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Luke 6:1-11
Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.
9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”
10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
In modern western culture, even among followers of Jesus, the Sabbath is observed pretty casually. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that people ignore the Sabbath entirely. Most people I know take it a little easier on Sunday. But it’s not observed as rigorously as it once was.
It’s common to hear church members – and especially church members who are beyond their child-rearing years – complaining about all the activity that takes place on Sundays. Youth sports are a source of special frustration, because games are played on Sunday mornings. But it’s important to think about what the Sabbath meant in the Hebrew culture around Jesus’ earthly ministry, and about how his followers can faithfully observe the spirit of the Sabbath in our time.
For the Hebrew people of Jesus’ time, keeping the Sabbath was taken very seriously. But the historians say it hadn’t always been that way. They say the Jews really started keeping the Sabbath seriously at the time of the Babylonian exile.
And it makes sense, when you think about the historical context. During the exile, the Jews were scattered and forced to live in towns and villages all over the Babylonian Empire. So keeping the Sabbath was one of the few ways they had to maintain their Jewish identity among their pagan neighbors. They ate kosher food, they circumcised their boy babies, and they kept the Sabbath. Those things marked them as Jewish. And according to the scholars, keeping the Sabbath became such an important mark of Hebrew identity that when the exiles were allowed to go home, those who went back took their strict observance of the Sabbath with them.
Five centuries later, when Jesus walked the earth, keeping the Sabbath had become a well-established custom. And by that time Hebrew teachers had established specific rules about keeping the Sabbath – rules about what Jews could and could not do on that day. There were rules for how many steps you could walk or what kind of a package you could carry. There were rules about what kinds of diseases and injuries you could treat. And those who violated the rules could be denounced and ostracized.
It seems that Jesus sometimes violated the strict rules about Sabbath observance. He healed people on the Sabbath, no matter what sickness or disability they suffered from. And in today’s reading, Jesus and his disciples pick kernels of grain, rub them between their hands, and eat them. That would have been considered a violation of the rules against harvesting and threshing grain on the Sabbath. And on another Sabbath, he heals a person of a disability. The religious people criticize Jesus for these things.
In our reading, Jesus gives three responses to this criticism:
First of all, he points that even King David, most revered figure in the history of the covenant people, violated the strict rules of religious practice when it was a matter of providing for the needs of his men. Jesus’ point seems to be that the needs of people justify setting aside the rules of strict religious practice.
Second, Jesus says that he is “Lord of the Sabbath,” as he is Lord of everything else. So whatever practices he might establish for keeping the Sabbath supersede the rules made up by rabbis and teachers centuries before. It seems from the gospel accounts that Jesus’ regular practice was to rest and worship on the Sabbath. But it also seems that he kept the Sabbath with a flexibility that made it a blessing to people, rather than a burden. In the second chapter of Mark, Jesus comments that “the Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.” Jesus kept the Sabbath in a way that promoted rest and refreshment as well as worship, but without imposing strict and burdensome rules.
In our passage for today, Jesus asks his critics, “Which is lawful to do on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” It’s obviously a rhetorical question; the answer is obvious. Those things that nourish and refresh us physically and spiritually, those things that strengthen our life in God and our relationships with others, those things that prepare us to return to our work with joy and energy the next day, those things would all seem to be things we can legitimately do as a part of our own practice of keeping the Sabbath.
So if you want a framework for how the Sabbath might be faithfully kept by followers of Jesus, asking what practices advance loving relationships with God and other people and promote the health and flourishing of ourselves and others is probably a good and reasonable approach.
Let’s pray. Lord, we pray that you would touch our hearts, and make us more and more devoted to keeping the Sabbath, both as a time to worship you, and also as a time to rest and be refreshed in mind and body and spirit, and in relationships with those we love. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 115 and 124; Jeremiah 30:1-9; and Colossians 1:1-14. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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