(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.
There were some “liberal, easy-going, lax” Christians in Luke’s time. They freely associated with sinners, neglected Sabbath regulations and mixed with holy and unholy people as well. This sounds very much like what I have often heard about certain people in our culture. Some other people did not like this.
It goes beyond the question of observing the Sabbath, although this group, whom Luke calls Pharisees, would rather have left it as that question. The Sabbath, after all, was made to give us rest and enjoyment of the holiness of God for at least one day a week.
The Sabbath, however, was also a sharing in God’s freedom. It celebrated the creation of the human race and the deliverance from Egypt, that place of slavery. This is how Jesus saw the Sabbath. He chose doing good on the Sabbath, not simply avoiding evil. He preferred to heal rather than allow suffering to continue even for a day.
We might ask whether it is more lawful to do something good in order to accomplish something bad or to do something bad in order to do something good. Our intention influences the goodness or the badness of everything we do. Doing good for bad reasons nullifies the good; doing bad for good purposes lessens the evil. In an ideal world, people would do the good only for good purposes and refuse to do the bad for any reason.
Those called the Pharisees here seem to have chosen to do nothing with the appearance of good reasons, but with the reality of wanting to accuse Jesus. Jesus, however, had chosen the good of giving a person freedom on the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is not an issue of today, but abortion is. As an issue, opposition to it could have disastrous consequences for women in our society, since poverty in families is often linked to single-parent families and since the effective use of the right to take active part in the political process and in the workplace is often neutralized. As an issue, supporting it does more than killing the baby humans in the womb; it also does harm on the mother and all other woman. It is complicated because it has become a political issue that some support for the wrong reasons and that others oppose for the wrong reasons. It is complicated because it has connections with other social issues such as racism and male and white supremacy. In an ideal world, we would have no abortions and women would be politically and socially equal with men.
What would Jesus do? In the light of this reading from the Gospel, Jesus would embrace the good for the sake of the good and strip the good of everything bad. What should we do? We should separate evil intentions from the good we do and reject evil actions from our good intentions. We should choose the good for the good benefit of all without any ulterior motives
We do have people of mixed political leanings in the Church, but our actions we have to strip of partisan motives. Christ’s way is not partisan but genuine; it is for the good of all.