TRANSLATION MATTHEW 12: 9

He left that place and came into their synagogue. And –see this!- a man with a wasted hand was there! And they questioned him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Day of Rest?” so that they could make an accusation against him. He said to them, “If a man amongst you has a sheep and it falls into a hole on the Day of Rest, won’t he grasp it and lift it out? How much more important is a person than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Day of Rest.” Then he said to the man, “Reach out your hand.” And he reached it out; and it was restored, as sound as the other. The Pharisees went out and made plans against him, how they could destroy him.

If we compare this with Matthew’s source, Mark 3:1, we can see again how Matthew smooths out the story. In Mark, Jesus asked the man to stand in the middle, and he asks, “Is it lawful to do good on the Day of Rest, to save life or to kill it?” a question that exposes the murderous desires of the Pharisees. Matthew tells the story as if it was a case for rabbis to discuss: if you would do this for an animal, how much more for a man? And he calmly states the conclusion, “So it is lawful…” Once more he shows Jesus including the Law in the joyful news.

In these stories of argument, Matthew shows how the miraculous compassion of Jesus is tested by an oppressive interpretation of the Law, and wins the test, not by rejecting the law, but by re-interpreting it as an aspect of God’s Rule.

This strategy of Jesus should be noted for use in contemporary arguments about the place of the Hebrew Bible laws in the practice of the church. Clearly you cannot simply quote passages from say, Leviticus, as if they were rules for today. On the other hand, simply dismissing the material as irrelevant to our times, is a denial of the origins of our faith. So when we deal with the notorious Levitical judgement on homosexual intercourse as an abomination, we have firstly to place this exclusive judgement in the context of the Joyful News of Jesus, which includes every person within the love of God. We may deduce that God is more concerned with the faithfulness of sexual relationships, than with whether they are heterosexual or otherwise. If so, churches must repent their abusive treatment of LGBTQI people, and learn to celebrate human love as it exists.

We may guess however that the people who produced Leviticus had never seen faithful same-sex relationships, and were appalled by what they saw as sexual behaviour for pleasure only, without love. If so, we might be able to give their judgement a new place within the Joyful News, questioning the current oppressive culture of sex for pleasure only and holding out to our contemporaries and especially to young people, the freedom of faithful love as the best context for sex.