Then He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27
“The adversaries of Jesus, the Pharisees, had gotten control of their schedule. It is no small matter to get control of one’s schedule, especially in a demanding rat-race economy like ours. But actually the Pharisees had not gotten control of their schedule. To the contrary, their schedule had gotten control of them. They had only to look at the calendar to know what the particular day required of them, and what the day prohibited.
This domination by the calendar is not unlike that of my mother and many other mother-housewives of her generation: “Monday is wash day, Tuesday is ironing,” and so on. It is then no surprise that the Pharisees are vigilant about Sabbath day, when they sharply disapprove of the conduct of Jesus’ disciples. They know that what his disciples have done on the Sabbath day violates the calendar of prohibitions.
They have “plucked heads of grain” to eat (Mark 2:23), and their “work” by definition violates the Sabbath. Jesus joins issue with the defenders of the Sabbath. He defends and justifies the “violation” by the disciples. He does not say that Sabbath rules are bad or that His friends are free to do whatever they want on Sabbath.
Rather He asserts that His purpose (as “Son of Man”) trumps Sabbath rules. The disciples are to act as though the kingdom of God is present. And that means they are free to act and compelled to act for the sake of human welfare, in this case to deal with their own bodily hunger. On the one hand, against his adversaries Jesus radically redefines Sabbath. On the other hand, He reiterates the deepest impulse of the Sabbath command of Moses, namely, the emancipated well-being of the covenanted community.
That vigorous insistence is sharply reinforced in the next textual unit, Mark 3:1–6, in which Jesus, in terse fashion, heals on the Sabbath. He restores the withered hand of the man in front of Him. In the new rule of God embodied by Jesus, all times, including Sabbath time, are for the sake of human restoration.”
Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 49-50.
Does your calendar have control over you? Do you live your Sabbath like everyone else?
Consider again this profound truth: “The disciples are to act as though the kingdom of God is present.” Notice what Jesus did on the Sabbath. He restored the strength of the disciples and He restored the withered hand of the man.
In Christ Jesus, the Sabbath comes into view not as day with restrictions but a day for restoration.
What might restorative work might you choose to do? How might your Sabbath living, giving, serving, and loving change from a day with restrictions to making it a day for the work of restoration?