Lord of the Sabbath and the Sermon on the Plain

Luke, the physician and companion of Paul according to early church tradition (Colossians 4:14), wrote this Gospel and Acts for Theophilus and for Greek-speaking readers who wanted an orderly account and assurance about what they had been taught (Luke 1:1-4). Scholars differ on the date: some argue for the early 60s AD, others for about AD 80 to 90. Luke 6 is a good place to see the synoptic problem at work. The Sabbath scenes and the call of the Twelve have parallels in Mark 2:23 to 3:19 and Matthew 12 and 10; the Sermon on the Plain has a large overlap with Matthew 5 to 7 that is not in Mark. The most common explanation is that Matthew and Luke each used Mark and a shared sayings source, Q. Others explain the overlap by Luke's use of Matthew, or hold that Jesus repeated his teaching on different occasions.

The setting is the Galilean ministry. The Sabbath was the weekly day of rest from Exodus 20:8-11. By Jesus' day, Pharisees and other teachers had developed detailed rules about what counted as work, which were meant to protect the commandment. The disputes in 6:1-11 are about whether Jesus and his disciples are keeping it. The Twelve are chosen on a mountain, and then Jesus teaches in a level place, which gives this teaching its common name. Among the crowd were people from Judea, Jerusalem and the Gentile coast of Tyre and Sidon, so the audience extends beyond Israel.

Luke 6 joins two kinds of material: controversy stories about the Sabbath, and a long block of teaching. Both ask what it means to belong to the people of God now that Jesus has come. Controversy stories are read for the saying that closes them. The teaching block is read as wisdom and prophecy in the manner of the prophets and the book of Proverbs, full of striking contrasts and vivid images. Such language is concrete and meant to be taken seriously, but it is not a set of legal clauses to be applied mechanically.

Three guidelines help.

• First, the blessings and woes are paired and set in the second person plural, addressed to disciples who are looking at the crowd. They describe the reversal of the kingdom, as Mary's song also does (Luke 1:52-53).
• Second, the commands to love enemies are tied to the character of God: be merciful as your Father is merciful. The reason is as important as the command.
• Third, the sermon ends with doing. The final image of two builders asks whether a person who calls Jesus Lord also does what he says (6:46). Everything before it is meant to be heard as a word to be obeyed.

Luke's sermon is shorter than Matthew's. Luke has four blessings and four woes; Matthew has nine blessings. Luke's 'poor' and 'hungry' appear to be spoken of in plain terms, while Matthew's version says 'poor in spirit' and 'hunger and thirst for righteousness'. This is not necessarily a contradiction. Each Gospel writer arranges the teaching for his readers, and the two versions bring out different edges of the same message.

Verses 1–5

On a Sabbath, Jesus' disciples pick heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat. Some Pharisees ask why they are doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath. The law allowed gleaning from a neighbor's field (Deuteronomy 23:25), so the charge is that harvesting by hand counts as work. Jesus answers with David, who when hungry entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which only priests were permitted to eat (1 Samuel 21:1-6; Leviticus 24:5-9). The argument implies that if David's need mattered, so does the need of the one greater than David. He concludes that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

Verses 6–11

On another Sabbath he teaches in a synagogue, where a man with a withered right hand is present. The scribes and Pharisees watch to see whether he will heal on the Sabbath, so they can accuse him. Jesus knows their thoughts, puts the man in the middle and asks whether it is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it. He heals the man, and the opponents are filled with fury. Luke here frames the question not as Sabbath rules versus compassion but as good versus harm, and the silence of the critics answers him.

Verses 12–16

Jesus goes up the mountain and spends the whole night in prayer to God, and at daybreak chooses twelve from his disciples and names them apostles, a word meaning 'sent ones'. The list is Simon (named Peter), Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas son of James and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. Luke's 'Judas son of James' appears where Matthew and Mark list Thaddaeus, and the traditional explanation is that one man had two names. The number twelve matches the tribes of Israel.

Verses 17–19

Jesus comes down to a level place, with a great crowd of disciples and a large multitude from Judea, Jerusalem and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They come to hear him and to be healed, and power goes out from him and heals them all.

Verses 20–26

Looking at his disciples, Jesus says blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God; blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied; blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh; and blessed are you when people hate and exclude you because of the Son of Man, for your reward is great in heaven, since their fathers treated the prophets the same way. Four woes follow, directed to the rich, the full, those who laugh now and those spoken well of, because the false prophets were spoken well of. 'Blessed' (makarios) describes a person whom God favors, whatever circumstances may say.

Verses 27–36

The core command is to love enemies, do good to those who hate, bless those who curse and pray for those who mistreat. The following examples are concrete: offering the other cheek, giving the shirt along with the coat, giving to everyone who asks. Then comes the saying known as the Golden Rule, to do to others as you want them to do to you, which is placed in a context of acts that go beyond reciprocity. Loving only those who love back earns no special credit, since sinners do the same. The conclusion rests on God's character: be merciful, as your Father is merciful.

Verses 37–45

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and a good measure will be poured into your lap. A blind man cannot lead a blind man. A person with a plank in his own eye should not remove the speck from his brother's. A good tree does not bear bad fruit; each tree is known by its fruit, and the mouth speaks from what fills the heart.

Verses 46–49

Jesus asks why people call him Lord, Lord and do not do what he says. The one who hears and does is like a man who dug deep and laid his foundation on rock, so the flood could not shake his house. The one who hears and does not do is like a man who built on the ground without a foundation, and when the river burst against it the house fell, and its ruin was great.

Luke 6 presents the new community that gathers around Jesus. Its identity is not defined by a rule about the Sabbath but by the person of the Lord of the Sabbath and by a pattern of mercy modeled on the Father. The Old Testament had already said that God desires mercy (Hosea 6:6), and Jesus' defense of his disciples draws on that principle in a fuller form in Matthew 12:7. The Sabbath is a gift for life and good, not a burden.

The blessings and woes teach that God's favor often runs against the world's standards of success. The theme runs through the Bible: the Lord exalts the humble and brings down the proud (1 Samuel 2:7-8; Psalm 113:7-8; Luke 1:52-53). James 2:5 says that God chose the poor in the world to be rich in faith. The woes do not say that wealth is evil in itself, but that those who are comfortable and self-sufficient risk missing the kingdom. The theme of reward in heaven shows that the final judgment is not yet and that the present order is not the last word.

The call to love enemies roots ethics in the character of God, who is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. The teaching on judging and on fruit shows that inner reality, not outward appearance, governs. In the whole sweep of Scripture the sermon prefigures the new covenant promise of a changed heart (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26-27).

The clearest Christological claim is 'Lord of the Sabbath', stated by the Son of Man in 6:5. The Sabbath was commanded by God at Sinai, so a claim to be its Lord is a claim to a place alongside God as the giver of the law. His appeal to David as a type is also important. David, the anointed king, was hungry and ate what was normally reserved for priests, and the law bent to the need of the king and his men (1 Samuel 21:1-6). Jesus is the greater Son of David whose followers share in his freedom.

The choice of the Twelve after a whole night of prayer shows Jesus acting as the head of a renewed Israel. The twelve apostles recall the twelve tribes, an echo that Revelation 21:14 makes explicit when it names the twelve apostles of the Lamb as the foundations of the new Jerusalem's wall. In the sermon, Jesus speaks with an authority that goes beyond the prophets, who said 'thus says the Lord'. In Matthew he says repeatedly that he says to his hearers something beyond what was said to those of old, and in Luke the final saying makes obedience to his own words the test of building on rock (6:46-49).

The closing parable also points beyond itself. Jesus asks why people call him Lord and do not do what he says. The title Lord is the one the Greek Old Testament uses for God, and Luke uses it of Jesus from the start (2:11). The Sermon on the Plain therefore does not merely give ethical advice. It describes life under the rule of the Lord who has come, and it asks to be heard as his voice.