I recently learnt that the church did not pay attention to the Gospel of Mark for centuries because it assumed that Mark was merely an abbreviated version of Matthew. This caused my mind to entertain several thoughts. Could it be, for instance, that after over 2000 years, we still may be deficient in our understanding of the faith? Consider the following passage:
Matthew 12:1-8 ESV
[1] At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. [2] But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” [3] He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: [4] how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? [5] Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? [6] I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. [7] And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. [8] For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
This is one of those passages that remind us that we will make a mess of the Gospel of Jesus if we do not take care to seriously study the Hebrew Bible. If your church experience is similar to mine, you have probably heard preachers explain this passage in the following way: Jesus was not for slavish observance of the laws (i.e., the Torah). He prioritizes people and their needs over laws and regulations. Indeed, Jesus appeared to fulfill (or, more accurately, to do away with) the laws, so we can now live by grace.
But such a reading is simply off-target. It does not do justice to the different moving parts of the passage above. Moreover, the Matthean Jesus also says:
Matthew 5:18 ESV
For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
So, no, Jesus is not antinomial. He is not defying the law. Indeed, if he was trying to pit himself against the law, he went about it in the most perfect wrong way because he appealed to the law to make his point! So, what is going on here?
Here is a helpful and straightforward idea that everyone familiar with the workings of a legal system can appreciate. Often, laws can conflict with each other, and it may not be immediately apparent how to resolve the conflict. In a recent US case, for example, a judge had to adjudicate between an alleged offense by a former FBI director and the legal process by which the US Attorney came to office. The judge, in this case, ruled that whatever case the State had against the FBI director is moot because the US Attorney’s appointment is invalid. Similar issues arise in the Torah. The Torah stipulates that a baby Israelite boy be circumcised on the eighth day (Leviticus 12:3). The Torah also forbids Israelites from working on a Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11). So, what happens if the eighth day falls on a Sabbath? Similarly, the Torah famously tells the Israelites to be fruitful and multiply. But the very acts of ejaculation and/or female discharge render a couple ritually unclean (Leviticus 15:16-18). Even worse, the very act of birthing a child renders a mother and possibly the baby unclean (Leviticus 12). Furthermore, as implied in the Matthean passage above, the Torah also stipulates that priests must continually serve in the temple, even on the Sabbath. In other words, priests were required to work on the Sabbath, thereby violating a Sabbath rule.
How do we make sense of these things? The same way the ancients did. First, it is crucial to stress that ritual impurity was not a sin. In fact, one often must become ritually impure as one carries out God’s will, as the reproduction example shows. Also, and this ought to be obvious, contracting ritual impurity from another source was not a sin either. In fact, except one was a priest perpetually locked away in a temple, ritual impurity was the norm. It was basically guaranteed to happen regularly. Hence, the ancients quite reasonably discerned that all the laws are essential, but not equally so. The law concerning the priesthood is more important than the Sabbath rules. On the evidence of the Mishnah, it appears that the Rabbis judged that the eighth-day circumcision rules are less important than the Sabbath observance rules. So, if the eighth day fell on a Sabbath, the Rabbis would circumcise the child later. Of course, if an infant was fighting for its life on the eighth day, the Rabbis also judged that it was better to wait for the child to be well first. Now, what is important for our passage is that Matthew, the disciples, Jesus, and the Pharisees are all familiar with this aspect of the Torah. This knowledge is taken for granted by all parties in this story. So, how might we parse the passage from Matthew? Carefully.
First, what the disciples did, working on the Sabbath by plucking grains, was ordinarily unlawful, and Jesus admits this point. When Jesus references the occasion when David ate bread that was ordinarily appropriate for priests to eat, he is not denying the legal point the Pharisees raised. On the contrary, he grants their point but now makes a legal defense from the Torah: what the disciples did would be permissible if there was a greater, more important reason or mission warranting it. This was the same principle of law that made it permissible for David and his men to eat the holy bread.
That story is in 1 Samuel 21. David was on the run for his life from Saul, the king. He was hungry. When he arrived at Ahimelech, the priest, he asked if there was anything to eat. The following conversation ensued:
1 Samuel 21:1-5, 6 ESV
[1] Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” [2] And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. [3] Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” [4] And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” [6] So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
Ahimelech did not know that David was on the run for his life. So, David lied to the priest to account for the unusual way he had appeared to the priest unaccompanied. The relevant legal point for us is that once David said the king had sent him on an urgent mission, that communicated to the priest that it was okay to suspend the usual laws that would apply to eating the holy bread. But it was still important that the men be ritually pure from women, or it would not have been permissible for them to eat the bread. (No, this purity point is not a moral judgement. Several other things could have rendered David and the men ceremonially impure, but the priest seemed to have gunned for the most obvious candidate. This is not a dig at women, but this issue will have to wait for another time.)
Thus, we observe a legal principle at work in the David story. Ordinarily, only the ceremonially clean priests could eat the holy bread. However, under certain circumstances, including when the king commissions someone on an urgent matter, a non-priest person may eat the holy bread, provided they are ceremonially clean. This was the exact point of Jesus’ argument to the Pharisees. Ordinarily, the disciples would be guilty of breaking the law for plucking and eating grains. But the King of kings had commissioned Jesus and the disciples on a critical mission, and this fact makes it permissible for the disciples to profane the Sabbath and yet be guiltless.
Jesus does not condemn the Pharisees here for being after the Torah as though that was a terrible thing to do. No, he acknowledges the Pharisees’ point but then challenges them to be thorough in their application of the Torah. The temple (where God resided) was the thing that made the bread holy and inappropriate for a ritually impure person to eat. Jesus says he is greater than that temple. In case the Pharisees misunderstood that point, Jesus further adds that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. The effect of these pronouncements is that Jesus’s exposition of the Torah is trustworthy. The Pharisees did not know it then, but one of the most promising guys in their ranks would later write, decades before Matthew wrote his gospel account:
Colossians 1:15-17 ESV
[15] He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. [16] For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. [17] And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
So, at least one Pharisee understood the point Jesus made in Matthew 12. He is greater than the temple and also the Lord of the Sabbath precisely because he created all things. Jesus does not condemn the Torah here.
