Big Idea: Jesus, the Son of Man, declares that he has the authority to determine how the Sabbath should be observed.

Understanding the Text

The two Sabbath incidents in 6:1–11 complete the series of confrontation stories that began in 5:17–26, and the concluding discussion of “what they might do to Jesus” sets an ominous note for the further development of the story.

But alongside the official opposition, we are now more fully introduced to the contrasting group of Jesus’s committed followers. We have read of the call of some of them in 5:1–11, 27–28, but now the inner circle of the Twelve is formalized. It is they who will form the primary audience for Jesus’s teaching on discipleship in 6:17–49, and who will be a constant presence during the story of Jesus’s itinerant ministry right u…