05
Trouble in the Wheat Fields
Luke 6:1-11
Simon is a very confused man. Over the past week, he has witnessed the most incredible things, and wisdom has flowed from the lips of his Master. But one thing continues to bother him. A week ago, he watched as Jesus first healed a possessed man on the holy Sabbath, and later that same day, Jesus also healed his own mother-in-law. Yes, of course, he was grateful! But it unsettled him… Was this not work? He had certainly heard the Pharisees grumble about it!
Now they are walking with Jesus through the fields near Capernaum. They pass through a waving green wheat field on their way to their destination. Simon is salivating because this gospel work they are doing with Jesus does not exactly pay a generous wage. On top of that, the crowds that constantly gather around them do not leave much time to think about food. Now, the plump ears of wheat look particularly tempting. “May we?” Simon asks Jesus. He nods approvingly. The law is, after all, very clear on this matter: if you walk through someone’s wheat field, you may pick a few ears - it is not theft. This is explicitly recorded in Deuteronomy 23:25. Simon and his companions each pick a few ears, and the fresh wheat crunches juicily between their teeth. The problem, however, is that it is the Sabbath! Simon had been taught very clearly that picking wheat was considered harvesting, and that was certainly work. And what does Exodus 20 say about work on the Sabbath?
When Simon looks up, he sees them: a group of Pharisees watching them with keen interest. He first turns red with embarrassment, then pale with fear. He notices that the learned men are urgently discussing something amongst themselves, frequently pointing in his direction. “Aha! Got them!” the Pharisees must be saying to each other. The next moment, the stern old men angrily charge at Jesus and His followers. One man jabs his crooked finger under the nose of the bewildered Simon and confronts him with the fact that they have just performed labour on the Sabbath and thus broken the law!
“These sour-faced men can be fanatical about the law,” Simon thinks as he sees them now turning their attention to Jesus. “They make life difficult because you dare not do anything on the Sabbath. If you lift a finger, it is a sin!”
In reality, these Pharisees appeared to be good men who had studied the Scriptures in great depth. Unfortunately, their knowledge had been drilled into them so rigidly by their teachers that they never grasped the true spirit and meaning of the Scriptures. For them, it was all about knowledge and strictly keeping the law down to its finest details so that nothing, not a single thing, would cause them to break even the smallest part of it. They also tried to impose this philosophy on society - on ordinary people. It all sounded noble, and there was not much inherently wrong with it. But over the years, the Pharisees began to realise that keeping the law was not so simple, as there were just too many different interpretations! If the law, for example, stated that one should not kill - would it still be against the law if someone was strangled instead? And so, they started creating laws around the laws to ensure that people did not accidentally break one.
One of the trickiest laws was the one about the Sabbath because there were so many loopholes. When exactly does work become work? Everyone knew that harvesting was considered work and was strictly forbidden. Simple! One old Pharisee probably said to his colleagues one day, “Yesterday morning, I saw my wife plucking her eyelashes in front of the mirror on the Sabbath, and I thought to myself: but that is the same as harvesting! Now I ask you, should we not create a law that prohibits women from plucking their eyebrows on the Sabbath?”
“Look,” another leading scholar responded, “If she had not looked in the mirror in the first place, she would not have seen her eyebrows at all! There is only one solution: women must not look in a mirror on the Sabbath!”
In the end, no fewer than 39 additional laws were woven around the Sabbath law alone. And the Pharisees saw themselves as the guardians of the Law.
And now Jesus, along with Simon and his companions, has been caught “working” on the Sabbath. This is trouble with a capital “T”! Simon’s mouth drops open as he watches how masterfully Jesus explains to these grumpy old men that one should not be so rigid and that even David had “broken” the law when there was a need. There must be balance in life, and beyond that, they were, in fact, dealing here with the very Creator of the Sabbath. But that idea was beyond their understanding because they had only one thing on their minds! The men turn away in anger and leave.
The question is: did Jesus consider the Law unimportant and outright reject the Sabbath? No, certainly not! Jesus wanted to show the Pharisees (and us) what the Law is really about. Later, He explains that everything revolves around love. After Jesus’ redeeming sacrifice on the cross, an additional dimension was added - gratitude. Because Jesus has paid our debt, we now live out this love He spoke of as gratitude to God for the salvation He has given us. For us, it is no longer like it was for the Pharisees, about keeping the law for the sake of the law or trying to earn our salvation through it, but rather, we do what God asks simply out of love and thankfulness.
Prayer:
Lord,
please give me a true love in my heart - a love born out of gratitude
for Your great act of salvation!