Monday, 12 July, 2004

We continue with another section of Walter Wink’s “The Human Being.” This is from the section on the Pre-Easter sayings of Jesus.



Comments again deal with the story about “plucking grain on the Sabbath” (Mark 2:23-28). Here it is to read:

One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them , “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 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.”

Technically they were reaping, an activity prohibited on the Sabbath. But the disciples judged, with the freedom in which they had been established before God by Jesus, that the infraction was too trivial to count. But was it? Numbers 15:32-36 recounts an episode during the Exodus when a man who was gathering sticks on the Sabbath was stoned to death, showing how seriously Israelites regarded such infractions.



We can always find a good excuse to go against a law. We can always find a reason to bend a rule…just this once. We can always make room for an exception – especially if it is for me and my kind. And yet, does that mean that we are to do that…to find ways to set the law aside for our own personal benefit? Wink notes that “once need has been elevated above the law, law is subject to infinite qualification, until anarchy prevails.” So where is the line to be drawn? Fill a room full of people and that line will be drawn in a number of places. Then again, there may be some unifying logic among each position but…the people in the room will still come down differently when it comes to acting. We must continue to push ourselves beyond what is good for “me” to how “we” will be able to live together in a creative harmony under a common vision.



Connection: What is the good that we seek to have brought to life today among us? Where does our definition of good come from and can we live with that definition changing within a dialogue with others?



Lord God, lead us again this day as you have led your people in the past. Take us into your loving embrace and send us off within the blessed memory of your love for all your children. Amen