This Sunday our sermon series on the Sabbath continues. This weekend we will reflect on one of the earliest healing stories in the ministry of Jesus, which occurs, according to Mark, on the Sabbath day. That Jesus healed on the Sabbath was a major source of conflict among the most devoted practitioners of Torah. In our passage this Sunday we see Jesus healing a man with a withered hand, doing so to the chagrin of the religious authorities in attendance at the local synagogue. There is, I think, something symbolic happening in this story. Perhaps we can think of this scene almost as a parable on the nature of the Christian life itself, a nature to which the Sabbath points us.