Lord of the Sabbath (Second Sunday after Pentecost)

Teresa Morgan and Molly Zahn discuss law, Judaism, and how Jesus engages these topics in Mark 2:23–3:6. The text is appointed for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcast

Teresa Morgan is McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Yale Divinity School. Molly Zahn is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School.

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Transcript

Voiceover Voice:

But the Messiah can’t act on his own. You have to put your trust in him and then healing can happen, salvation can happen.

Helena Martin:

This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.

This episode, we have Molly Zahn, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, and Teresa Morgan, McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. They’re discussing Mark 2:23-3:6, which is appointed for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 4, in Year B. Here’s the text.

[Mark 2:23-3:6]

One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food, how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They were watching him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Molly Zahn:

 So this passage in Mark, these two scenes with Jesus and his disciples doing things on the Sabbath, is really one of the classic examples for me of how we see Jesus actually participating in the Jewish life of his day and how we can understand in previous generations these kinds of passages were often interpreted as scenes where Jesus is rejecting Judaism or rejecting the law or showing how the law is no longer in force. And in fact, they're exactly the opposite. They show Jesus as part of debates over how to observe Torah in early Judaism and at this time period the idea of covenant and of certain behaviors as the terms of the covenant, the ways that Israelites and Jews express their love and devotion and reverence for God, that's been fundamental for a long time by this point in Judaism. Even as those ideas become more prominent, you had to figure out how to live by Torah. I always show my students the sort of sum total of verses from the Torah, the Pentateuch, that say something about what kinds of work cannot be done on Shabbat. And there's like five verses and they're not very specific at all. You can't kindle a fire. You can't gather manna. So, there was a lot of interpretive work to be done and a lot of debate to be had about what it meant to observe Shabbat. And so, we see Jesus really taking part in these debates and not at all renouncing the Torah, but saying Shabbat is important. This is how you do it. This is how we do it. And that would have been a perfectly authentic expression of Jewish learning and Jewish life in his time. 

Teresa Morgan:

This is a really good passage, isn't it, for seeing the difference between what the historical Jesus might have been doing and saying in his lifetime as a Jew in debate with other Jews. As a rabbi in debate with other rabbis with Pharisees and scribes. The difference between that and what Mark wants to say about Jesus, because Mark is making this a very adversarial encounter, isn't he? And it's because Mark is angry with the Pharisees. It's possible that Mark is angrier with the Pharisees than Jesus was, in a sense, because Mark believes the Pharisees, or indeed knows that the Pharisees, most of them, didn't recognize Jesus as Messiah. And that's a problem for him. He's angry about that. And so he makes this much more of a kind of a head to head than you can imagine such an encounter might have been in kind of historical context. 

That said, I have to say, I always feel a lot of sympathy for the Jewish authorities in all of these stories of confrontations in the Gospel, because I cannot help thinking about the life that they must have been living under Roman occupation in Israel. The Roman regime is a harsh and a punitive regime and anybody causes trouble, they will come down really hard and everybody could lose their civil rights. Everybody could lose all the freedoms that they currently have under Roman law, all the license they currently have to live under Jewish law. And so the authorities are doing the only thing that is responsible, really, which is trying to keep the ship on an even keel. And so they don't want anyone who's going to rock the boat. They don't want people like John the Baptist and Jesus who are going to cause trouble, who will get the attention of the Romans, you know, who might lose them all their freedom. So, in a sense, by being opposed to Jesus, being critical of him, and eventually by plotting against him and helping to get him arrested, actually, they're doing, in many ways, the only thing they could do in their situation. But of course, if you are Mark, if you are any follower of Jesus for whom Jesus is the Messiah, the authorities cannot be but in the wrong. And it's an absolute tragedy of the kind of the moral impossibility of the situation, in a way.

Molly Zahn:

Well, indeed, and I, you know, I do think that these debates over law, you know, were pretty much the bread and butter of the expression of Judaism in this period. And so, I agree with you when you say that I don't think that Jesus himself, if we imagine this as a sort of, if this had happened historically, he's just doing what people do in the time period and pronouncing his own interpretation of Torah and the right way to keep these laws in order to be in relationship with God. But yes, for the authorities, anything, any dust up, could possibly attract the attention of the Romans. And that would be, could have negative consequences, of course.

Teresa Morgan:

Can I ask you a question as a scholar of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible? What do you think of this statement Jesus makes about the Son of Man being Lord of the Sabbath? I mean, assuming that the Son of Man equates to the Messiah, and there are of course debates around all these titles, but let's make that assumption in a sort of broad-brush way. Would that be a conventional Jewish idea that, you know, when the Messiah comes, whatever kind of Messiah he is, he will be above the law? Or is that not a conventional idea? Is that a sort of a new thing that Jesus is articulating or Mark is articulating on behalf of Jesus?

Molly Zahn:

Yeah, I think in a way it is, and I think, I mean, you're right, these titles are very, have a complicated history, and even the title Son of Man, you know, really starts out with the one like a son of man, the one like a human being in the book of Daniel, in chapter seven of Daniel, who's pretty clearly an angelic figure. And so, these depictions of Jesus in the Gospels and the other New Testament literature are picking up language that in Judaism was originally applied to human messianic figures, but also to sort of angelic savior figures in Jewish tradition and they're kind of combined together. It's pretty clear though that there's no real evidence that any contemporary Jews thought that the advent of the Messiah or the advent of God's eschatological reign, which is when some of these other Savior figures might crop up, that that would have been a time where the law was suspended. I think that's kind of a uniquely, at least at this time, a sort of uniquely Christian preoccupation that has to do with the enfolding of the Gentiles into God's promise and whether Gentiles qua Gentiles can become part of part of the community of  Salvation in Christ. I think what Jesus is saying is not making a claim about lawlessness, because again, this is not about not observing the law, it's not about Torah being done. It's about Jesus saying, you Pharisees have one way to observe the law that says you can't pluck these heads of grain on Shabbat. But I have another way. I have good scriptural authority, right? He's citing the example of David. So, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath is not a claim about the superiority of Jesus to Torah, I don't think. I think it's a claim about Jesus interpretive authority. His ability to say the true meaning of Torah.

Teresa Morgan:

That's really interesting. Something else that always strikes me about this passage is about the healing of the man with the withered hand. So, Jesus does this healing on the Sabbath. Query – controversially? But clearly not totally controversially because when we get to chapter six in Mark, we find him preaching in the synagogue in Nazareth and the people of Nazareth don't like him, don't take to him because they say, you know, we know this guy, he's the son of the local carpenter. Who is he to tell us what's what? And Mark remarkably ends that little passage by saying that he couldn't do any, perform any miracles. He couldn't perform any healings on that occasion because the people didn't trust or believe in him. And it really underlines that accepting Jesus is a two-way process, as it were. God sends the Messiah into the world in Christian thinking, the Messiah reveals God and also reveals himself, but the Messiah can't act on his own. You have to make contact. You have to be open to him. To seeing, to recognizing him. You have to be open to being healed by him. You have to put your trust in him and believe in him. And then healing can happen. Then salvation can happen, ultimately. And in Nazareth that can't happen. It doesn't happen. But here, clearly there are people, even in this quite conflicted story, there are people in the synagogue on this Sabbath day who are open to him and are putting their trust in him because he's able to heal the man with a withered hand. It's not just an exhibition of his power. It's not just underlining that he is, in fact, the Son of Man and the Messiah, and the Pharisees are wrong. It's also, a point about anybody who is going to receive him as such.

Molly Zahn:

Right. Well, and I think it's another device by which Mark shows, marginalizes the Pharisees, right? By saying, you know, they're watching him to see if he's going to heal on Shabbat. So, he knows that they know that he might do this. And so, by implying that the people there in the synagogue are open to Jesus and willing to receive his power, if you will, or his healing, acts, you know, Mark is saying, like you Pharisees are, you're kind of in the margins. 

I might just point out one more thing about the debates over Sabbath observance. This statement that Jesus responds to the Pharisees, actually, he hasn't. They haven't even asked him a question. He just, he invites the man with the withered hand to come forward, and he knows that they're watching him. And he says to the Pharisees, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath to save life or to kill? But they were silent. And there, you know, Jesus is actually picking up, or Mark has Jesus pick up, on a long tradition of interpretation within Judaism that a life is more important than the observance of Shabbat. That the Sabbath is holy, but human life is holier. 

And so, we see in Rabbinic tradition, and we see actually in the otherwise quite often strict Qumran documents, Dead Sea Scrolls legal texts, allowing provision of saving life on Shabbat, even if it requires breaking the laws of Shabbat. So again, Jesus very much, despite Mark's attempts to read this as a sort of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees or the Jewish authorities, really very much shows Jesus as part of that community.

Helena Martin:

Thanks for listening. You can visit our website for more Bible study resources: YaleBibleStudy.org.

Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. And our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.

We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.