Like many of you, I've been bewildered and shocked by the news coming out of Washington, D.C., this week. Not only the horrific plane crash that happened, but also everything that's going on with the federal government. I'm especially mindful, being only 20 minutes (depending on traffic) away from Canada of our Canadian friends, family, and neighbors who are feeling especially betrayed after tariffs were imposed on the country. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted in his address to Canadians and Americans, that "From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar, we have fought and died alongside you during your darkest hours."
Jesus' teaching about ethics is always timely, but it seems especially so now.
Our Bible reading today is two connected stories, relating to the sabbath. The sabbath is one of the most iconic part of the Jewish religion; The very first story in the Bible establishes it as the day that God rested after creation, and thus we are called to do the same. This is a good thing! Have a day to rest, to recenter, to worship are good. What is often under debate is the nature of that rest. This is the debate- one that is still ongoing in Jewish communities- that Jesus wades into in these stories, and uses to uncover broader themes about ethics.
In the first one, Jesus and his friends/students are walking through the fields, doing the normally Torah approved practice of gleaning- just not on the sabbath- when he is asked about his justification for doing so. Jesus responds with the story of David and his men eating the normally forbidden temple bread. He adds that "'The Chosen One' is ruler over the Sabbath."
The phrase rendered in our inclusive Bible translation is the Greek phrase huios anthropos, classically translated as "son of man". Anthropos means humanity or mankind- a word we might recognize from "Anthropology"- the study of humanity. Huios does mean something like son, but also means something like "descendant of" or "bears the image or likeness of". It is a translation of the Hebrew phrase Ben Adam- the son(s) of humanity, the mortal one(s). Indeed, in the Old Testament, it is much more often used to indicate humanity as a whole or something like "Joe Everyman." (Although the book of Daniel does use the phrase to point to one particular chosen person)
This phrase in Greek is new to the New Testament, and I believe that Jesus is deploying it with a double meaning. He is using it to indicate something special about himself, and to comment on humanity's moral agency. Yes, Jesus is fully God and fully human- the Human one, the chosen one, the son of Mary; and yet, his listeners would not necessarily be familiar with that meaning. I think he also is implying that the descendants of Adam- the image bearers of Adam, the "sons of man" are also masters of the sabbath, not the reverse. After all, what was the fall of humanity in the story of the Garden about other than man eating of the fruit of the knowledge of "Good and Evil"- of awareness of morality and ethics?
I believe that this sets up our second story; of the healing of the man with the withered hand. Jesus is at the synagogue; he asks the man with the withered hand to come forward and asks: "I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good—or evil? To preserve life—or destroy it?." Here, Jesus makes a crucial definition: To do good is to preserve life; to do evil is to destroy it.
For Jesus, People are not a means to an end, and their preservation- even their thriving- are a moral end unto themselves. To do otherwise is to accept dehumanization as normal and make it acceptable to strip certain people of their dignity, humanity, and eventually, their lives. This is no distant intellectual debate: this is happening today.
Thus, we have a moral duty and obligation to consider people as people; people are not evil, but we are prone to doing evil things. Even when we are targeted for dehumanization, we are called to not respond by dehumanizing others. Do not outsource your own moral sense and agency. Do not serve those who do evil to us by doing more evil. Dehumanizing others does not bring our own humanity back. Instead, we are called to sober thought and reflection, leading to love, solidarity, and action. That can change the world for the better.