WEDNESDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT

The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath

One Sabbath [Jesus] was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
Mark 2: 23-28

This story seems on first blush to have little pertinence to our lives. In our present time and culture when Sabbath adherence is honored more in the breach than in the observance, some wish that our own time were more like Jesus’ (or more like an earlier era when the blue laws existed). Some assume that there is just a quaint strangeness to the ancient Jewish world.

The book of Exodus stipulates that Sabbath observance is a sign of a perpetual covenant; in Deuteronomy there is a provision for picking grain from someone else’s field. Was picking grain work? Could it appropriately take place on the Sabbath? By Jesus’ time, the rabbis had conducted tortuous pros and cons on these questions, and it seems that some of the Pharisees might have been following Jesus just spoiling for a good argument.

They certainly conceded Jesus’ reference to the familiar story of David and his men eating grain on the Sabbath with the blessing of the priest. However, his final words were undoubtedly unbearable to them not only because they implied that his stature was equal to or greater than David, but also because they were tantamount to blasphemy. It is still something of a scandal when we proclaim that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath and of all that exists!

Who is this Son of Man? What does he reveal about the One who commanded the Sabbath?

Son of Man, Lord of the Sabbath, who are you? What do you wish me to see? … Amen.