Forming Faith Blog

Observing the Sabbath (Luke 6)

Posted on January 21 2025 by Gregory Rawn

The Pharisees tail Jesus to find evidence to condemn him, specifically for violating the Sabbath. Jesus challenges and dismisses their accusations. Observing the sabbath is not only about following rules, it is about doing God’s work.

A man wearing black cap with eyes closed under cloudy sky, as if resting on a Sabbath.
Photo by Kelvin Valerio on Pexels.com
Revelation of the Son of Man

With this reading from Luke 6, Jesus has finally been revealed! Okay, that’s not true. Jesus is revealed throughout the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, and there are four weeks left in the season of Epiphany. But this does mark the end of our theme “Revelation of the Son of Man.” Indeed, it is from today’s reading that our theme gets “the Son of Man.” So far in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has been revealed in his birth, presentation at the temple, learning at the temple, baptism, pronouncements in Nazareth, and promises to his first disciples. Now we encounter Jesus as he’s arguing with the Pharisees about observing the Sabbath day.

What Is the Sabbath?

The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week in the Jewish calendar, and it is a day of rest as the example of God resting after the six days of creation shows us. Proper observance of the Sabbath is so important that it made it into the Big Ten (Commandments).

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

Exodus 20:8-11

Later, the focus changes:

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Deuteronomy 5:15

And the consequences for working on the Sabbath were pretty serious:

You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death.

Exodus 31:14-15

Not properly honoring the Sabbath is one of the violations that led the Israelites into exile:

“What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the sabbath day? Did not your ancestors act in this way, and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Yet you bring more wrath on Israel by profaning the sabbath.”

Nehemiah 13:17b-18
The Offenses

There are a few different passages in the Gospels where Jesus and other religious leaders clashed over proper Sabbath observance. Luke brings together two of them here in chapter 6. The first story involves some Pharisees catching and challenging Jesus’ disciples about breaking the Sabbath by harvesting grain to eat (Luke 6:1-5).

The second is about Jesus healing a man with a disability in his hand on the Sabbath (verses 6-11). Again, the Pharisees (along with the scribes this time) were in the synagogue with Jesus to see if Jesus would heal on the Sabbath. It kind of makes me wonder if the religious leaders brought in the man as bait.

The Pharisees (Try to) Provoke Jesus

The first episode is lacking a bit of context, as many stories in the Bible do. Why were Jesus and his disciples walking through a field of grain, especially since traveling too far would also violate Sabbath observance? Why would the disciples want to eat uncooked grain in the first place? And why were the Pharisees traveling with Jesus in the first place?

The Pharisees were not big fans of Jesus, to put it mildly. So, they clearly were not following him out of devotion and the desire to learn from him. To me, that really means that they were there looking for ammunition to use against this troublesome rabbi. And the disciples gave them some. According to strict Sabbath observance, they really were violating the Sabbath. But that was a very minor infraction, not something that they could use to destroy him publicly (Matthew 12:14). So I have to assume that they were using this incident to try to provoke Jesus into something more serious, perhaps denying the Sabbath altogether.

But Jesus doesn’t take the bait, or at least not in a way they could (mis)use. He defends his disciples using a rather strange example involving David in 1 Samuel 21:1-6. And then he follows that with a cryptic assertion: “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Luke 6:7). At least Mark prefaces this with “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

Jesus Provokes the Pharisees

“On another sabbath day” (Luke 6:6), the Pharisees set a trap for Jesus at a synagogue to see if he would violate the Sabbath in front of an audience. Jesus fully knew what they were trying to do. He could have told the man who needed healing to come back the next day. Instead, he decided to provoke them. 

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?”

Luke 6:9

He’s giving them a bit of a false dichotomy here. Obviously, one should not do harm or destroy life on the Sabbath or any other day. Equally obvious is saving a life. If one can save a life, even if that means violating the Sabbath, one should (see pikuach nefesh). “Doing good” is a lot more generic. 

But the man in the synagogue’s life isn’t in immediate danger. The Pharisees aren’t suggesting that Jesus is doing harm or destroying a life. Healing the man is certainly a good and important thing, but it could wait for the next day.

Really, in this situation, Jesus is purposefully provoking his opponents by “violating” the Sabbath just like they are daring him to do. But he frames it in a way that makes them the villains in the story.

Why?

The question “why?” in this case has three different parts:

  1. Why do the Pharisees do what they do? I’d say this is the easiest one. As Matthew 12:14 tells us, they are trying to find evidence that they can use to destroy Jesus, though whether they meant to discredit and get rid of his movement or actually kill him (at this point), I’m unsure. Since Sabbath laws are so strict, one or more violations here could give them the evidence they need to destroy Jesus.
  2. Why does Jesus do what he does? I’m not sure, and I’m afraid that I don’t have the time right now to research it. However, later in the Gospel, Jesus accuses his opponents of hypocrisy and argues that it is most appropriate to liberate the enslaved on the Sabbath (Luke 13:16). He even asks lawyers and Pharisees if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, to which they are silent (Luke 14:3-4). According to Jesus, God’s work of liberation and healing are most appropriate to do on the Sabbath.
  3. Why does Luke include this and other stories of Jesus healing on the Sabbath? Again, I don’t know. However, the early church struggled with what to do with the rules of the Torah (see many examples in Acts, Luke’s volume 2). Perhaps these examples help give a flexible, broader, and more nuanced view of the Torah from the Christian perspective. By removing the strictures regarding Sabbath observance, the focus can be more on the gift of the sabbath, rather than on following one more law. [Note: This is not to suggest that Jewish thought and practice doesn’t focus on the Sabbath as a gift, since that’s very clear from everything I’ve read on the topic. The extremist views of some do not reflect the views of everyone.] 
Sabbath vs. sabbath

You might have noticed that I sometimes capitalize “sabbath” and sometimes don’t. That’s on purpose. When I capitalize it, I’m referring to a day of the week (specifically the day starting Friday evening and ending Saturday afternoon as per Jewish tradition). In lowercase, sabbath refers to the spiritual practice of holy rest, whether a person practices sabbath a full day a week, a few hours, monthly, quarterly, etc. 

Most of the congregations and their denominations using the Narrative Lectionary do not follow a strict, mandatory Sabbath observance like the Pharisees are expecting here (and Jesus and his followers mainly followed, too). Those who do practice a more informal, spiritual sabbath make their own rules while sharing a common goal of spending time with God and usually family.

However, we cannot, and should not, assume that everyone has a sabbath practice, especially if you don’t count worship attendance as the limit to sabbath observance. So this week, gently challenge your faith formation participants to consciously incorporate holy rest into their lives.

In Christ’s love,

Gregory Rawn (Publisher)

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