Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 9th September 2023

​In many ways Jesus led a perfectly normal lifestyle. Like others, he would go for a walk with his companions from time to time, especially on the sabbath, when Jews were not allowed to work. In today’s Gospel from Luke, (Lk 6: 1-5), we find Jesus taking a walk with his disciples through the cornfields on a sabbath day. Without thinking, as it’s what people do in a cornfield, his disciples begin to pick ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands and eating them. It’s something we’ve all done, usually with wild grasses. We don’t think of it as work, but for an observant Jew is was something strictly forbidden on the sabbath. Little wonder that the Pharisees, on seeing this, complain. “Why are you doing something that is forbidden on the sabbath day?” We could ask what the Pharisees were doing on a sabbath, spying on Jesus and his followers, when they could have been taking a siesta or preparing another sermon for their poor congregations.

 

​Jesus answers on behalf of his disciples, citing something we read about in the Old Testament concerning King David. “Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the loaves of offering and ate them and gave them to his followers, loaves which only the priests are allowed to eat?” They must have known the story very well. Is Jesus implying here that is own disciples were hungry, in which case they had every right to seek nourishment in the cornfields? No law of God obliges a child of God to die of hunger. My mother loves to tell me how she and her sisters, during the war, when people were starving in Italy, would go out into the fields and woods even on a Sunday and come back with bagsful of leaves, flowers, roots, nuts and fruit and how my grandmother would transform any ingredients into the most delicious meals you could imagine. They were following the example of Jesus and his disciples. My grandmother would often quote the words of Jesus, “The Son of Man is master of the sabbath.” – “Il Figlio dell'uomo è signore anche del sabato”.