Why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? In these early chapters of Mark, it seems Jesus and the religious leaders cannot help getting into a confrontation. Anything that Jesus does provokes the religious sensitivity of the religious leaders. In today’s account, the disagreement is all about the Sabbath. Jesus and his disciples are either going to, or coming from a place of worship (it is on a Sabbath). As they make their way through a field of corn, they start picking ears of grain (whether they were hungry and intended to eat the grain, or whether they were simply gleaning and bring the grain home, we are not told). To the religious leaders, they were violating the sacredness of Sabbath for they were doing something that was unlawful. This leads us to the question, what was lawful on the Sabbath?
In the Genesis account of creation, God establishes the Sabbath rest as a celebration of the work of creation (cf. Gen 2:2ff). God declares the Sabbath holy, forbidding any kind of laborious activity on that day (cf. Exodus 20:8-11). While there can be a debate as to what pertains to a laborious activity (and hence what can be permitted on a Sabbath), the one thing that is undebatable is that God established the Sabbath as a celebration of life. God delighted in all that God had created because it was all good (cf. Gen1: 31a). It would be too literal to attribute the Sabbath to God wanting to rest because God was tired. It would also be absurd to attribute the Sabbath to God celebrating the end of creation, for we all know that God continues to create even today.
The Sabbath rest is a celebration of life. It is a time God expects us to sit back and join God in celebrating the beauty of creation even as we become co-creators with God. Anything, therefore, that goes against celebrating life is a violation of the Sabbath. Anything that would, in any way, destroy or promoting the destruction of life, is unlawful on the Sabbath. Were the disciples of Jesus violating the Sabbath? Were they engaging in activities that destroyed or promoted the destruction of life? I don’t think so. If they were picking the ears of grain because they were hungry, this does not constitute a violation of the Sabbath. If they were gleaning the ears of grain to bring home with them, they were not engaging in any unlawful activity. On the contrary, they wanted to preserve life.