Mark 2:23-28

One of the major themes of the gospel of Mark is that people, especially the common people, are more important than laws, especially laws that restrict and confine them. One of this gospel’s favorite targets was the Sabbath day.

Over the several hundred years since Moses, rabbis and priests had struggled to define the 613 laws in the Law of Moses. They inherited their positions as lawmakers and interpreters of the law. They wrote interpretations of interpretations of interpretations of the law, expanding those laws into several volumes and demanding that all those interpretations were laws to be honored, to be obeyed, that those were equal to the law of Moses. And the Sabbath day was critical to their understanding of interpreting God’s law.

With that in mind, let’s go back to the first century and listen to Levi, the tax collector called by Jesus to be a disciple in the gospel of Mark.

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You know how hindsight is so much better than foresight? It also helps to have some 20 years to think about something. And I’ve thought about it a lot in those years.

A little thing it was. See, following Jesus was a lot of walking. We must have crisscrossed that whole area—not just Galilee, but Samaria, Judea, and Gentile territory as well. Sometimes we walked on roads, but sometimes all we had was paths. Other times the only way to get from one place to another was to walk through the fields.

Now we didn’t have row planters like you do. And our wheat fields weren’t as tight as yours. So, yes, we knocked down some grain stalks, walking through someone’s field, especially because we were often more than a dozen, but we tried to be careful.

And that day, we were hungry. A couple little breads at daybreak divided among the bunch of us … and this was well past noon. So as we walked, we plucked some heads of the wheat, rolled them around in our hands to get rid of the husks, and popped them into our mouths. Not exactly a candy bar like you have, but something. And to be honest, we didn’t think anything about it. Who knew what day of the week it was?

Well, wouldn’t you know, somebody was keeping track of what day of the week. Now I’m not saying we wouldn’t have done that if we had known. But we didn’t carry calendars with us, and traveling like we did, one day pretty much melted into another.

But one of the people in the crowd ahead of us, a Pharisee, I think, approached Jesus and said, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

See, most of those guys were real sticklers about following the laws, and the Sabbath day was really important to them. If we’d been farther out of town, we’d have been fine because they were about at the limit of their Sabbath steps.

Now they already knew that Jesus didn’t have the same idea about honoring the Sabbath as they did. Not long ago, he cast a demon out of a man in the synagogue, and that was on the Sabbath. But Jesus responded to them with a piece of our history, a piece about one of Israel’s greatest men, maybe even the greatest Israelite.

Jesus looked around, saw me with a handful of wheat heads, and grinned. Then he turned back to the complainer and said, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.”

See, back then Saul was king. David had already killed Goliath, and he had become a seasoned soldier in Saul’s army. He had even become an officer. But Saul was jealous of David’s popularity with the people, so he decided to eliminate this potential rival. David found out about Saul’s intentions, and he literally headed for the hills without taking time to pack up any supplies.

At that point in time, there were several holy places, each with a priest, where the people offered sacrifices to Jehovah. When David came to Nob, he went in and asked the priest for bread.

On the altar were several breads, an offering to Jehovah—holy bread, only for Jehovah or the priests.

David grabbed the breads, stuffed them in his bag, and off he went. He broke the law, but his descendants, the people of our time, wouldn’t condemn him because he was our hero, the great, the one and only King David, well, at least, later he was King David.

This was the story that Jesus meant, this was the story that the Pharisees remembered. I heard one of them mutter, “So you think you’re as great as King David?”

Jesus hesitated before he replied. “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

 Later we would recognize that this was one of many times that Jesus would antagonize the religious leaders, the people who made the decisions, the rich and powerful.

Another reference to our history, in this case, to creation. The first people were created before the Sabbath. And the Sabbath was created as a day of rest. God rested on the seventh day, and so should people. As simple as that. But the lawmakers came along, and pretty soon there were so many laws about what you could do and what you could not do on the Sabbath, so many laws that defined “rest,” that nobody rested. Everyone was looking over their shoulder to see if the religious leaders were watching.

But it wasn’t just the Sabbath that Jesus was concerned about. You see, the religious leaders spent most of their time checking on the common people, those who spent most of our waking hours working so that the uncommon people, the rich and powerful, didn’t have to. We fished so they could eat. We planted and weeded and harvested so we could bake bread for the wealthy. We built furniture so they could sit. Our women wove wool blankets so they would be warm. And they made laws and called us “sinners” if we failed to keep them.

Jesus didn’t hang out with them; he hung out with us. He didn’t call them to be his disciples; he called fishermen like Peter and Andrew and James and John. He called tax collectors like me. He didn’t call the wealthy, the law makers; he called the poor, the law breakers. He called common folk, ordinary people. He didn’t call the upper class so they could strut around town, showing off their piety; he called us, so we could take care of each other, so we could teach each other.

Now it would be simple to say that Jesus gave us only two laws, to love God and to love our neighbor. Even Jesus gave us explanations how to do those two. He told stories, stories about regular people, stories about things we knew, stories about our daily lives, stories that put loving God and loving our neighbor into concrete terms we could understand.

But more importantly, he lived what he taught. He cast out demons; he healed the sick, whatever their status, male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, old or young. The blind saw; the lame walked; the paralyzed picked up their mats. He ate with tax collectors and sinners; he fed the multitudes; he calmed the storm. In short, he showed us how to love our neighbor. More importantly, he showed us that our neighbor was not necessarily the person who lived next to us, but any person in need.

And in the end, he died for what he taught. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

For consideration:

General Questions

1) How does this story follow its Scripture?

2) How does this story expand its Scripture for you?

3) What is the message of this story?

4) How does the message apply to us today?

Specific Questions:

5) What has happened to “honoring the sabbath” in the present time?

6) Given the sacredness of the holy bread on the altar, was David justified in taking it to feed himself and his companions?

7) Why were there so many restrictions on what people could do on the sabbath?

8) We go to restaurants, watch football, and mow the lawn on Sunday. Have we gone too far in allowing anything to happen on the sabbath?