Lord of the Sabbath

Doing what is not lawful

Rules were put in place to keep the Sabbath Holy and separated from normal everyday life. Any other day and it would have been completely lawful to pluck the heads of grain and eat, you just were not allowed to take a sickle to the grain as to harvest it. On this day in the scripture the disciples were walking through the unharvested fields and were hungry. Perhaps you could say it was just by habit that the disciples began to pluck the heads of grain and eat.

The Pharisees are watching to see if Jesus and his disciples are going to follow the sabbath law and they catch them red-handed you might say. So they ask the Lord why they are plucking the grain on the sabbath.

Jesus then asks them (Pharisees) a question. You might wonder why Jesus is always asking questions-well he was a much better teacher than I and if you remember he was called Rabbi, or teacher. Jesus turns this onto those who are accusing them as an opportunity to teach, even those who were earthly teachers themselves.

So what is Jesus teaching the Pharisees? So during this time in our history there were literally thousands of petty rules and regulations concerning the sabbath. It was unlawful to work on the sabbath and work was classified under thirty-nine different sections. Four of these sections were directly connected to what the Disciples were doing on this occasion: reaping, winnowing, threshing, and preparing a meal. All four of these rules were being broken by the Disciples on this occasion. Today we can look at these rules and possibly think of them as ridiculous. But during this time it was considered a deadly sin.

Now the Pharisees that witnessed this immediately accused the group of this deadly sin expecting Jesus-the teacher-to stop the disciples from committing such an act and repent, but Jesus has a different answer as He turns this accusation into a teaching opportunity for those who accused.

Once while David and his men were on the run he stoped he stopped in a place called Nod and asked the priest for some food as he and his men were very hungry. Now the priest answered David and said the only bread they had was Holy bread. Now there were rules against common men eating Holy bread and in our Methodist tradition this tradition is followed by some still to this day. Now in the passage we are discussing today, Jesus asks the Pharisees if they remembered this story, and of course they did because they knew their Bibles very well.

(NRSV)

27 Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

What does this mean to you? What you should understand is that God established the sabbath for us, so that we could rest from our busy lives. God knew that as humans we would get caught up in life and never rest from our labors. What Jesus is really saying is that he did not create the law to be so rigged that we die rather than break this law. Eat and rejoice because the Lord provides.

A Man with a Withered Hand

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

This is another opportunity for the Pharisees to accuse Jesus of breaking a sabbath law. (NRSV)

3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” (NRSV)

4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.

Now it was also a law that healing could not even be done on the sabbath. So once again the Pharisees are trying to accuse him of breaking the law and he obliges them by healing the man. Jesus, in knowing what they were up to, begins this by bringing the law to their attention even before he performs the act of healing. Basically what Jesus is teaching is a better way. “My Father has created the sabbath for your great pleasure” Jesus wants us to know that we should enjoy the sabbath and protect it always but we should not withhold mercy when mercy is a better choice; when the hungry can be fed, or the broken can be healed.

Now as hardcore Christians needing to follow the absolute truths of God we can also fall into the trap of legalism. The Law was created so that the sacred space in the sabbath would be protected from those who would be unwilling to observe the sabbath and keep it holy, but Jesus reminds us that humankind was created long before the law. Therefore the law and the sabbath was created to help us not the other way around. We should remember this when the opportunity to do good to others.