How did Jesus interpret his own scriptures? What principles did he use? You notice that I do not use \u201cread.\u201d Jesus probably did not read or write though Luke portrays that he can read from the scroll of Isaiah. Jesus probably could recite large passages of the Hebrew scriptures from memory. Very few folks\u2014less 1.5% of the Jewish population in the first century CE\u2014could read and write. The story this morning illustrates two ways of interpreting the Jewish scriptures: The Pharisees\u2019 and Jesus\u2019 way.<\/p>\n
Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, already a violation. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees saw this, they said to him. \u201cLook, your disciples are doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath.\u201d The objection comes from the scriptural commandment not to work on the Sabbath.<\/p>\n
Later after the exile in chapter in Genesis narrative of God\u2019s creation of the universe in six days, the Sabbath celebrated the seventh day when God rested from creation and delighted in creation. It anticipates the completion of God\u2019s designs in creation. Rest on the Sabbath recognized God\u2019s reign over the created world. Norman Wirzba, an eco-theologian writes,<\/p>\n
God takes complete delight in what is made. Delight marks the moment when we find whatever is in our presence so lovely and so good that there is no other place we want to be. All we want to do is to soak it up, be fully present to it, and cherish the goodness of the world God has made. Something so good cannot be enjoyed from a distance or in the abstract. It requires the deep knowledge that comes from \u201cunion,\u201d from tasting of it.<\/em><\/p>\n God\u2019s deep gaze of delight is a contemplative seeing the created world as beloved and beautiful and communing with creation. When God takes delight, the evolving world becomes creation. \u201cCreation\u201d is a theological term arising from delight, union, and erotic intimacy with the natural world, recognizing God\u2019s presence within nature. I understand creation as \u201cseeing the world or nature as God sees it.\u201d We need more \u201cdelight\u201d in the Earth, for Sabbath delight arouses in us the excitement and intimate connection with the evolving world. Let quote Wirzba again on a Sabbath perspective.<\/p>\n Here in this spirituality of delight is the realization of bodily interrelatedness, the basis of a spirituality of compassionate care for all life and for the Earth. All bodies, whether human animal and nonhuman animal, matter to the Creator, and they should matter to all spiritual peoples.<\/em><\/p>\n For God, all bodies mattered. There is a democracy of siblings here. We must recover and re-connect our bodies with the Earth, the land, and other life. In fact, I would argue that all of us need to compost the Earth and the interrelatedness of all life into our spiritualities. It connects us to God\u2019s delight in life and the Earth. I will come back to point for Jesus\u2019 Sabbath spirituality.<\/p>\n The emphasis on food with the Sabbath is found in today\u2019s gospel. The Jews for millennia have celebrated the Sabbath with a meal. God\u2019s sovereignty extends over the food producing Earth, and with God there is an abundance enough for all God\u2019s creatures.<\/p>\n Now, the disciples are hungry while traveling through the fields and pluck grain to eat. It was allowed that the hungry could take some pick some food or glean the field after the harvest. The disciples\u2019 action to alleviate their hunger raises profound issues. It is considered work by the Pharisees, and colleague of mine tells a story of visiting his son when a knock from a Hasidic Jew in the downstairs apartment asked him if he would come down and take his laundry out of a washer and place them in a dryer. For the Hasidic Jew, even pushing the button of the dryer was considered work. Work on the Sabbath was not permitted according to the law, but the Sabbath also celebrated God\u2019s provision of food and alleviating hunger to the Hebrews in the Sinai desert.<\/p>\n The Pharisees understand the disciples as violating the covenant on observing the Sabbath. Jesus\u2019 disciples have acted contrary to the will of God. If Jesus has allowed them to act this way, the Pharisees can argue publicly that he cannot be from God. Jesus\u2019 credibility and authority as a religious teacher are at stake.<\/p>\n Jesus defends his disciples\u2019 behavior to gather food out of hunger. Rather, he contests the Pharisees\u2019 logic of their scriptural interpretations. They literally interpret the commandment and never allow for other interpretations than their own. The Pharisee are fundamentalists, practicing an embattled form of spirituality that protects what they cherished from selective retrieval of certain commandments and practices from the past. They practice a spirituality that also cooperates with the Temple rulers, who have been coopted by the Roman colonizers. They have become legalists and fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists do not regard this battle as a mere conventional political struggle but experience it as a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. The Pharisees practiced a holiness like the Temple priests, keeping themselves holy at all costs and maintained the practice of tithing and maintaining purity as the priests practiced. Ordinary folks could never practice such purity and holiness without hardship.<\/p>\n Jesus disputes the narrowing down of interpretation of the scripture and tradition of Sabbath observance. He suggests that they do not understand the scriptures. \u201cHave you not heard\u2026\u201d He remembers the origin of the Sabbath in the Sinai desert with God\u2019s abundant gifting of food and drink. But the first scripture that Jesus cites is David on the run from King Saul. The future king and religious hero, David, breaks the law by entering the house of God and commandeering the bread of presence, consecrated bread reserved only for the priests to eat. Jesus pointed out that they ate the bread reserved only for the priests. Jesus draws the parallel between the eating of his disciples and David and his companions. They break literally the laws and religious boundaries out of basic human need, hunger.<\/p>\n Then Jesus presents his argument to the Pharisees by pointing out exceptions to strict observance of the Sabbath. A fundamentalist interpretation does not allow for any exceptions. It is my interpretation only, not yours. We hear this often in contemporary debates on marriage and homosexuality from Christian fundamentalists., and other issues First, hunger is a legitimate concern for humans, and God is concerned in feeding and providing for the poor. Food is ultimately a gift of God\u2019s providential care. After all, the Sabbath is the day that celebrates God\u2019s provision of the food-producing world, God\u2019s provision of manna in the desert was pure gift. The Sabbath is a gift, grace if you want to use Christian theological language. The Sabbath is connected with God\u2019s delight in creation: Remember my earlier comment that all bodies matter to God, and God\u2019s provision for the Hebrews in the Sinai desert after the Hebrews escaped from slavery in Egypt. Sabbath celebrates both God\u2019s creation and justice.<\/p>\n Despite all of his arguments, Jesus reverses the narrow interpretations of the Pharisaic fundamentalists: He announces to them, \u201cThe Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.\u201d Here Jesus has turns upside down the Pharisee\u2019s interpretation of the law and regulations. They have turned the Sabbath into a law, a regulation, when God originally intended the Sabbath to be an unconditional gift or grace. I am reminded Jesus’ words to his disciple: “What is given freely, give freely.” (Mt. 10:8)<\/p>\n Today we celebrate the Christian Sabbath in the eucharist. Listen to the words of the UCC biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann:<\/p>\n I have come to think that the moment of giving the bread of Eucharist as gift is the quintessential center of the notion of Sabbath rest in Christian tradition. It is gift! We receive in gratitude. Imagine having a sacrament named \u201cthanks\u201d! We are on the receiving end, without accomplishment, achievement, or qualification. It is a gift, and we are grateful! That moment of gift is a peaceable alternative that many who are \u201cweary and heavy-laden, cumbered with a load of care\u201d receive gladly. The offer of free gift\u2026 might let us learn enough to halt the dramatic anti-neighborliness to which our society is madly and uncritically committed.<\/em><\/p>\n Our Christian Sabbath has some important features derived from Jesus\u2019 practice of an open table during his ministry and his last meal with male and female disciples. Let me elaborate on these elements: They challenge us and Christian fundamentalists. Let me remind you of the words of one my favorite writers Diarmuid O\u2019Murchu in the opening unison prayer:<\/p>\n When you give a feast\/ Give first place to the margins\/\u00a0To infidels and strangers\/\u00a0Then you need to stop and ask yourself,\/ Why you left them out so long.<\/em><\/p>\n When you give a feast\/\u00a0Where the boundaries are all broken,\/ Parabolic truth is spoken,\/\u00a0New hope is awoken. Then you need to stop and ask yourself,\/\u00a0How powerful grace can be..<\/em><\/p>\n This is Jesus\u2019 intent in his practice of an open table. Our Christian Sabbath, likewise, reminds us to pause and remember who is not here and who may be excluded.\u00a0 It is a pause to remember God\u2019s inclusiveness, God\u2019s hospitality and abundant grace. Sabbath is pause that invites us to transformation by remembering Jesus\u2019 radical inclusive love and invites our own practice of radical inclusiveness. There are never any strangers at God\u2019s table.<\/p>\n I would add that Christian Sabbath has an invitation to fight against the economic inequalities in our community and world.\u00a0 It is an act of resistance to economic patterns of the wealthy that impoverishes the poor to enhance their own wealth. Sabbath justice, and I would add, economics deny scarcity for God\u2019s abundance: there is abundance when we all share with one another our resources and food. Think of Jesus multiplication of the loaves and the fish for the multitudes in the wilderness.\u00a0 Our Sabbath pauses to remind us that there is an alternative form of giving and sharing than taking resources from people. The Sabbath is about God\u2019s gifting us, and that gifting is, in turn, gifted to others.<\/p>\n Jesus claims, \u201cThe Sabbath was made for humankind.\u201d The necessities of life should not be restricted by literalist obedience to the scriptures or strict observance of the Sabbath. \u00a0Meeting human need is the divine will for the Sabbath celebration. Feeding the hungry and justice expresses the divine intention of the Sabbath as gift.\u00a0\u00a0 Fundamentalists, who presume to do the divine will, by literal and aggressive adherence to the Sabbath, cannot allow for mercy, generosity, and justice to enter their interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures. \u00a0They use the Sabbath as a weapon to keep people in check, to control people, and manage them what I call a \u201csin management strategy.\u201d Just think of politicians who voted to repeal Obama care, to throw millions of people off healthcare, and who voted corporations and the very wealthiest in our country with tax cuts. The 1% in the US own more than 50% of the global wealth, and some 150 individuals own nearly 40%. Depriving people of basic services and care for your own wealth is the gross re-enactment of the parable of Dives and Lazarus the poor beggar at the gate of his estate.<\/p>\n So radical inclusiveness and care for the needs of human bodies are hallmarks of our Sabbath celebrations.\u00a0 But there is one added feature. God\u2019s delight in the universe, where creation becomes beloved and delightful, speaks to us that the Earth and the community of non-human life are beloved to God.\u00a0 When we realize that all created life, included ourselves, are siblings and part of God\u2019s beloved community of creation, we need to widen our inclusiveness in our eucharist to include the Earth and all life in our celebrations. We need to share resources and respect the rights of nature as we respect human rights.\u00a0 All life has rights before God as Creation, Christ whose incarnational outreach has fleshly as well as comic interconnectedness with all life, and the Spirit who ensouls herself in all life as the sustainer of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How did Jesus interpret his own scriptures? What principles did he use? You notice that I do not use \u201cread.\u201d Jesus probably did not read or write though Luke portrays that he can read from the scroll of Isaiah. Jesus probably could recite large passages of the Hebrew scriptures from memory. 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