I desire mercy, not sacrifice
The Pharisees were looking for reasons to condemn the disciples rather than to be acting from a deep concern for the holiness of God. To protect the sanctity of the sabbath would be a truly noble purpose. But the Pharisees insisted on a legalistic, rule first approach, and put no consideration on the purpose of the rules. They wielded those rules as weapons, using them as a bludgeon to beat down those with whom they disagreed and therefore to build themselves up. Had they desired mercy more than sacrifice they might have been open enough to see things in a new way.
I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.
The Pharisees, had they desired mercy, would have able to remain open to the idea that Jesus was what he claimed to be, the Messiah. Maybe God really did indeed desire to reveal his mercy through Jesus. This possibility, if true, could explain fundamental claim being implicitly made by Jesus, that he and his disciples were a new priesthood, and that their ministry was an essential service to God that was, if anything, even more appropriate on the sabbath than the other days of the week. If Jesus was indeed the promised Son of David, then he, like David, was priest, prophet and king.
For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.
Jesus not only came to restore man's relation to man and the world, symbolized by his acts on other six days of the week, he also came to restore man's fundamental relationship to God, and this was appropriate work for the Sabbath, which was always meant as sacred time wherein man would be given time and space to come into harmony and alignment with God. Man had twisted the Sabbath in such a way that God's purpose in it was obscured. So Jesus took it firmly in hand and reshaped according to its original intention, which was always to be an occasion or mercy.
But the blood will mark the houses where you are.
Seeing the blood, I will pass over you;
thus, when I strike the land of Egypt,
no destructive blow will come upon you.
The feast we celebrate on our Christian Sabbath is similarly meant to open us to the mercy of God. It is meant to help us to surrender of hearts more fully to God himself and to be more open in turn to love of our neighbors. We recognize immense holiness in the mass. We sense that it is only by mercy that the we are permitted to come forward and receive God himself without being struck down, as the firstborn of Egypt were struck down. In the mass it is our heart that is the door on which the blood of Christ is sprinkled. We are thereby spared from judgment, given new life in the Spirit, with new, God-given purpose and direction.
When we protect the sanctity of the Sabbath, the mass, and the other holy things, we are doing what Jesus instructed, and not throwing pearls before swine (see Matthew 7:6). Yet we must never use this as an excuse to lord it over others whose faith and practice we perceive to be deficient in some way. If we judge them and imagine ourselves to be superior it is we who are deluded. We are what we are only by the grace of God (see First Corinthians 15:10). It is only because Jesus had the mercy to call us that we are permitted to enter into the mysteries, because he is the Lord of the Sabbath, and we his disciples.
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
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