Expandable hearts in a rigid world
6-8 "There is far more at stake here than religion. 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. The Son of Man is no lackey to the Sabbath; he's in charge." (Matthew 12:6-8) One day, Jesus and his disciples are walking to their next destination. They find themselves in the midst of a field of grain. They are hungry from their journey and reach out to take some of the grain as a little snack to get them through. What they do is forbidden - not because this was not their field to harvest, but because it was the Sabbath. To the Jew, this was a day of rest - commanded by God many years prior to be kept holy; a day when men cease from work and pay attention to God. Their simple actions of removing grain from the stalks, and rubbing them between their hands to remove the outer "husks" of the grain, was the issue - not that they were hungry, not their source