Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)

All four Gospels cover similar stories in which Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees regarding their rules about the Sabbath.  The accounts involve similar anecdotes, challenges, responses by Jesus, and eventually, similar responses by the Pharisees.  I will analyze them together to draw the most from them.

The account from John 5

The Book of John provides an encounter between the Pharisees and Jesus over the Sabbath that is separate and apart from those discussed in the other Gospels.

Jesus heads to Jerusalem for another feast.  He goes to a natural pool where blind and crippled people wait by the pool.  They believe that an angel of God stirs the water and if they get into the water, they will be healed.

Jesus heals a crippled person and tells the man to pick up his mat and walk.  It is the Sabbath day and Pharisees challenge him that he should not be carrying a mat on the Sabbath.  He tells them that the man who healed him told him to do so.  But Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. Later, the man encounters Jesus again and then he tells the Pharisees that Jesus had told him to pick up the mat and walk.

From the other accounts of Jesus, I do not think this was the only person who was healed at the pool.  Rather, it sounds like this was a place that Jesus wanted to go to heal many.  However, this man stands out because Jesus told him to carry is mat on the Sabbath day.

Likewise, there is no rule in the Law of Moses to refrain from carrying mats and walking while on the Sabbath.  To the Pharisees' credit, there was the incident of the man killed for collecting firewood in Numbers 15:32-36.  So, in some ways, this rule about not carrying objects around on the Sabbath is understandable.

The Pharisees challenge Jesus and Jesus launches into a long theological discussion about the Son of God.  This part is packed pretty dense, but a few things stand out:

• The dead will hear and have heard the voice of the Son of God
• The Father has entrusted all judgment of men to the Son
• Jesus refers to the Pharisees' belief in John the Baptist to help convince them
• Jesus will not accuse the Pharisees before the Father, but rather their accuser Moses.

Their certainly is a lot of heavy theology in response to being accused about breaking the Sabbath rules.  In the other Gospels, Jesus makes the statement that the Son of God is Lord of the Sabbath and that is part of the intended message here.  

The Pharisees hear this and their mood darkens.  They want to kill Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules, but also stating that he is equivalent to God.  So, it was not breaking the fasting tradition or cleansing the temple of money changers that drove the Pharisees to want to kill Jesus, but their Sabbath rules and stating that he was like God.

The accounts from Matthew 12:1-21; Mark 2:23-3:6; and Luke 6:1-11

Jesus' disciples are in a grain field on the Sabbath.  They pick grain and eat them.  The Pharisees see this and ask Jesus why his disciples are breaking the Sabbath rules.

Harvesting grain is not explicitly forbidden in the law of Moses.  However, it is a reasonable extraction of principles if one simply looked at the time the Israelites were in the desert.  The time in the desert was important because it is the first mention of a requirement of anyone doing a Sabbath.  So, it appears to be the beginning of the institution of the Sabbath as a human requirement and it was so important, it made it in the list of Ten Commandments.  

Harvesting grain seems to be contrary to two anecdotes of the Israelites.  First, there was the time the person was stoned for collecting firewood.  Another reasonable extraction of that is Sabbath-breaking is punishable by death.  Second, God had required that two days of manna would be collected on the sixth day so they would not need to collect manna on the seventh day.

Back to the story, Jesus responds by pointing out other areas of the Old Testament that make the issue more complicated.  First, David and his friends ate bread that was consecrated to God.  This seems to be a non-sequitur in Mark and Luke, but in Matthew, Jesus explains that God prefers mercy, not sacrifice.  Second, Jesus points out that the priests were in fact commanded to work on the Sabbath and they were innocent.

At this point, Jesus makes two bold statements.  First, the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath.  Second, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.  I will return to these statements after covering the final anecdote of the Sabbath in this group.

Later, Jesus is in the synagogue and a man with a paralytic hand is present.  The Pharisees want to see if Jesus will heal this man on the Sabbath.  In Matthew, they even ask him if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, but in Mark and Luke, this detail is omitted.  But Jesus knows what is in their hearts and knows that this is a pseudo-trap.

Again, there is no explicit rule in the law of Moses against healing on the Sabbath.  On one level, this question seems bizarre, because healing requires supernatural power that would either come from God or another source.  So, perhaps the question carried the implication that God was resting on the Sabbath and would not heal anyone.  Therefore, if Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, it showed that he did not come from God.  Likewise, they may have actually created a law specifically to target Jesus - no healing on the Sabbath.  Regardless, it is a strange question.

In Mark and Luke, he asks the people in the synagogue if it is acceptable to do evil or good on the Sabbath.  In Matthew, Jesus asks whether if a sheep fell into a pit on the Sabbath, would they lift it up?  He further asks - How more important to God are humans than sheep?  Jesus concludes it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

The people remain silent.  He asks the man to extend his hand and the hand is now healed.

This angers the Pharisees a lot.  They are angered so much that they begin to plot with the Herodians to conspire to kill Jesus.  The Herodians are people loyal to Herod and ultimately, the Roman government over Palestine.  Normally, the Pharisees probably hated the Herodians and viewed them as traitors.

Afterwards, Jesus continues healing the sick, but tries to maintain a lower profile.  He tells the people whom he heals not to say who he is.

Reading all of this together, what can we extract?

1.  God prefers mercy over sacrifice.  

In this context, the sacrifice being the sacrifice of refrain on the Sabbath.

2   It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.  

Stated examples include healing and taking a sheep out of a pit.  However, the statement to "do good" is actually very broad and encompasses far more than healing or taking care of emergencies.

3.  Harvesting grain for immediate consumption on the Sabbath is ok.
This is a literal extrapolation.  Stepping further back, preparation of food for immediate consumption is OK, even if it involves "harvesting".  However, in light of the context in which it appears, one wonders if any work on the Sabbath is OK.

4.   Sabbath was made for man, not vice versa

I suppose that means that at a minimum people should not be put to death for breaking the Sabbath.  In fact, i think it goes even further that people should not be punished at all for breaking the Sabbath.  The Apostle Paul will take this logic much further in Colossians 2:16-17 and state that the Sabbath observance is personal and flexible.

So, why was the man stoned for breaking the Sabbath by collecting firewood?  In the context of that particular story, think it also involves the fact that he consciously avoided taking place in the community worship that was happening at the same time.  He was off collecting firewood instead.  It also showed his selfishness because he was getting a head start on collecting firewood in detriment to the group.

On a more literal level, the statement by Jesus also means that the Pharisees had the exact opposite view of the Sabbath than Jesus.  It implies that the Pharisees believed that people were made to serve the Sabbath, so they created rules on what could and could not be done.

5.  Lord of the Sabbath

This statement is not entirely explained by Jesus.  On one level, Jesus is stating that he is God and is above their rules of the Pharisees on the Sabbath.  On another level, given the context that Jesus is going against the restrictions on the Sabbath, it could also imply that Jesus is releasing everyone on the rules of the Sabbath.

The Response of the Pharisees

All four accounts end with the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus.  From a Christian bias, this is unfair and wrong.  That said, Sabbath-breaking to them is punishable by death.  Likewise, being a false prophet was punishable by death.  Jesus is doing things that go against what they perceived was taught in the Law of Moses.

On the other, Jesus has legitimacy even within their beliefs.  First, John the Baptist, who they respected, said that Jesus was greater.  Second, Jesus has a lot of supernatural power and constantly amazes the crowds.  Third, they expected a Messiah has probably arrived.  Thirty years prior, the wise men spread the word around Jerusalem that the king of the Jews had been born.  Jesus might not fit their expectations for a Messiah, but that would mean they wanted a Messiah on their own terms and not on what the Messiah wanted to accomplish.  So, they in turn wanted to control what the Messiah did.  

Going back to the parable of the wine skins, I think it explains much of the reaction Jesus receives from the Pharisees.  Jesus was offering new wine, but the Pharisees could only receive it in old wine skins.  As a result, Jesus was breaking their beliefs and now they wanted to kill him.