Big Idea: The joyful inclusiveness of Jesus’s ministry contrasts with the joyless ritual of formal religion.

Understanding the Text

The note of controversy that came into Luke’s story with the accusation of blasphemy by scribes and Pharisees against Jesus in 5:21 is now further developed in two scenes in which he is criticized first for mixing with people regarded as irreligious and second for not imposing a proper disciplinary regime on his disciples. The impression thus grows stronger that Jesus’s whole approach to religion is fundamentally different from that of the scribes and Pharisees, and the Sabbath controversies in 6:1–11 will underline this difference. This theme will lead up to his eventual confrontation with the authorities in Jerusalem.

But alongside the controversy, and in…