Quixote's.
Not if there's a God, not if Jesus Christ, his son, is our savior. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.