Jesus happened to be passing through the wheat fields on the Sabbath, and his disciples bean to pick the heads of wheat as they made their way through. And the Pharisees said to him, "Look! Why are they doing what it is against the law to do on the Sabbath?" He said to them, "Did you never read what David did, when he was in need and hungry, he and his men? How is it that he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the Presentation Loaves, which it is against the law for anyone but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions too?" And he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and so the Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath."
Even in a little gospel reading we see that there are even bitter differences between Jesus and the leading Pharisees. They seem to follow Jesus; they watch him with scheming suspicion. In this scene the wrangle is over the Sabbath rule of forbidden work.
The apostles are hungry and so they pick some ripe grain. They rub it between their hands and pop it into their mouths. Ancient fast-food! The Pharisees, who have religious power, consider that action to be harvesting. When religion gets twisted up, there are people who become surveyors, assessing and judging the actions of others. These men aren't concerned that the wheat is stolen, but only that it has been harvested. You're not allowed to do that on the Sabbath rest day.
But Jesus is careful and smart and he answers their question with another question, which gives him an opportunity to teach them what they clearly don't know. But like many, they don't want to be taught. The Sabbath day is God's gift to us. The burdensome cycle of the frenzied money wheel is put aside and lifted, as once each week God invites us to rest. But the Sabbath is God's gift; not God himself. Human need takes precedent. Followers of religion sometimes forget this.
But then Jesus goes further and claims He is Lord of the Sabbath! Now he's really looking for trouble! He has God-authority to tell us what we may and may not do on the Sabbath. Jesus isn't just a good man, a holy man, a just man, a prophet. He invites me to know him in God's authority and Lordship. He's supreme even over the Sabbath.
It's the time of seasonal change. It's the time of letting go as the trees of the northern hemisphere drop millions upon millions of leaves and the late summer garden surrenders its fruitfulness. To know Jesus in an evolved way, we might need to drop immature, naive or even superstitious notions of him. A kind of un-knowing.
To know Jesus without packaged words or religious cliches. To know Jesus from an inner, felt place. To know Jesus for myself and not as something simply handed on to me by someone else. Look at the picture below: an image of the un-knowing. What then?
