At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. – Matthew 12:1

 Today's Scripture Reading (November 5, 2020): Matthew 12

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November." These are the openings words of the childhood rhyme that commemorates the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The plot was orchestrated by a group of Catholic conspirators who wanted to assassinate King James I. The plan was to blow up the English Parliament, killing the King and the rest of the government, and replacing King James I with his nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth who, with the guidance given to her by the conspirators, would lead the nation from being governed by Protestants, to a country of Catholics.

But on the night of November 4-5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was found guarding a pile of wood not too far from thirty-six barrels of Gunpowder intended to be blown up the next day. Whether Fawkes was one of the key conspirators or just an unfortunate scapegoat, his name is probably best remembered in association with the plot. Fawkes was executed on January 31, 1606. And the children's rhyme was born;

          Remember, remember!

          The fifth of November,

          The Gunpowder treason and plot

          I know of no reason

          Why the Gunpowder treason

          Should ever be forgot!

Walking through the grainfields picking heads of grain is not quite the equivalent of blowing up parliament and killing the King, but the offense has some common ground with the Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes and his conspirators seemed to oppose the King on religious grounds. The fundamental problem was that the King was Protestant, and they were Catholic. The perceived reality, and the perception was likely right, was that the King was undermining the Roman Catholicism in England. And they desperately wanted that to change.

As Jesus's disciples picked the heads of grain as they walked through the grainfields on the Sabbath, according to Jewish Law, they were working. Regardless of how inconsequential that work might be, work was prohibited by the Law on the Sabbath. The result was that as the disciples walked through the grainfield, they were destroying the underpinnings of the Law of Moses and Judaism. And that they were doing so with the blessings of a popular rabbi only made their actions more troubling. There might as well have been a gunpowder bomb under the grainfield because all of Judaism, a religious belief system that hinged on the keeping of the Mosaic Law, was in the process of being destroyed. And it wasn't going to take a bomb to destroy the Jewish faith, just a few heads of grain.    

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Mark 3