Have you ever judged anyone before learning about their circumstances? Sometimes this happens to each of us. This happens within today's Gospel, and even the first reading (1 Sam16:1-13 where Samuel is seeking for God's anointed one, not the strong and mighty, but the young inconspicuous boy, David.) In today's Gospel the scribe watches Jesus picking the wheat and eating it on the Sabbath. Based on his strict religious laws, he is judging Jesus and the disciples. The scribe isn't looking at them with the love, compassion and understanding that they laws could originally have held, especially if he understood how hungry they were carrying nothing for food and wandering for days without shelter overhead. No, the scribe looks upon them in judgement with the rigidity of the old law.
Jesus on the other hand reminds the scribe of how David long ago ate what was apportioned to the priests even though it was unlawful because he and his companions were hungry. Then he makes a further statement, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even over the Sabbath." The Sabbath is that day set aside for rest and worship. Yes, what Jesus and the disciples was doing was considered work, but it was necessary so they did not starve. Jesus' point is that it was necessary for life and thus overruled the law. The Sabbath was created to remind all of human kind to give thanks to their creator, and that is why the Son of Man, God made manifest is ruler of the Sabbath.
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