Monday December 11, 2017
The Pharisees and teachers of the Law were “sitting there,” the account says; and the paralyzed man was lying on his mat. They were as paralyzed as he: they in their “seat of learning,” he in his bed of pain. Jesus said to him, “Get up!” and he got up and walked. But by the end of the story the Pharisees and teachers of the Law are still seated. Their religion wasn’t such as to enable, or even to allow, anyone to get up and move. The effect of religious teaching, all too often, is to keep people seated—not only that, but seated in judgment. The effect of real religion is to give us “the mind of Christ” (1Cor 2:16): his life’s work, he said, was “to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…” (Lk 4:18).
A Christian who went to study zen in Japan met a zen master who asked her what was moving in her spiritual life. “I dwell a lot recently on the idea of the Kingdom of God,” she replied. Instantly he said, “Show me the Kingdom of God!” You get nowhere by telling a zen master about your ideas (see January 8). That woman became a zen master herself eventually, and she spends much of her time and energy in prison ministry—setting captives inwardly free. That work shows the Kingdom of God.
