At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.”
· One of the most pronounced elements of the Gospels is that Jesus was opposed by devout, faithful, Bible readers - the Pharisees. Their challenge revealed itself in two distinct ways: Jesus eating with sinners and Jesus and, like this passage, his followers breaking the sabbath. Undergirding both, however, was a deeper set of questions which display Jesus’ overturning ministry of how to read the Bible. How should we read Scripture? What does it mean? How should it be applied? And there was probably no single instance of interpretation more important or controversial than the biblical discussion of the Sabbath. In the Hebrew Bible, the Sabbath command is solid, fierce, and mandatory and mentioned multiple times. Sabbath keeping was the most distinctive mark of Judaism, to the point where one of the few things the average pagan knew about their strange Jewish neighbors was that they had a lazy day once a week.
· You’ve got to love Matthew as a narrator. These guys were first rate artists so you must always pay attention to the nuances. He wants to clue us into an important problem with the Pharisees reading of Scripture. Look at vs. 2: “When the Pharisees saw “it”. It? What’s the “it”? The “it” refers to the offense. The Pharisees see the conduct of the disciples as a violation of the Scriptures clear command not to work on the Sabbath (Deut. 5:12-15; Exodus 20:8-11) – “plucking grain” was technically harvesting, a form of work clearly forbidden – connecting to one of thirty-nine classes of work prohibited in Exodus chs. 34 & 35.
· But, it could have said, “When the Pharisees saw them” or “the ones who were hungry” or “the ones who were in need”? It doesn’t because they’re way of reading Scripture didn’t see people. They could only see the offense. It’s as if Matthew is saying, “Be wary of “it” Bible readers who refuse to consider people’s needs and rather focus on laws. Be wary of being those who read the Bible and ignore the hungry.”
3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests.
· I’m struck by Jesus’ haunting question – “Have you not read” which he asks twice. The question is also a double whammy for it exposes two realities that challenge us and not simply the Pharisees: 1. First, do you know your Bible? Are you aware of this example? Can you guess the book of the Bible it comes from? To be able to love and converse like Jesus you must know your Bible well (in this passage alone he quotes from the three main sections of the Hebrew Scriptures (Torah, Ketuvim [writings], Nevi’im [prophets]. And he had no special knowledge – he was a human being just like you and me. He had to learn it. It’s why we do Immerse and why we study the Old Testament. And friends, I want you to purge one thought out of your head right now that the Old Testament is somehow graceless or devoid of mercy. Every merciful act of Jesus, every challenge of grace to the Pharisees, Jesus supports by quoting from the Old Testament. But Jesus question exposes an even deeper reality: 2. Second, just reading the Bible does not make you a good Bible reader. The Pharisees did know where these passages came from. However, because they failed to read the Bible with the hungry, to study the Bible with people in need, they would never have thought to go to these passages.
· Jesus first quotes a story from 1 Samuel 21:1-6, that does not concern the Sabbath at all, about David and his men eating bread from the temple that Levitical law (24:5-9) expressly forbids them to eat. The bread was specified by God as only being for the priests yet David and his men violated this direct commandment when they ate the bread of Presence, which was a thank offering placed in the temple. Of course, David had already violated the law by entering this part of the temple not to mention that David lied to Ahimelech that he was on a secret mission commissioned by Saul.
· Notice that the passages are not connected thematically with regard to Sabbath at all. The passage from 1 Samuel does not mention it. So why would Jesus choose this passage? He connected the passages because of the awareness of human need and frailty. We hear in both vs. 1 and vs. 3 that the disciples as well as David and his men “were hungry”. By placing human need front and center Jesus reorients not simply how we read but what we read. Focusing on need will lead you to Bible passages that you had not thought to use or apply.
5 Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless?
· The second argument from Numbers 28:9-10 is more directly relevant yet a more obscure reference. Here, Jesus points out that the priests technically perform “work” on the Sabbath which violates the law but are considered innocent. So Jesus is using the idea implicit within that text that temple service – the practice of forgiveness, doing the work of God, takes precedence over Sabbath observance. So, Jesus and his followers, like the priest, represent a special group who are not bound by the Sabbath because they too are about the work of God. Jesus reads this passage in light of a new day dawning in which everyone assumes a priestly role. We all have Sabbath work.
6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.” ~ Matthew 12:1-8
· Finally, Jesus quotes from the prophet Hosea ch. 6:1-6 (a favorite quote of his that he also uses to justify his associations with tax collectors and sinners, c.f. Matt. 9:13) where God declares that careful law observance and the sacrificial system must give way to the priority of God’s new work of public love and justice – that welcomes people, feeds them, liberates them, unbinds them, and heals them. Mercy has us looking at people; sacrifice at maintaining a reading that places people in cages.
Despite Jesus’ jabbing question, “Haven’t you read? . . .,” the Pharisees remain quite sophisticated Bible readers – they are careful, thoughtful, and, believe it. So why do they come to such different conclusions from Jesus? How does Jesus overturn the traditional reading of the Scriptures by the Pharisees?
1. Jesus read the Bible with the hungry.
Immediately after this confrontation over plucking the heads of grain, Jesus will encounter a man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees will watch him carefully to see what he will do — will Jesus break the Sabbath again!? Jesus responds with a question, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep!” I believe that Jesus’ argument clues us into the significant difference between how he reads the Scriptures versus how the Pharisees read them. See, the Pharisees’ theology works from the abstract: Is Sabbath work forbidden in Scripture? Yes. Is plucking grain work? Yes. Is healing work? Yes. Then we have our conclusion—plucking grain and healing on the Sabbath are forbidden. Jesus’ reading of the Bible, however, also involves the value of the person: Here is a hungry group or a hurting person in front of me. What do they need? How can I help? Ah, but it’s the Sabbath. Let me now take this person’s unique situation to the Scriptures—and when we do that, we can see even more clearly that the Scriptures themselves address real human faces (e.g. the story of David). They accommodate and address human need. Moreover, Jesus will argue that the Sabbath itself aims to serve people and NOT the other way around (in Mark and Luke Jesus will say this strongly, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath)!
2. Jesus read the Bible sabbathly.
This gets at the real purpose of Scripture. Sabbath had a two-fold tradition. In Genesis and Exodus it’s spoken of as a time of rest, a ceasing from work but that’s not its only meaning. The other tradition comes from the Ten Commandments themselves, in Deuteronomy (5:15): God says, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” In this tradition the Sabbath isn’t about rest so much as freedom. Jesus reads the Scriptures sabbathly always privileging texts that speak of liberation, particularly of human need. We need to be Juneteenth readers. Juneteenth is the combination of “June” and “nineteenth,” and it commemorates the true date that all slaves in the United States were finally freed. Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, it took two and a half years for Union soldiers to arrive in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the proclamation. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, that the state’s enslaved residents finally learned they were freed. We have a Juneteenth responsibility with our Bible reading to move out to the borders and boundaries of our world, to step into places of oppression and slavery, and proclaim the freedom of the gospel. If you’re Bible reading doesn’t leave people liberated. You aren’t reading it right.
3. The pharisees read carefully but destructively
In the next passage after these two Sabbath encounters describes Jesus reflects on the controversy with his disciples and, funny enough, quotes again from the OT, Isaiah 42:1-4, which details the work of God’s anointed. It says, “He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick . . .” The Pharisees, because they see no human face when they read the Scriptures, are quite willing to break reeds and snuff out wicks. Is it any wonder then why they missed the word of God with a human face in their midst? Though he heals a man yet does not read the Scriptures like they do, vs. 14 says they wanted to “destroy” him. That might be the biggest red flag of all for their type of Bible reading.
Which kind of Bible reader are you?
No comments:
Post a Comment