God gives a sign to Hezekiah. We have very interesting relations with signs: either we reject them completely, or we long to receive them constantly. But God, strange as it may seem, looks at it completely from another site. He indeed uses the signs, sometimes miraculously and completely “unreal” - as in the reading of today, with the sun. But He doesn’t like, when we ask for signs. Here is an image depicted: sign is what He sends, when He desires. He uses this means, and that is why He doesn’t desire that we reject the signs, and do not believe in them, but the initiative comes from Him, and He has the right not to answer to the request of sending a sign.

Disputes about the Sabbath between Jesus and the Pharisees were constant—accusations of breaking it accompanied the Savior throughout His earthly ministry. Observing the Sabbath prohibitions would not seem to have been especially difficult—so why did He continually, and often pointedly, disregard them? One might, of course, explain everything by saying that Jesus Himself, like His followers, held a particular understanding of the norms and rules for observing the Sabbath rest, but was that the only issue?

If we turn to the Sabbath's original meaning, it becomes clear that this is a special, sacred time given to God and intended solely for communion with Him. All the rules and prohibitions are secondary; they are merely a means to the main purpose: that every seventh day should be spent not on ordinary, everyday affairs but in communion with God and in His presence. The strict treatment of those who violated the Sabbath rest was chiefly connected with the fact that an offender could easily disturb those around him—people who wanted to spend the day in peace and quiet but risked losing that opportunity because of neighbors who were too noisy or active. Yet as the Yahwistic, and later the Jewish, religious tradition developed, the prohibitions became ends in themselves, losing their supporting role and becoming almost the very purpose of the day. For many members of the Pharisaic brotherhood, the chief meaning of the Sabbath became not communion with God but observance of numerous prohibitions.

Jesus restores the Sabbath to its original meaning and enriches it with the new revelation He brought into the world. It is no accident that, in response to the Pharisees' accusations, He recalls the story of the consecrated bread that the high priest gave David even though he had no right to do so. There are situations in which an established order is broken. If the One who bears within Himself the fullness of the Kingdom has come into the world, then the Sabbath without Him loses all meaning. The situation has changed radically: it is now possible to spend the day not merely in communion with God but in communion with the Messiah in His Kingdom. To ignore this and behave as though nothing in the world had changed is to hollow out the Sabbath, leaving only its outward legalistic form. The Savior never tires of reminding His listeners of this so that the Sabbath may become for them not an observance of religious formalities but the beginning of the way into the Kingdom.

The scribes' accusations against Jesus are very serious: He is profaning the Sabbath, He is doing what must not be done, and "must not" in the highest, sacred sense - this is a violation of a divine commandment. Christ does not justify Himself; instead, He reminds them that King David once also did what was not permitted, and that even now the priests profane the Sabbath, and this profanation took place and still takes place in the Temple itself! Jesus deliberately uses such words, though He could have spoken more mildly. And if those violations seem forgivable to the scribes, what will they say if the One who is here is greater than David, greater than the priests, and greater than the Temple?

Christ shows them His divine-human freedom to do good on the Sabbath, the sacred day of God's perfection. The prohibition exists only so that human freedom will not be turned toward evil, toward destruction and death. This means that Jesus' actions announce that standing before them is the One who is incapable of evil: the Lord of the Sabbath.