Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Our translator here writes, “They were observing him carefully.” But the word used here really means that they were observing him with suspicion. They watched closely to see whether he would make a mistake or do something wrong.

It is important that we hear it that way because, fundamentally, this Gospel contrasts two different gazes. There is the gaze of the crowd, which is one of suspicion. And then there is the gaze of Christ, which seems to be the gaze of a father looking at his son. That is, in a sense, how he speaks of this man with dropsy: who of you would not rescue your child if he fell into a pit, even on the Sabbath? Christ looks at him like a son. And these ways of gazing affect the outcome.

Those who view things with suspicion close their hearts to the lesson Christ is going to teach. And it is bizarre for them to look at him with suspicion because he does everything out in the open. If he is going to violate the law, he does not do it in secret. He openly tells everyone what he is going to do. He challenges them and calls them to reconsider things. Still, they look for some small thing they can use to accuse him, and so they miss entirely the lesson he wishes to teach.

But Christ, gazing like a father upon a son, shows love to this man who is suffering. He shows him compassion and helps him truly live out the rest of the Sabbath.

All of us have to choose how we view the people we meet in this world. We can view them with suspicion, or we can gaze on them as Christ does.

And truthfully, if we choose the gaze of suspicion, we will find what we are looking for, because the people we look at are not perfect. Look at someone with suspicion long enough, and you will find a reason to accuse them of something. They will fail. The same would be true if they looked at us. If somebody looks long enough, they will see our failures and find a reason to reject us.

But in that very way of looking at someone, we also miss everything that is good. You cannot look at someone with suspicion and also look at them with love. If you are looking for their mistakes, their faults, and all their problems, you will find those things. But you will see nothing good in them either.

Christ is calling us to look on them as a father looks at his son, looking for what is good. That does not erase the faults. It does not fix all the problems. But it helps us approach them in a different way.

Because Christ looked at this man like a son, he was able to bring him healing. Had he chosen to be suspicious as well, he would simply have listed his sins, his faults, and his problems, and the man would still be suffering. It is the very act of choosing to look with love that makes room for healing.

And I think the same is true in our own relationships. If we look with love, trying to find the good, we will find a way to magnify that good and bring even more out of it. We will find the path to healing, the path to reconciliation. But if we gaze only with suspicion, we will find nothing but problems, and we will magnify those.

So we must choose how we look at the world: with the gaze of suspicion manifested by the crowds and the Pharisees, or with the gaze of Christ, who seeks love and healing and helps bring about the kingdom of God.