Saturday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 7, 2024

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.”

“His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.”  The Pharisees objected to the behavior of the Apostles here based on their reading of the Law regarding work on the Sabbath.  The Law itself as written is general in forbidding work of any kind, and customs arose more precisely defining what was “work” and forbidden and what was allowed.  This comes from training one’s focus on the Law instead of the Law-Giver and his intent: it is the worship of the Law itself and not honoring the Law as a gift from the Creator of all things.

“While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a Sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain.”  Travelers customarily cut through grain fields in ancient Galilee, over time creating more or less permanent paths, and farmers expected people to help themselves to the heads of grain as they went along, though leaving the path to gather them was not allowed.  The Pharisees walking with Jesus and his disciples, in today’s Gospel reading, would not have spoken up if the plucking of the grain heads had happened on a day other than the Sabbath.  The fact that they object here comes from their interpretation of the Torah’s laws concerning the Sabbath.  One of the sticking points between the Pharisees and the other Jewish sects, such as the Sadducees, arose because the former insisted on making adaptations of the ancient law to modern times.  They permitted themselves to make a number of adaptations to the law governing the Sabbath which went into considerable detail, and so they could say that plucking the heads of grain constituted an act contrary to that law.  The Lord Jesus goes beyond merely defending his disciples and shows the Pharisees that their adaptation went too far, and had no basis in the Scriptures that they venerated: “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?” The passage in question is found at 1 Samuel 21, 3-6.  

In the Old Testament story, the priest is concerned only about whether David and his men are ritually clean.  The bread in question had been placed “before the face of the Lord”, that is, before the ark of the covenant, as a sacrifice, but by the time David asked the priest for them they had been replaced by fresh loaves.  According to the law, the priest and his assistants, were permitted to eat them, but no one else.  Jesus uses this account from the Scriptures to show the Pharisees that even if they were correct in their interpretation of the law, the need for nourishment in this case outweighed the exact following of the law.  And Jesus does something more: he claims: “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”  By making this claim of lordship over the Sabbath, Jesus does not merely insist that he possesses the authority to interpret the law, putting himself on the same basis as the Pharisees, but that he himself made the law.  He claims to be divine.  St. Luke does not describe the reaction of the Pharisees.  They probably could not believe that they heard him right.  But afterwards, their belief that Jesus broke the Sabbath formed part of their argument against him.

An important feature of this account is often missed because translators try to smooth it over or because they simply do not understand it.  The translation here for instance has it that this event occurred on “a Sabbath”, but Luke says very specifically, in the Greek, that this happened on “the second first Sabbath”.  Now, few non Jews would understand what this means and assume it is a misprint.  However, the term “second first Sabbath” indicates the first Sabbath after the Sabbath of Passover, which is called the “first Sabbath”.  This tells us that Jesus and his disciples were walking through this field during the Spring when the grain would be nearly ripe.  We can also interpret this spiritually, that the Lord died on the day before the Sabbath in Passover (the first Friday) and rested from the work of his Passion on the Sabbath itself.  By his Passion he delivered all men from sin, and instituted the new law, loosing the bonds of the old.  Therefore, his disciples were free from its restrictions when the next Sabbath (the second first Sabbath) arrived.  This means for us that the Death of Jesus opens the way for us to enjoy the ground wheat of his Body in Holy Communion, and prepares us for the eternal Sabbath in heaven.