How did Jesus interpret his own scriptures? What principles did he use? You notice that I do not use “read.” 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—less 1.5% of the Jewish population in the first century CE—could read and write. The story this morning illustrates two ways of interpreting the Jewish scriptures: The Pharisees’ and Jesus’ way.

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. “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath.” The objection comes from the scriptural commandment not to work on the Sabbath.

Later after the exile in chapter in Genesis narrative of God’s 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’s designs in creation. Rest on the Sabbath recognized God’s reign over the created world. Norman Wirzba, an eco-theologian writes,

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 “union,” from tasting of it.

God’s 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. “Creation” is a theological term arising from delight, union, and erotic intimacy with the natural world, recognizing God’s presence within nature. I understand creation as “seeing the world or nature as God sees it.” We need more “delight” 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.

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.

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’s delight in life and the Earth. I will come back to point for Jesus’ Sabbath spirituality.

The emphasis on food with the Sabbath is found in today’s gospel. The Jews for millennia have celebrated the Sabbath with a meal. God’s sovereignty extends over the food producing Earth, and with God there is an abundance enough for all God’s creatures.

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’ 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’s provision of food and alleviating hunger to the Hebrews in the Sinai desert.

The Pharisees understand the disciples as violating the covenant on observing the Sabbath. Jesus’ 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’ credibility and authority as a religious teacher are at stake.

Jesus defends his disciples’ behavior to gather food out of hunger. Rather, he contests the Pharisees’ 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.

Jesus disputes the narrowing down of interpretation of the scripture and tradition of Sabbath observance. He suggests that they do not understand the scriptures. “Have you not heard…” He remembers the origin of the Sabbath in the Sinai desert with God’s 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.

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’s providential care. After all, the Sabbath is the day that celebrates God’s provision of the food-producing world, God’s 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’s delight in creation: Remember my earlier comment that all bodies matter to God, and God’s provision for the Hebrews in the Sinai desert after the Hebrews escaped from slavery in Egypt. Sabbath celebrates both God’s creation and justice.

Despite all of his arguments, Jesus reverses the narrow interpretations of the Pharisaic fundamentalists: He announces to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” Here Jesus has turns upside down the Pharisee’s 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)

Today we celebrate the Christian Sabbath in the eucharist. Listen to the words of the UCC biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann:

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 “thanks”! 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 “weary and heavy-laden, cumbered with a load of care” receive gladly. The offer of free gift… might let us learn enough to halt the dramatic anti-neighborliness to which our society is madly and uncritically committed.

Our Christian Sabbath has some important features derived from Jesus’ 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’Murchu in the opening unison prayer:

When you give a feast/ Give first place to the margins/ To infidels and strangers/ Then you need to stop and ask yourself,/ Why you left them out so long.

When you give a feast/ Where the boundaries are all broken,/ Parabolic truth is spoken,/ New hope is awoken. Then you need to stop and ask yourself,/ How powerful grace can be..

This is Jesus’ 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.  It is a pause to remember God’s inclusiveness, God’s hospitality and abundant grace. Sabbath is pause that invites us to transformation by remembering Jesus’ radical inclusive love and invites our own practice of radical inclusiveness. There are never any strangers at God’s table.

I would add that Christian Sabbath has an invitation to fight against the economic inequalities in our community and world.  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’s 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.  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’s gifting us, and that gifting is, in turn, gifted to others.

Jesus claims, “The Sabbath was made for humankind.” The necessities of life should not be restricted by literalist obedience to the scriptures or strict observance of the Sabbath.  Meeting human need is the divine will for the Sabbath celebration. Feeding the hungry and justice expresses the divine intention of the Sabbath as gift.   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.  They use the Sabbath as a weapon to keep people in check, to control people, and manage them what I call a “sin management strategy.” 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.

So radical inclusiveness and care for the needs of human bodies are hallmarks of our Sabbath celebrations.  But there is one added feature. God’s 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.  When we realize that all created life, included ourselves, are siblings and part of God’s 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.  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.