NL 324: Healing on the Sabbath - Luke 6:1-16

image: Ash and his possessed hand from Evil Dead 2 via Pinterest

image: Ash and his possessed hand from Evil Dead 2 via Pinterest

January 31, 2021

Luke 6:1-16

Initial Thoughts

  • Similar story in Matthew 12:1-21 & Mark 2:23-3:19

    • Mark and Luke are nearly identical. Differences are noted:

    • Mark names Abiathar the High Priest

    • Luke transfers the anger: Mark says that Jesus was enraged. In Luke, it is the Scribes and Pharisees.

    • Luke moves right into naming the 12, while Mark added a sojourn in a boat and a trip up a mountain.

Bible Study

  • 2 Sabbath controversies

    • Plucking Grain

      • Jesus refers to the story in 1 Samuel. He interprets Scripture for those whose job it is to interpret Scripture, pointing out their inadequate reading of this story.

      • Point of the story for Jesus - David broke the law when he needed to because of circumstances.

      • Moral relativism or interpreting the Law?

      • It has long been a part of Jewish tradition that Law could be broken in times of emergency. Be careful not to caricaturize the Legalism that is represented here.

      • Jesus and his disciples are simply walking through a field. There is no sign that they were starving. Plus, David was trying to survive while Saul was pursuing him.

      • Sabbath is still respected - simply in its proper place.

      • Lord of the Sabbath does not mean that the Sabbath is abolished.

        • “Christians who acknowledge Jesus as Lord should keep the sabbath in the same spirit that Jesus exhibits in these stories. The parishioner who has only recently been released from the hospital should not feel compelled to attend church. But those who never consider corporate worship an important part of faith should reconsider whether Jesus is Lord for them.” (Pheme Perkins, New Interpreters’ Bible: VIII, p. 559-560)

    • Healing a withered hand

      • Jesus does not abolish the sabbath. “Rather, he insists that the principle of doing good should govern behavior on the sabbath.” (Pheme Perkins., p. 557)

      • Jesus heals in anger and grief.

      • Anger and grief is an interesting mix of emotions. Here, Jesus heals the man while ‘deeply grieved.’ He is hurt and angered by their unyielding hearts. They saw only a Law to be followed, not a man in need.

      • Similar to how this series of healings started in Mark 2:1-12. There though, the legal experts are merely “grumbling among themselves.” Now it has come to a head.

      • The very next healing is done in a crowd and the people shouted, “You are God’s Son.” This forms quite the contrast to how the Pharisees react.

      • The crowds of people see Jesus for who he is. The religious leaders see him as a threat.

  • Note on the Pharisees:

    • “Christians have a special obligation to avoid anti-Semitic stereotyping of the Pharisees and other religious authorities as bound by intolerant legalism… The Pharisees, scribes, and other religious authorities performed a socially necessary function of interpreting the Law so that people could use it to shape their lives. Disputes over proper interpretations of the Law are as necessary a part of their social and religious landscape as are Supreme Court decisions in the United States.” (Pheme Perkins, New Interpreters’ Bible: VIII, p. 559-560).

  • Sabbath

    • Jesus  is not diminishing the role of the Sabbath, but rather emphasizing its purpose. 

    • In ancient and modern Judaism

    • “[Jesus] indicated that not the law but meeting the needs of human hunger and wholeness is the new standard...Addressing hunger and the right to use one’s hands to provide for one’s self and others must be the work of the church.” Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, True to Our Native Land, p.166

    • From Amy Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew (p. 31-33)

      • “From this and other narratives of Jesus healing on the Sabbath, a number of Christians have received the impression that Jesus completely revised the way the day was observed. In this ‘Christian’ view, ‘the Jews’ had turned the Sabbath from a day of rest and celebration to a day of constraint: don’t do this, don’t do that. This impression is symptomatic of a larger view of Judaism as a straitjacket with thousands of picky injunctions, and of Jews as fearful that if they were to violate one commandment, they would face the wrath of an angry God.”

      • “No Jew, then or now, would have upheld any Sabbath ruling preventing work were a life in danger... [but] should one practice medicine and ‘work’ in order to heal a nonpainful, chronic condition such as the one in Luke’s story?”

      • Notice that Jesus does not actually do work. The wording is very  careful to reveal that the man “was restored,” and there is no evidence that Jesus actually “did” anything.

      • When shifting the conversation to the details of Luke 13:10-17, Levine says “The forbidding of work on the Sabbath remains in place - physicians such as Luke, then and now, got a day off- while miracle working remained permitted. Christians today (and Jews as well) may rejoice that Jesus was able to heal the woman and so to allow her fully to celebrate the Sabbath without having to change their own Sabbath practices. The synagogue leader thus represents not ‘the’ Jewish view, but rather a Jewish view, and one against that of the majority of the people in his congregation.”

      • “The Babylonian Talmud interprets, ‘The Sabbath is given to you; you are not to be delivered to the Sabbath,’ and then adds, ‘Profane one Sabbath for a person’s sake, so that he may keep many Sabbaths.’”

Thoughts and Questions

  • “I consider this one of the key texts in all of the gospels to understand Jesus’ relation to his tradition, particularly to the law. Jesus’ operating principle is that the Sabbath (and, with that, I am reading all of the law and the rituals of holiness) was created for humanity, and not the other way around.

    • The idea that ‘humanity was made for the Sabbath’ continues to be a wildly popular theology that God created the law and humanity needs to live up to it or else we are lost. In that theology, God is chiefly known as holy, and humans have to achieve a certain level of holiness – through following laws or practicing purity rituals - to be acceptable to God.

    • The alternative theology, which Jesus poses here, is that ‘the Sabbath was made for humanity.’ In that sense, God is chiefly known as love and the laws and purity rituals are for humanity’s own good. Or, even better, they offer ways that humanity can respond to God’s grace with gratitude.” (Mark Davis, Left Behind and Loving It) 

  • What is the Sabbath to you? We Christians have moved the Sabbath to Sunday, but what else have we done to it? Is the Sabbath just another day? Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, do we even give Jesus that day?

Year 3Eric FistlerLukeComment