Are you serving some human need?

Mat 12:1-8

One Sabbath, Jesus was strolling with his disciples through a field of ripe grain. Hungry, the disciples were pulling off the heads of grain and munching on them. 2 Some Pharisees reported them to Jesus: "Your disciples are breaking the Sabbath rules!" 3 Jesus said, "Really? Didn't you ever read what David and his companions did when they were hungry, 4 how they entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat? 5 And didn't you ever read in God's Law that priests carrying out their Temple duties break Sabbath rules all the time and it's not held against them? 6" There is far more at stake here than religion. 7 If you had any idea what this Scripture meant-- 'I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual'-- you wouldn't be nitpicking like this. 8 The Son of Man is no lackey to the Sabbath; he's in charge. "

Food for soul!

In Palestine in the time of Jesus the cornfields and the cultivated lands were laid out in long narrow strips; and the ground between the strips was always a right of passage. It was on one of these strips between the cornfields that the disciples and Jesus were walking when this incident happened. The gospel says that they were hungry. So stood before them two things, human need and human law.

There is no suggestion that the disciples were stealing. The Law expressly laid it down that the hungry traveller was entitled to do just what the disciples were doing, so long as he only used his hands to pluck the ears of corn, and did not use a sickle: "When you go into your neighbours standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbours standing grain" (Deut.23:25).

In the eyes of the Scribes and Pharisees, the fault of the disciples was not that they had plucked and eaten the grains of corn, but that they had done so on the Sabbath, a day of rest. To meet the criticism of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus put forward three arguments.

(i) He quoted the action of David (1Sam.21:1-6) on the occasion when David and his young men were so hungry that they went into the tabernacle, and in their hunger, took and ate those sacred loaves without committing sin.

(ii) He quoted the Sabbath work of the Temple. The Temple ritual always involved work, and the priests worked on Sabbath without commiting sin. Even today, Sunday, which is supposed to be the day of rest to everybody, is not to the priest. The busiest day of the week for the priest is Sunday!

(iii) He quoted God's word to Hosea the prophet: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice" (Hos.6:6). What God desires far more than ritual sacrifice is kindness, the spirit which knows no law other than that it must answer the call of human need.

In this incident Jesus lays it down that the claim of human need must take precedence of all other claims. The claims of worship, the claims of ritual, the claims of liturgy are important but prior to any of them is the claim of human need. Jesus insisted that the greatest ritual service is the service of human need.

It is an odd thing to think that, with the possible exception of that day in the synagogue at Nazareth, we have no evidence that Jesus ever conducted a church service in all his life on earth, but we have abundant evidence in all the gospels that he fed the hungry and comforted the sad and cared for the sick.

Christian service is not the service of any liturgy or ritual; it is the service of man; service of human need. If in your life, your business, your profession, you are not serving some human need, I am afraid you are missing the point. The claims of human need take precedence over any ritual custom or law. All our laws in the Church and society are just that, our laws! We are more important than any of them. The son of man is lord over them all. God will reward us not for keeping laws but for serving humans in their need.