Lk 6:1-5
1While [Jesus] was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. 2Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” 3Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those [who were] with him were hungry? 4[How] he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions.” 5Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
Sabbath: The sabbath is connected with the Hebrew root word SBT which means to rest or to cease. At the original sabbath, after “God was finished with the work he had been doing” in creation, “he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken” (Gn 2:2). The observance of the sabbath later became one of the Ten Commandments, in memory of God’s rest (Ex 20:8-11). The motif of God’s and Israel’s ceasing from work is related to being “refreshed.” Thus, the sabbath has become “a delight” (Is 58:13).
The sabbath is also linked with the motif of remembrance and commemoration. Two things the Israelites are commanded to remember: God’s resting from the work of creation (Ex 20:1) and Israel’s deliverance from the slavery of Egypt (Dt 5:15).
Thirdly, the sabbath is surrounded by an aura of holiness, which is basically a setting apart for God. This day is to be kept “holy” because God “blessed the sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex 20:11). In Israel, the sabbath is the occasion of “holy convocation” (Lv 23:3).
Faithful to his people’s belief and tradition, Jesus respects the sabbath. But he asserts that it has to yield to the satisfaction of human needs. Elsewhere he says, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mk 2:27). For Jesus, the law of the sabbath and all other laws should serve a human being’s full development and should make life more pleasant, a human being more “refreshed.”