Thursday, 8 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 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.”

Jesus might seem to be saying that humanity is the measure of all things. If so, it would take little to refute him. Humanity is alienated from the cosmos, a wolf at the throat of its neighbors, a rebel against God and the requirements of the ecosystem, and a threat to every living species. Humanity can least of all be the measure of all things! It is not humanity as such, but the Human Being that is the lord even of the Sabbath.



The fullness of our Humanity demands something more than the wishes we have and the needs we may claim. The Son of Man – or as Wink puts it: the Human Being – honors the Sabbath and honors the welfare of others and God’s creation. Therefore, it is when our own “special interests” are put aside do we begin to see what kind of action is appropriate for us. Yes, the Sabbath allows for and calls for and demand rest and peace and healing…but when we see from the eyes of the fullness of our Humanity, those laws become something in which we can stretch and move for the welfare of all. The law cannot create our wholeness; it becomes a gift given to us by God.



Connection: Don’t be afraid to think and act beyond the “letter of the law.” We are at our best a human beings when we are drawn into a dialogical community in which we begin to see more than what our own eyes have let us see and our own ears have let us hear. Today may carry a moment in which, for the welfare of others, we wrestle with what is…and possibly step into what could be.



Lord of the Sabbath, you bring us our rest and you call us into community. Remind us of the tension that exists as your will is made known among us and not simply something that is demanded of me alone. Amen.