Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Obviously not! The answer here must be exactly the same as in the case of the fourth commandment that presented itself in connection with Luke 9:59-60. For Jesus the first commandment is the absolute center of his thought and action, together with what that commandment wants to emphasize: the absolute uniqueness and preeminence of God over everything else, realized for Jesus in the reign of God now dawning. Therefore Jesus had to heal sick people even on the Sabbath, and therefore he could not delay the healing until the next day, because the reign of God is advancing rapidly, and that people in Israel are made whole is precisely a sign of the reign of God now becoming reality. With his Sabbath healings Jesus does not abolish the third commandment, but he gives greater weight in these cases to the first commandment.

It cannot be objected against this interpretation that in the texts mentioned Jesus never gives the approaching reign of God as a reason for his offenses against the Pharisees’ interpretation of the Torah, because if we look more closely we can see that this reasoning is actually present. Luke 13:10-17 tells of the healing of a woman whose back has been bent for eighteen years, so that she can no longer stand up straight. Jesus heals the woman on the Sabbath, and in the synagogue to boot. The leader of the synagogue becomes indignant at this and says to those present, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day” (Luke 13:14). The fact that a bent woman has been healed is to him a minor matter compared to the offense against the Sabbath. Healing is work, and no work may be done on the Sabbath. There are six other days in the week for therapeutic actions.

How does Jesus justify himself? He calls this form of interpretation of the biblical Sabbath commandment pure hypocrisy, since, after all, those attending the synagogue untie their household animals from their stanchions on the Sabbath and lead them to water. That is, they untie knots, they release animals—and yet he should not be allowed to free a poor woman who has been fettered and tied down by Satan for many years? Thus the point of comparison is not leading to water but untying knots.³³ Jesus answers the legal casuistry that clings to words with a skillful counter-casuistry: “And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16).

But Jesus does more than simply reveal the contradictions in the casuistic interpretation of the Law. His own argument goes much deeper. He calls the woman “a daughter of Abraham.” That is: she is part of the chosen people of God, a representative of Israel. As such she has been bound by Satan for eighteen years, and as such she is now freed from her bonds. No, she is not only freed, she “must” be set free. The phrase “reign of God” is not spoken, but it is quite obvious that it is precisely what is at stake here: the reign of God is happening now, God is becoming Lord in Israel now, Satan is being bound now, and now the people in Israel are being freed from the fetters with which they have been held bound. It is Jesus himself who forces his way into the “house of the strong man” and binds him (Matt 12:29). If we look closely we see that Jesus’ Sabbath healings have a great deal to do with his proclamation of the reign of God. God will now become Lord in Israel once and for all, and the spread of the reign of God cannot be delayed for any reason.

We also need to ask ourselves why Jesus’ disciples were plucking and eating ears of grain on the Sabbath, of all days. Obviously it was because they were hungry (cf. Mark 2:25). And why? Is not the background here the insecurity of Jesus’ and his disciples’ itinerant existence in service of the reign of God? Jesus’ disciples, like himself, were dependent on people who would take them into their houses in the evenings and give them something to eat. But they did not always find houses open to them, and the labor for the Gospel did not always leave them time to think of eating at all. In this connection we need to take seriously what Mark writes, “Then he went [into a house]; and the crowd came together again, so that they [Jesus and his disciples] could not even eat” (Mark 3:19-20). The story about plucking ears of grain presumes such a situation of completely insecure itinerant existence in which no planning was possible. The plucking of grain was not a game; it was done out of necessity, because of the hardship of existence for the reign of God. But that means that this breach of Sabbath rules is firmly connected to the proclamation of the reign of God. Here again, the first commandment has greater weight than the third as it was then interpreted.

Clean and Unclean