Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

The man in today's Gospel has lived with a withered hand for who knows how long. Long enough, probably, that he'd stopped expecting it to change and simply built a life around the limitation. Then Jesus tells him to stretch it out, in front of a crowd that includes people hoping the whole scene fails.

There's something in that worth sitting with at this stage of life, when so much has already been carried a long time - a grief that's become familiar, a limitation you've made peace with, a way of living around something rather than through it. The healing in this story doesn't come with a private moment to prepare. Jesus asks the man to act, in public, before the outcome is certain.

Paul's words in the first reading are sharper than usual - a call to clear out what's been quietly tolerated, because a little yeast works through the whole batch eventually. It's not a comfortable word, but there's mercy underneath it: better to deal with something now, plainly, than to let it define everything around it for years to come.