Soften My Heart
Read Mark 3:1-12
Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. –Mark 3:4
There’s a national park in Arizona known as the “Petrified Forest.” Some 200 million years ago, a massive flood uprooted trees and washed them into a river system.
The debris carried in the rivers buried the logs so deeply and quickly that they were cut off from oxygen, which slowed their decay down to a process that would take centuries. At the same time as they decayed, minerals from the sediment absorbed into the wood and crystallized within the cellular structure, replacing the organic matter over time and perfectly preserving its form, even down to tree rings and delicate fern leaves. Some 60 million years ago, the shifting of the Earth’s plates slowly pushed the Colorado plateau upward, bringing this buried forest back to the surface of the Earth.
Petrified. Something that was once organic, made hard and unyielding. That’s the sense of the Greek word Mark uses to describe the Pharisees’ hearts.
While Jesus was in the synagogue on a Sabbath morning, a man with a withered hand approached him. The man’s condition was not life-threatening. If it had been, Jesus could have “lawfully” preserved his life. Instead, according to the Pharisee’s understanding of the law, Jesus should have waited until the next day and healed the man’s hand after the Sabbath.
This was a continuation of the same conflict from the chapter before. What would be allowed on any other day of the week was forbidden on the Sabbath. Yet the Pharisees’ application of the law did not increase goodness and blessing in the world—it stifled it. So Jesus brought the man in front of the synagogue and used him as an object lesson: Is it lawful to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath? Healing the man’s hand would be good; allowing him to persist in suffering would be evil. Yet the Pharisees were unwilling to answer.
Jesus pressed them further: Is it lawful to save a life or to kill? (Keep in mind that the Greek word for “heal” and “save” is one and the same.) Again, the Pharisees were silent. Jesus’ question indeed proved prophetic. After Jesus saved this man’s hand and restored his life, the Pharisees responded by joining together with the Herodians and plotting to have Jesus killed (Mark 3:6).
When the Pharisees refused to answer him, Jesus looked around in anger, grieved by their “stubborn hearts.” The Greek word here is pórósis, it’s the same word used to describe the “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart in the Septuagint. It literally refers to the calcification of bone or skin. According to Strong’s Greek Concordance, pórósis “denotes a moral and spiritual callousness—a state in which the inner person becomes insensitive and unresponsive to God’s self-disclosure.”
This is the irony of a hardened heart. Our hearts grow hard in response to pain. Often, the places where we are most calloused is where we most need the healing of God! While Jesus was more than able to heal the withered hand before him, the Pharisees’ hearts became even more hardened towards him.
Perhaps the antithesis to pórósis can be found in Jesus’ command to the man with the withered hand: Ekteinó. Stretch forth your hand. It’s the same word from which we get our word extend. The heart that is extended towards others does not grow calloused. The heart that is extended to God can know His healing. Only the heart that is withdrawn and buried becomes calcified. So how might God be calling you to extend your heart to him or others? In what places of “hardening” or “withering” might you need his healing?
Keep my heart from becoming petrified, O God. Show me the places where my heart has become hard towards my neighbor. Soften my heart with your compassion. Teach me to love others in the same way as Your Son. Amen.