I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?

 

 Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields.  And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands.  And some of the Pharisees said to them, "Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?"  But Jesus answering them said, "Have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:  how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat?"  And He said to them, "The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."

Now it happened on another Sabbath, also, that He entered the synagogue and taught.  And a man was there whose right hand was withered.  So the scribes and Pharisees watched Him closely, whether He would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against Him.  But He knew their thoughts, and said to the man who had the withered hand, "Arise and stand here."  And he arose and stood.  Then Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one thing:  Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?"  And when He had looked around at them all, He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand."  And he did so, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.  But they were filled with rage, and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

 

- Luke 6:1-11 

 

Yesterday we read that, after healing the paralytic, Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office.  And He said to him, "Follow Me."  So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.  Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house.  And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them.  And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, "Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."  Then they said to Him, "Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?"  And He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days."  Then He spoke a parable to them:  "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.  And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'" 

 Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields.  And His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands.  And some of the Pharisees said to them, "Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?"  But Jesus answering them said, "Have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:  how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat?"  And He said to them, "The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."  My study bible explains that the term the second Sabbath after the first is used when  Jewish feast immediately followed the normal Sabbath; a feast was also known as a Sabbath.   It notes that St. Ambrose calls the term "second Sabbath" an image of the new covenant and the eternal resurrection.  The first Sabbath would indicate the Law, but the second Sabbath indicates the gospel that follows it.  In keeping with the theme of "new wineskins" and "old" in yesterday's reading (above), we observe that under the new covenant, the food which was at one time not lawful for anyone but the priests to eat is now freely given to all by the Lord of the Sabbath.  David prefigured this when he gave the showbread . . . to those with him.

Now it happened on another Sabbath, also, that He entered the synagogue and taught.  And a man was there whose right hand was withered.  So the scribes and Pharisees watched Him closely, whether He would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against Him.  But He knew their thoughts, and said to the man who had the withered hand, "Arise and stand here."  And he arose and stood.  Then Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one thing:  Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?"  And when He had looked around at them all, He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand."  And he did so, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.  But they were filled with rage, and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.  My study bible comments that according to certain traditions that the scribes and Pharisees had built up around the Law, healing was considered to be work -- and therefore it was not permissible on the Sabbath.  Their belief was that they served God by zealously keeping these peripheral traditions, but this legalism made them insensitive to God's mercy.

Possibly one of the most striking things we read in today's Gospel readings is that, after Jesus heals the man's withered hand, the scribes and Pharisees were filled with rage, and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.  After He does something ostensibly good and healing -- restoring a man's withered hand to be equally healthy as the other -- these religious leaders are consumed with rage, and can only respond by plotting what they might do to Jesus.  What could cause such rage, except that these men feel they are the sole keepers of the tradition, so that even God's mercy is an affront to them?  They see it only as Jesus' direct defiance of their authority, and so once again in Luke's Gospel, the issues of power and authority come up -- and a contradiction between the worldly ways of seeing such and God's ways of using God's power and authority.  These men, the scribes and Pharisees, no doubt believe they are serving God.  Jesus will say to the disciples Himself at the Last Supper, regarding persecutions to come:  "They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service" (John 16:2).  We might puzzle in our minds and wonder how this can be so, but if we look around at our world we might still find that such persecutions of the Church exist.  Moreover, in the time of Christ even the man who would become the possibly the most influential apostle of all, whose Epistles we read to guide us in our faith, St. Paul, was one such man who felt he was offering God service by persecuting Christians.  When he was still a young man called Saul, it was he to whom fell the clothing of those who stoned the first martyr, St. Stephen (Acts 7; see verse 58).   Acts 8 and 9 tell us the story of Saul as zealous persecutor of the Christians, and also of his conversion.   In the way that the story in the Gospels unfolds, it seems inevitable that once Christ begins to assert His power and authority, there will be pushback and hostility.  There are those like the scribes and Pharisees who can only see Christ's defiance of the rules and traditions they guard so zealously, a phenomenon which the Church has called "legalism."  This is, unfortunately, the way of the world in which we live; and it is a pitfall which just as equally applies today as it did in Jesus' time, even if we do not have the same institutions and structures within which He lived His life and practiced His ministry.  Once again, in today's reading, we are asked to consider what it means to need new wineskins, and their ever-expanding nature.  We all have various orthodoxies to which we ascribe -- even secular orthodoxies in today's world now carry an impact which can be far deeper and more zealous by their adherents than religion -- forming a clear indication that humankind was made for worship.  All of it cements together the idea that it is up to us to maintain a strong prayer life, and activity within all the things that shore up the deepest place within ourselves: that mystical place where the soul meets Creator, where our faith lives and breathes and transforms and expands and changes us on the road of faith.  This is the one tool we have to see through bigotry, zealous persecutions, and legalism of all stripes and types, and all those heresies (religious and otherwise) which are to come.  This is the place we need, where we each experience God's mercy and love and know what it is -- so that we also will know what it isn't.  For we must always be prepared to know God's mercy at work in the world, and continue the work of faith amidst whatever new legalisms come our way that blind people to God's love.