Mark 2:23-28 (ESV)
Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying 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 was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
One of the areas of life that is so frustrating is where we have people concerned about procedures and/or their traditions vs helping and caring for others. In the above passage we have one of those examples. The religious leaders of the day did not like that Jesus’ disciples were gathering grain on the Sabbath. To cut them some slack, they were following the Law of the Lord. Remember, keeping the Sabbath day holy was one of the Ten Commandments:
Exodus 20:8-11 (ESV)
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
The challenge here, as Jesus points out, is one of necessity. We don’t know why the disciples had not gathered grain on that Friday and thereby could avoid gathering it on Saturday. Jesus uses it has a point, however, to make sure they understand that some things were lawful on the Sabbath or, for that matter, doing right for people vs following the prescribed steps. His illustration about David tells us that, yes, God has order and procedure and laws and rules. The greatest of these is wrapped up in these great laws:
Mark 12:30-31 (ESV)
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The Pharisees were so caught up in the following the Law they failed to practice the Law. We can get so caught up into our structure of belief that we fail to do what God wants to accomplish from that structure: Caring for mankind and brining others into the knowledge of Him. The Church can often work so hard to get their theology right that they fail to reach out and welcome the sinners into that theology.
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