Picking Grain on the Sabbath

Today's Reflections

 

                               

 

     

Picking Grain on the Sabbath 

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Mt 12:1-8

[On one occasion] ¹Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. ²When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath.” ³He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry, ⁴how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat? ⁵Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath and are innocent? ⁶I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. ⁷If you knew what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned these innocent men. ⁸For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”

Reflection:

The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath. Here Jesus says something astounding, amounting to a claim to divinity. Who can be Lord of the Sabbath if not he who established the Sabbath—God himself? As Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus has the right and authority to interpret what keeping it means. Thus, when he defends his disciples who pick and eat the heads of grain, he is certainly correct.

The point of Jesus is: the prohibition of work on the Sabbath is not absolute. It yields to the needs of human beings, for he says, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mk 2:27). Thus, even today, it is taken for granted that when people have to work on Sundays, as in hospitals and in utility or service companies, for the sake of their fellow men and women, that work is allowed by God.

Like God and Jesus,

we should be makatao (humane).