What is it in us that takes a simple notion like "making space for God", and surrounds it with laws? In Jesus' lifetime, keeping the Sabbath had become a major worry. All work was forbidden, and work was classified under thirty-nine different headings. Time and again, Jesus ran into trouble with the scribes and Pharisees over keeping the sabbath. For the Rabbis this was a matter of deadly sin, and of life and death. When Jesus and his disciples plucked and ate ears of corn on the Sabbath as they wandered through the cornfields, the rabbis saw them as guilty of four different offences: reaping, winnowing, threshing and preparing a meal. All of these were forbidden on the sabbath. When the Pharisees threw this accusation at Jesus, he came back with a memorable phrase, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.' (Mark 2:27) Human beings were there before any regulations or laws, and human need overrides any law. The Sabbath meets a human need, for space and a break from work.
[source: http://sacredspace.ie]
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