Saturday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 9, 2023

Luke 6, 1-5

While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a Sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

At the Wedding of Cana, the Lord Jesus performed a miracle that was known only by the wedding servants, the Apostles, and the Lord’s Mother.  St. John tells us that this was the first of his “signs”.  He later performed miracles at various places in Galilee as he preached the Gospel.  But it was at Nazareth that he announced that he was the long-awaited Messiah, though not using that politically loaded term.  Then at Capernaum a demon Jesus exorcised cried out that he was “the Holy One of God”, while other demons called him “the Son of God”.  The miracles the Lord was performing acted as signs pointing to his identity as something much greater than a mere man or even a prophet.  The local Pharisees had heard about him and perhaps had sent to Nazareth to find out his background and what he had said and done there.  In today’s Gospel Reading we see them walking with the Lord and his Apostles.  We should see how curious this is.  Jesus is leading his Apostles to a particular destination and the Pharisees are simply tagging along with no other purpose than to watch the Lord with a critical eye.

“His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.”  Due to the Lord’s ceaseless activity and his zeal to preach, he and the Apostles often slept out of doors, eating sparely.  For instance, on the occasions when Jesus fed the large crowds, the twelve Apostles between them were found to have just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish — hardly enough for a filling meal for thirteen grown men.  The Apostles took advantage of a Jewish Law that allowed them to take and eat grain heads they could reach as they walked along a path.  Then they rubbed these in their hands, as though to bake them, and then they ate them.  The Pharisees were aghast.  “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”  They objected to the action of the rubbing of the grain heads.   The only thing in the Law that might be found behind their claim is from Exodus 16, 22, in which God tells the Israelites to gather enough manna on Fridays to last them into the Sabbath so that they would not break the law regarding resting on the Sabbath by preparing food.  For the Pharisees, rubbing the grain heads meant the preparation of food, and in the days of Moses, people were put to death for anything approaching the breach of the Sabbath (cf. Numbers 15, 32-36).

“Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry?”  The Lord refers to an incident recounted in 1 Samuel 21, 1-6.  It may not be apparent at first sight what this passage has to do with what the Apostles are doing, though both involve the actual or apparent breaching of the Law.  But David, in this passage, is fleeing from King Saul, who is trying to kill him though he is innocent of any crime or treachery.  And after David and his men had eaten, David lead them into the land of the Philistines, who recognized him as the king of Israel (v. 11).  Here, the Lord was indeed fleeing — not from an earthly enemy but to the Passion and Death he longed for in order to redeem the human race.  And as he went along he would be recognized for who he was: the Son of God, the King of Israel.  

In the moment, Jesus explains to the Pharisees that in case of dire necessity, exceptions should be made in the practice of the Law: if a person is famished, let him eat even if it means some minimal preparation of food on the Sabbath. By doing this, Jesus shows his compassion to the Apostles and thus equates himself to Ahimelech, the high priest who allowed David and his men to eat the consecrated bread.  The Pharisees may have noted that and the strong claim he was now making for himself.  His next claim stunned them.

“The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”  Even if they had not heard that he had announced himself in Nazareth as the Messiah, the words of John the Baptist, the unprecedented gushing forth of miracles and even the cries of the demons identified this man as one who was beyond men.  His seeing himself in terms of the high priest would have further alarmed them.  But now he takes for himself the title of the Son of Man by which the Messiah was known by the Prophets and even in their own teachings.  And he assumed for himself the divine prerogative of Lawgiver in declaring that he, the Son of Man, was “Lord of the Sabbath”.  

The Evangelists do not tell us how the Pharisees responded.  Most likely they could not speak and stayed put for a while after the Lord and his Apostles resumed their passage through the wheat.  Perhaps they did not follow.  They had much to consider.