BIBLETELLING
Below is the Narrative Lectionary passage for the coming week. It is followed by Bruce’s notes on the text which aim at a general understanding of the text and some notes on the structures and techniques used by the Biblical storytellers.
One Sabbath1 Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”2
Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”3 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man4 is Lord of the Sabbath.”5
On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.”6 So he got up and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”7
He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.8
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them9, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.10
Luke 6:1-16 (NIV)
THREE STORIES
The following three stories pair well with the Narrative Lectionary passage for the coming week. They are followed by Danny’s sermontelling footnotes which explore the stories’ theological connection to the passage as well as insights into craft and performance. Our advice is to read the story first before digging into the footnotes.
The Creation of Sabbath
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Genesis 2:2 (KJV)
The last of God’s creations was Sabbath herself, which he created on the seventh day. That is why it says, “On the seventh day, God ended his work."11
When God made Sabbath, she protested that each of the other days of creation had a mate. Sunday had Monday, Tuesday had Wednesday, and Thursday had Friday, but Sabbath was alone.12 God comforted her by telling her, “You are a bride for Israel, my only son. Your marriage with Israel will be consummated when I give you to him at Mt. Sinai.”13
Then God sat Sabbath on a throne beside him and had all the angels come before her dancing and singing, “You are a Sabbath unto the Lord!”
God even brought Adam up to the highest heaven to join the celebration.14 Adam was so overtaken by Sabbath’s beauty that he began to sing a special song for her.
Then God said, “Why do you sing a song to Sabbath but not to me? Am I not the God of the Sabbath?”15
All of heaven was silent in this moment for fear of what might happen next. But Sabbath rose from her throne and knelt before God. She sang:
“It is good to praise the Lord!”
And all the angels joined in with her:
“And make music to your name, O Most High!”16
And God said, “Just as we have made Sabbath holy on this day, so shall my first born son, Israel, make Sabbath holy when they are wed.”
This was not the only time Sabbath intervened on Adam’s behalf.
The day Adam ate the fruit and was banished from the garden of Eden was a Sabbath. It was twilight, and the angels called out to God, “Did you not promise to Adam, ‘On the day you eat of it, you will surely die’? Let not your mercy prove the serpent right and you a liar! You must smite Adam now!”
But before God could slay Adam, Sabbath came before him and argued:
“O Lord of the world! Adam’s death is to be the first in all of creation! How can you possibly let the first death be on the Sabbath? How could such a day possibly be called Holy thereafter?”
So God resolved for the sake of Sabbath not to slay Adam but to let him die a natural death.
In response to this act of mercy,17 Adam composed a special song to God. King David later received the song through divine inspiration and made it number 92 in his Psalter.18
~ BERESHIT RABBAH
The Ascension
The story is told of a Hasidic19 rabbi who had a great reputation for personal holiness. The rabbi had a habit of disappearing after weekly Shabbat services and it was rumored among his disciples that each Shabbat afternoon, he would ascend the Holy Mountain,20 like Moses, and commune with God.
Wanting to know for sure what their teacher was doing, the disciples chose one of their own to follow the rabbi and find out where he was going.
So after morning Shabbat service, the student followed his master at a distance.
First, the rabbi stopped at his house and went inside. He emerged minutes later in ordinary peasant clothes. Even his distinctive hair style was hidden under a hood.
Then the disciple followed the rabbi as he walked out of the shtetl21 and into the greater city. The student watched as his teacher spent the rest of the day serving his gentile neighbors. He did chores for an old lady. He read a blind man his mail. He bought and prepared dinner for a poor family. And after each encounter, he would say “God bless you. I will see you again next week.”22
The next day, when the disciples gathered together, they asked the one who had followed the rabbi, “Tell us: what did you see? Where did our master go on Shabbat? Did he ascend to the mountain of God?”
The disciple smiled and said, “No. He went higher.23 Much higher.”24
~ Hasidic Story
John & Joe
The late Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman could not have been more different. They had different political points of view. John McCain was a Republican from Arizona while Joe Lieberman was a Democrat from Connecticut. They had different life experiences. John McCain was a former air force pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and tortured in a prison camp for five and a half years. Joe Lieberman was a former civil rights activist who received a draft deferment to finish his law degree at Yale. They were also very different religiously. John McCain was an Episcopalian who didn’t attend Church much and Joe Lieberman was an Orthodox Jew who was deeply observant.
Despite these differences, John and Joe were not only political allies who travelled the world together promoting freedom and democracy, they were lifelong friends. They are a powerful reminder of a time in Washington when people could not only work across the aisle but build genuine relationships with people on the other side.25
In 2012, McCain was giving a dinner speech at the Israeli Embassy when he shocked the crowd by announcing that he would be converting to Judaism. He said, “I do this not because of any particular liking for the religion. It’s just that I’ve had to for so many years put up with all of Joe’s religious nonsense26 that I might as well convert and get some of the benefits.”27
He was just joking of course. Kind of. McCain’s friendship with Lieberman had put him out of his way more than once. He was not a big fan of Kosher meals but would go places where they were served to eat with his friend. McCain would grouse that the only thing that those kosher chefs knew how to make was salmon.
And he hated the Shabbat elevators. McCain recalled how the first time he ever rode in one he thought it was broken. “It’s stopping at every floor!”28 he exclaimed. When his friend explained that it did that so that Orthodox Jews29 didn’t have to push the buttons on the Sabbath, John said, “It takes an hour to get anywhere with you!”
McCain was probably referring to the many times the two of them walked together to the capital for Saturday votes, sometimes in the cold, because Lieberman didn’t drive on the Sabbath. Once they missed a popular Friday night30 dinner in Munich that they went to every year because it was too far to walk. Instead they ate salmon together at the hotel.
But of course, McCain never had to do any of that. He could have gone to different restaurants, stayed at hotels with regular elevators, or hailed a cab. But for all his grumpiness, McCain put his friendship above his comfort. He would have rather been put out of his way than see his friend eat or walk alone.
Being put out of your own way for someone else is the essence of kindness. And kindness is a quality of mercy.
For both Christians and Jews, the truest expression of religion is showing mercy. Sometimes mercy calls us to break the rules like Jesus did when he cured the man’s hand on the sabbath. Other times it calls us to observe rules that aren’t our own like Paul advised the Corinthians31 to do when they were in the home of those who didn’t eat meat.
To paraphrase Paul: whether you keep rules or break rules, do so to the glory of God. In a world where we treat people who think differently from us as enemies to be vanquished rather than friends to be won, the smallest thing done in simple kindness is done to the glory of God.32
When John McCain passed away in 2018, Joe Lieberman gave his eulogy.33 He quipped that McCain would have considered it divine justice that the funeral was held on a Saturday and that he had to walk there. Later he told the press, "I say goodbye and my heart will be heavy. I'll shed a tear and yet I'll thank God that I knew a man like John McCain so well." That sounds more like divine mercy to me.
SERMONTELLING NOTES:
Volumes have been written about the meaning of the Jewish Sabbath. Within scripture, the celebration of the Sabbath is connected to the seventh day of creation (Exodus 20:11) and to the commemoration of Israel’s deliverance from slavery (Deuteronomy 5:15.) Sabbath, of course, was to be celebrated by the cessation of work. Symbolically, the idea of Sabbath took on an eschatological meaning. In some sense, celebrating the Sabbath was seen as engaging in the coming age of the New Creation.
While the Torah itself gives little direction around which activities should be though of as “work” and therefore forbidden on the Sabbath, rabbinical teaching consistently defined “harvesting” and “threshing grain” as work. The Pharisees confronting Jesus clearly see the disciples act of plucking the grain heads and rubbing them between their hands in this light.
We often think of Jesus as teaching against the Sabbath. Note that his teaching here does not challenge the institution of the Sabbath, or even the Pharisees’ definition of “work.” Instead, he reminds those gathered of a story of David begging bread to feed his men. The rabbis routinely cited this same story to defend actions which were necessary to sustain life as being exempt from Sabbath regulations.
“The Son of Man” can be seen as an ambiguous phrase. In one sense, the phrase can be used as a way of referring generically to “humans.” In another sense, the phrase can be seen as a Messianic title. drawing on the imagery from Daniel 7. Both senses of the use of this phrase can be seen at work in scripture. Choosing one over the other is a matter of interpretation in the eyes of the translator. The NIV (quoted here) capitalizes the phrase, indicating that these translators read the phrase here as a title
How one reads this statement from Jesus depends on how one interprets “Son of Man.” (See Note 4 above.) It can mean something very much like what Jesus says in Mark 2:27: humans are not made for the Sabbath, but vice versa. It can also be read as a Messianic claim: Jesus, as Messiah, has ultimate authority to define what can and cannot be done on the Sabbath. To press further, as Messiah, Jesus fulfills the ultimate meaning of the Sabbath.
Jesus is deliberately drawing attention to what he is about to do. He knows that it will draw objections, to which he is prepared to respond
The argument Jesus uses here is in parallel with his argument in the preceding narrative: actions which bring life should be seen as exempt from Sabbath regulations.
Jesus’ action was deliberately provocative, designed to challenge the teachings and authority of the Pharisees. As such, it is unclear whether the Pharisees’ anger here is rooted in Jesus’ act of healing on the Sabbath, or on the challenge to their own honor in a culture driven by shame and honor. More than likely, both are in play.
These last few verses are an interesting inclusion in the lectionary text. On the one hand, we could read the literary unit about Jesus’ challenges to the Pharisees’ interpretations of the Sabbath as being “over” at the conclusion of verse 6:11. As storytellers, most of us would have ended the story there.
On the other hand, the introductory phrase “one of those days” seems designed to connect the naming of the twelve disciples as a part of the Sabbath Conflict Narrative. The narrative beats seem to be: 1) Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees about Sabbath obedience, 2) Jesus, knowing the Pharisees’ frame of mind, provokes a second confrontation, 3) The Pharisees, provoked to anger, begin to plot “what they might do to Jesus,” 4) Jesus prays all night on the mountainside, and 5) Jesus names twelve apostles.
His motives (as is generally the case in scriptural narrative) are not given. We might, however, assume that Jesus recognizes he has created dangerous enemies. For his movement to survive, he will need others to carry it on when he is inevitably arrested and taken out of play.
Each of the gospel storytellers agree that Jesus appointed twelve apostles. The names each storyteller places on this list, however, differ is some minor ways. Matthew and Mark each name Thaddaeus as an apostle and omit the name of Judas, son of James. Traditionally, commentators have solved this problem by assuming that Thaddaeus and Judas, son of James are one and the same. John does not list the apostles, though he refers to them as “the twelve.”
It seems that perhaps the number of apostles is more important to the storytellers than establishing absolute clarity exactly which disciples were on the list. We have discussed the importance of the symbolic use of numbers by the Biblical storytellers in previous posts. The number 12 is almost always connected to the 12 tribes of Israel, indicating that the apostles were seen as reconstituting the ideal of God’s people.
The Creation of Sabbath
The ancient Rabbis puzzled over why Genesis 2:2 says God ended his work on the seventh day. After all, by the end of the sixth day, God had made everything and proclaimed it all very good, so shouldn’t it say: “On the sixth day God ended his work?” After all, we say work ends at close of business Friday, not Saturday morning. So why does the Bible say God quit working on the seventh day?
Most modern translations simply correct the verse and change seventh day to sixth day. The CEB translation has “sixth day” but follows with a footnote that says, “The Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Translation, and the Masoretic Text read “seventh day.” For those of you keeping score at home, those are the four major sources for translations of the Hebrew Bible. You would have to have a pretty compelling reason to overturn a reading agreed on by all four. The reason seems to be that it doesn’t make narrative sense.
But where modern translators see difficulty, the ancient rabbis saw possibility. They reasoned that the last thing to be created must be Sabbath itself. And I think there’s some profound wisdom in this. Sabbath does not just happen. It has to be created.
I’m not sure why the days are paired off this way. Maybe it has something to do with the Hebrew. Another natural way to pair off the days might be Sunday/Wednesday, Monday/Thursday, and Tuesday/Friday since God populates the domains created in the former with the creatures made in the latter. In this scheme, Saturday is the only day that doesn’t correspond to another.
The image of Sabbath as a bride for Israel is very old and appears in the earliest talmudic literature. Whether this tradition was alive during the first century is not known but does add a tantalizing dimension to Jesus’ statement that the human one is kyrios of the Sabbath. In addition to the meanings teased out above, it could be a way of saying ‘man is husband of the Sabbath.’ That is based on nothing but my own wild speculation.
What we do know with confidence is that in the centuries following Jesus’ ministry, rabbis recognized that Sabbath was a special gift for humanity that should be greeted as joyfully as a groom greets her bride and that Jesus stands in this tradition.
According to the Midrashic timeline, Eve had not yet been created on the first Sabbath. The female that was created on the sixth day would have been Adam’s first wife. And that is another story for another day!
I really wanted this line to read “am I not Lord of the Sabbath?” But the parallel is there.
These are the opening verses of Psalm 92. The Midrash seems to be designed to make sense of the preceding superscription: A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day. It is one of the rare superscriptions that does not give a name. A tradition ascribes the whole psalm to Adam (perhaps because he too was nameless).
In our Bibles the superscription appears in its own special font before the first verse number, clearly marking it as separate from the psalm. In the original text (which contains no chapters and verses or special formatting and typography) the superscription would have scanned as part of the psalm. In fact, in Hebrew Bibles the superscription of Psalm 92 is numbered as verse 1. Here’s the sequence the Midrash envisions:
Adam: A song for the Sabbath day…
(he sings his song and God objects)
Sabbath: It is good to praise the Lord!
Angels: And make music to your name, O Most High…
The reason I shared this midrash is that it personifies Sabbath as someone who intercedes for humanity. This fist beautifully with Jesus’ question of whether it is better to save life or destroy it on the Sabbath. In this story, the fundamental quality of Sabbath is mercy and not even God will use the holy day to kill.
By the time this midrashic tale was written, King David was not simply believed to be the writer of those psalms which bore his name, but the entire Psalter. Because many Psalms (like Psalm 137) talk about times long after his reign, it was believed that David was a prophet who received the psalms through divine inspiration. This belief was operative in the 1st century. Thus, in Mark 12:35-37 Jesus quotes Psalm 110 as a prophecy revealed to David through the Holy Spirit, but fulfilled in the time of Jesus.
The Ascension
I note that the Rabbi is Hasidic up front but I do not use the traditional Hasidic terms, rebbe for rabbi and hasidim for disciples, because I think they will be confusing for most Christian hearers. Even with all its New Testament connotations, disciple is actually a pretty good way to think of the relationship between a hasid and his rebbe. It captures the dimension of attachment and submission that goes deeper than an ordinary student-teacher relationship.
The disciples are envisioning a mystical ascent in prayer (like the one Paul describes 2 Corinthians). Being that this is a Hasidic story, we should be picturing an 18th century Eastern European setting far from the foot of Sinai.
The Jewish part of town. Shtetl is Yiddish for little town. It’s a neighborhood in which Eastern European Jews live together and retain their customs and way of life (not unlike Chinatowns in major cities).
If you really wanted to make a meal out of this story, you could describe each of the three encounters in fuller detail, ending with the rabbi saying: “God bless you. I will see you again next week.” In any case, this line indicates that the rabbi has a sustained relationship with these neighbors who have no idea that he is a holy man.
The rabbi of this story, like Jesus is going above and beyond the law of Sabbath by recognizing it as a time to show mercy to others. The fact that this very Christian message is found here in a very Jewish story should tell us something. For too much of Christian history, Judaism has been used in teaching and rhetoric as a foil for Christianity. This simplistic and antisemitic depiction of Judaism makes it always the bizzaro version of Christianity; anything we are, they are the opposite.
We have a relationship; they have a religion.
We believe in a loving God; they believe in a vengeful God.
We have freedom in Christ; they are slaves to the law.
Not only is this morally wrong, it’s bad theology. It is a gross distortion of the Biblical narrative. It casts all Jews everywhere in the role of Jesus’ first century opponents, ignoring not only the diversity of Judaism in Jesus’ own day, but all the many ways of Jewish being and seeing that have arisen in the two millennia since.
This distortion often arises out of a need to portray Jesus as totally unique in every circumstance as opposed to standing in a stream of tradition. For apologetic reasons, we want Jesus’ every word to be revolutionary and unheard of and so we are unwilling to portray him as taking sides in the rabbinic debates of his day and using arguments that would have been familiar to his opponents. But could a Jesus who simply floats above the intense scrum of ancient theological debates and creates wisdom sayings ex nihilo truly be described as incarnational?
Many Jews in Jesus’ day and today would agree that showing kindness supersedes the strict observance of Sabbath. An ancient midrash on the book of Exodus has God saying to the people, “The Sabbath has been handed over to you, not you to the Sabbath.” Even in a Hasidic tradition that prizes an orthodox lifestyle and the imitation of God’s holiness, a story like this one emerges that challenges all who call themselves God’s children to go higher. Much higher.
The call to ‘go higher’ would make a wonderful organizing image for a sermon. You could tell this story early on and continue to use the refrain, “Go higher! Much higher!” as a way of reminding the congregation that kindness is higher than the law.
We tend to think of kindness/mercy/grace as lower than or in opposition to keeping the rules. Even when we hear Jesus say loving our neighbor is like loving God, that the sheep and the goats will be divided and judged based on their kindness, or that ‘doing to others as we would have them do to us’ sums up the entire Bible, we nod our heads in agreement but then go right back to thinking, yeah but what REALLY matters is…
But if we take the Gospel of the crucified one seriously, mercy is as high as it gets. When Jesus feeds his disciples on the Sabbath, he is going higher. When he heals a man with a withered hand, he is going higher. When we go against the rules to show love, we are not breaking them; we are transcending them. Not one soul will be turned out of heaven because they showed too much grace.
John & Joe
Not that this was ever easy. Lieberman received swift backlash from his own party when he endorsed his friend for President in 2008 despite being the VP nominee of his own party only 8 years before. Democratic politicians privately and publicly seethed about this betrayal right up until Lieberman’s death.
McCain’s actual expression here referred to the excrement of the male Bos taurus.
Once John McCain said to Joe Lieberman, “Since I’ve spent this time with you, now I know all this Hebrew, and I follow all these rules. I think you’ve turned me Jewish!”
Lieberman quipped, “If that’s true, your entry into the covenant was a lot less painful than mine.”
Words have been omitted to make the comments more suitable for a religious setting.
While all observant Jews rest on Shabbat, Orthodox Jews adhere to the most strict guidelines. The rules that Joe Lieberman follows are of the Orthodox variety. This article is a good explainer.
Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday evening. Interestingly, because the first chapter of Genesis says ‘there was evening and there was morning the first day’ and keeps that order each day after, the new day begins at twilight.
I decided to tell a story about the relationship between Joe Lieberman and John McCain because it shows that for McCain, observing the rules was a way to go higher. That too is an expression of mercy.
In other words, the challenge of the scripture is not to loosen up about the Sabbath. Jesus says nothing about abolishing it. The challenge of scripture is to show kindness whenever and however a situation requires.
I look forward to your stories and reflections every week. You never disappoint. There is always a surprising idea, a helpful endnote, and engaging story. (See how I gave three!)
Thanks for helping us all grow as story tellers and preachers.
This week I was struggling with the idea of how praying and appointing the 12 connected to Sabbath stories. I’ve been tying Sabbath and Jubilee together and making Jubilee my theme for the month, viewing subsequent stories through the lens of the sermon at Nazareth. I’m mulling over the idea that the 12 continue to announce the jubilee.