Day 45: Jesus Values People Over Protocol

Moving on from there, he entered their synagogue. There he saw a man who had a shriveled hand, and in order to accuse him they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He replied to them, “Who among you, if he had a sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, wouldn’t take hold of it and lift it out? A person is worth far more than a sheep; so it is lawful to do what is good on the Sabbath.”

Then he told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored, as good as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, how they might kill him. MATTHEW 12:9–14

DURING DECEMBER 2022 MILLIONS of people in America experienced some of the coldest few days on record, but the hearty citizens of Buffalo, New York, were hit especially hard. They endured what their governor (a Buffalo native) described as the longest sustained blizzard to ever hit the city. Conditions there were so harsh that emergency workers were unable to get to many people who’d lost power in their homes or motorists who were stranded on roads, resulting in dozens of tragic deaths. But there were some bright moments during that frigid season in upstate New York, too, including a heartwarming story about a “criminal” who became a hero.

To Whomever It May Concern:

I’m terribly sorry for breaking the school window and for breaking in the kitchen. Got stuck at 8 p.m. on Friday and slept in my truck with two strangers. Just trying not to die. There were 7 elderly people also stuck and out of fuel. I had to do it to save everyone and get them shelter and food and a bathroom. Merry Christmas.

Jay

This note with no last name that was left in a school outside Buffalo on Christmas Day 2022 prompted an enthusiastic search by the Cheektowaga Police Department to find “Jay.” And because of video surveillance footage from the school he broke into, it didn’t take long! His name is Jay Withey Jr. He’s a twenty-seven-year-old appliance mechanic and is credited with saving the lives of at least twenty people during that ferocious winter storm. After taking a stranded child and an elderly woman into his truck overnight on December 23, he got up the next morning and made his way to Pine Hill Primary Center school, where he broke a classroom window, climbed inside, opened a door, and then went back outside into the blinding snow, howling wind, and subzero temperatures for his two passengers and trudged through hip-deep drifts from car to car to help usher other stranded motorists to safety inside the heated school, where they spent the next twenty-four hours waiting out the storm together.

Jay and his new friends ate small servings of frozen pizza, cereal, and fruit from the school cafeteria and took some medicine from the nurse’s office, but were scrupulous about only using what they needed to survive. After the worst of the weather broke on Christmas Day, they cleaned up after themselves, washed the dishes and pans they’d used (school officials said it was hard to tell anyone had even been there, save for the broken window they had carefully boarded up before leaving), helped dig each other’s cars out, and traveled on to their respective destinations.

The Cheektowaga Central School District and the police have chosen not to press charges. And I’d bet my bottom dollar there was no angel holding a clipboard in Glory chalking up Jay’s behavior as sin either!

Because throughout the Gospels Jesus consistently put people over protocol and relationships over regulations. Which is evidenced by the healing encounter Jesus had smack-dab in the middle of a synagogue on the Sabbath. The very place the Pharisees (from the original Greek word pharisaios, which means, “separate ones”39) practiced Sabbath and interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures into a codified list of rigid behavioral guidelines. Which means that nasty habit of taking God’s Word out of context and twisting it into a club with which to beat people up has been around long before we were!

Anyway, those persnickety Pharisees single out this poor man with the hurt hand and ask: What do you think about healing this guy right here, right now, Yeshua? And their query exposes their desire to trap Jesus in a theological paradox because there’s a well-established principle in Jewish tradition that physical healing—which was regarded as “work”—was forbidden on the Sabbath except in life-threatening situations.40 Therefore, since this man wasn’t in danger of dying, the Pharisees callously picked him out as bait.

In my somewhat sanctified imagination, Jesus regards those zealous legalists with a slow, sad smile. Then He patiently explains that since there are exceptions in Torah for pulling a stranded animal out of a ditch on the Sabbath, surely, it’s all right with our Father in heaven when we extend compassion to someone who’s in obvious distress in church. And as those ancient deacons stand there all sweaty and flummoxed, unsure of how to retort, He heals the disfigured man.

Jesus was preoccupied with caring for people, not checking off boxes on some kind of “religious procedures” form—ones that weren’t even true to the Scriptures, but were rather man-made traditions! And while I’m not advocating that we add breaking and entering to our small group agendas unless absolutely necessary, I do think we must be willing to hurl our inner rule books if they get in the way of helping the wounded world around us!

• WHAT FRIEND, FAMILY member, or spiritual leader comes to mind when you think about someone who puts people over protocol? What about them reveals that?
• READ JOHN 5:39. What’s the gist of Jesus’s accusation here? What kind of behavior exemplifies knowing the Bible but totally missing the point about loving God and people?
• READ 1 JOHN 4:20. How would you paraphrase this to someone who’s interested in/investigating the claims of Christianity?