Lord of the Sabbath

Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 4; Year B; Mark 2:23-3:6

The paired stories of the disciples plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath followed by Jesus’ healing of a man with a withered hand are in all three Synoptic Gospels, but this is the only time across the three years they are read. After some weeks in the heady world of John where time seems to stand still, it is quite something to find ourselves back in the urgent and sparse narrative of Mark, where explanation and discourse are in short supply and context must be claimed to discern the message.

Landing somewhat abruptly in chapter 2 as we now do, it thus matters to note briefly what has already happened. Jesus has just begun his Galilean ministry after John’s proclamation, followed by the baptism and temptation by Satan. The sense that a struggle between good and evil is taking place mounts with Jesus’ immediate encounters with demons (mentioned four times in chapter 1 after the contest with Satan) and in his mysterious triumphs over forces of disease and disability.

In the second chapter, a shift in the scope of this narrative of struggle occurs, as various groups of people and their place in the campaign come into focus. We encounter persons seeking healing, disciples of John, tax collectors, and of course Pharisees, who are introduced (and mentioned four times in this second chapter) as a presence both observing and criticizing the practice of Jesus.

The Pharisees function here like the chorus of a drama, on stage to one side, assessing and commenting on the action throughout while Jesus impacts the lives of others more directly. When Jesus calls Levi and eats with him, they make the famous objection about Jesus associating with “tax collectors and sinners.” Then comes a dispute about fasting, where Jesus’ followers do not follow the examples either of the Pharisees themselves or of John’s disciples. Now comes the story about the disciples plucking and eating grain straight from the field, and while we do not read these all together there is of course a connection between the three disputes about when, how, and with whom to eat, or not.

Each of these three controversies has Jesus responding with an incisive and revealing message to the objections made or implied: he is a physician to the sick (sinners), then a bridegroom with whom the guests (disciples) must celebrate—a festive image to which the boozy parable of wineskins is aptly added.

The problem of the sabbath and proper behavior has two parts, and after the first—the disciples in the fields— Jesus offers a historical observation, before another pithy punchline.

‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’

Illuminated Initial S with David Receiving the Shewbread; French late 15th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

The story about David needing food for his cadres when fleeing Saul is a bit different in 1 Sam 21. In Jesus’ telling, David is given a greater boldness (and hence greater authority) in actually entering the house or tent—the temporary shrine of the Ark at that point—and taking the bread of the presence (cf. Lev 24:5-9), when the earlier story had the priest bring it to him, and did not say quite where they were. The identity of the priest is also a problem. In 1 Sam it is a certain Ahimelech who gives David the loaves. This priest is then shortly afterward murdered by Saul, with almost his whole clan, for supporting David with this act of transgressive kindness. Abiathar is one of Ahimelech’s sons, who escapes and joins the Davidic uprising against Saul. This story of bending sacred tradition and the following atrocity is thus a turning point in the story of Saul and David.

Both Matthew and Luke removed the Abiathar reference when re-using this story, presumably to correct an apparent error, which is also how modern commentators tend to view it. We might entertain the possibility instead that Mark’s Jesus is more creative, or even subversive, than erroneous. Abiathar did become High Priest soon after, when David came to power, and Mark’s temporal reference can be rendered “in the days of” Abiathar the high priest, which is broader. The point in any case is the connection being made to the uprising against Saul, and David’s appearance as a new political force that threatens the existing establishment. Mark’s presentation of the story hints not merely at a precedent for arguing about legal niceties, but a reference to a power struggle wherein the God of Israel’s support might not really be with revered tradition because liberation may be more important than compliance. So the conclusion “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath” is a claim about the authority of Jesus that suggests a new power is rising to contest with the regime.

This association with another divinely-mandated struggle helps us also with the immediate problem of what Jesus and the disciples are doing and thinking about the Sabbath more generally. Here as often, Christian readers have to acknowledge a legacy of anti-semitism, that appears in the assumption that Jesus is simply indifferent to the Sabbath, and at this point declares it void. This is not the case.

The second story also needs to be considered here. Both the disciples’ gleaning and the healing of the man’s hand in the Synagogue are matters of importance for human life. Just because we westerners inhabit a world where food insecurity is for other people and food waste is our norm, we should not read the disciples’ actions in the field as indifferent snacking, any more than we are likely to treat the healing story as trivial. In both cases, Jesus demonstrates an authority—once verbally, then materially—that invokes the true power of the God honored in the Sabbath. At no point does he dismiss the Sabbath, but rather suggests that the Sabbath is fulfilled or honored by the actions he undertakes (in the second case), or that God’s work might even involve exceptions (in the first).

He is of course in conflict with the Pharisees on these two counts, but the Pharisees were a quite specific set of interpreters, whose views were far from universal in Judaism. Other Jewish interpreters recorded not long after this also outlined the principle that human life was more important than Sabbath-keeping, and sage who lived in the second century is recorded as saying something very similar to the first part of Jesus’ conclusion: “Sabbath is given to you and you are not given (i.e., "surrendered") to the Sabbath.”¹

It is the work of later interpreters and readers that conflates the version of Pharisaism depicted here and all Judaism. What we have in these episodes is actually two very Jewish viewpoints in conflict.² Jesus’ Judaism is not being set aside by these actions, but asserted. So however is his mysterious yet inescapable authority, and this—his claim to be “Lord of the Sabbath”— rather than his attitude to Sabbath-keeping is what is original here.³

Notably this very last episode with the Pharisees, the Synagogue healing, has no take-away insight from Jesus at the end, unlike all the others discussed. We simply hear that “the Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.” This is the take-away now. The mention of the supporters of a(nother) king again reminds us of the conflict between David and Saul. Mark presents these stories, not only (and not so much) as about the law and its interpretation, but about Jesus, his still-emerging yet mysterious power, and his insurgency against the illegitimate authorities of the present world.

1. Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shabbata 1

2. See further on this Lutz Doering, “Sabbath Laws in the New Testament Gospels.” In The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, edited by Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martínez, Didier Pollefeyt, and Peter Tomson, Vol. 136. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

3. Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. New York: New Press, 2012.