Coffee With God

Reflection: Luke 6: 1-5

In Jesus’ time the feast of the Sabbath began on Friday evening at sunset. At that hour, in every village, a man climbed on the roof of the house and sounded the horn three times. At the first call, all the activities of the fields were suspended. All the household works were stopped with the second call. Then, when stars appeared in the sky, the person in-charge sounded the horn for the last time. Then mothers in the family placed a lighted lamp by the window of the house. It was the sign of a people’s joy who “would welcome” Saturday and received it with a lighted lamp, because Saturday – the Sabbath day – was considered “the bride and queen of Israel.” The book of Deuteronomy prescribed that on the Sabbath “Do not do any work” (Deut 5:14). As the centuries have passed, the rabbis had begun to define more minutely what activities were prohibited on the Sabbath. They identified 39, and each of them had 39 further specifications. Thus 39 x 39 amounted 1521 prohibited works. This is the background to the question on the disciples of Jesus violating the Sabbath. “Why are you doing something that is forbidden on the sabbath day?” In fact, Luke makes use of this incident to teach his community the actual meaning of the observance of “the Lord’s Day.” Jesus reminds them of the incident from the Old Testament where King David and his men ate the bread from the house of God, which only the priests were allowed to eat (1 Sam 21:6). Each sabbath, 12 loaves of fresh bread were set on a table in the Holy Place. Originally, the Sabbath was intended to be a day of overwhelming joy. The whole community would gather in the synagogue in the morning. There they prayed and listened to the Word of God. After the celebration, they engaged themselves in conversation, then to lunch with friends. Basically, it was intended to be a day spend with the Lord, in prayer, in meditation. Hence, the Lord’s Day is a time to spend with the Lord. That was exactly what the disciples were doing. They were spending their time with the Lord, listening to his Word. A day becomes holy only when and to the extent that it promotes human sanctity and not hatred and anger. Today there is another danger: that the “Lord’s Day” serves only to recover from the stress of the works of the week, to be able to start again, with more energy, the feverish activity in which one is involved. This is the snake biting its tail. To be truly humanising, the Lord’s Day must be time to devote to the Lord, to meditation and prayer and works of Charity