Luke 6:1
And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.
It was the Sabbath, and the grain was ripening and ready for the sickle as Jesus and His disciples passed through the standing fields on their way back from worship. He had prolonged His teaching and healing work to a late hour, and the disciples had been a long time without food, so they were hungry. Passing through the field in that hunger, they plucked heads of wheat, rubbed the kernels in their hands, and ate them to satisfy their need.
What they did was permitted by the law of God, which allows a hungry passerby to pluck ears with the hand from a neighbor's standing corn to satisfy hunger. The same permission extends to grain, orchard fruit, or vineyard produce taken to meet immediate hunger, while it forbids putting a sickle to the neighbor's standing corn. On the Sabbath, however, the rabbis treated the same act as a double desecration, counting gathering as a kind of reaping and rubbing as a kind of threshing. Scribes, Pharisees, and Jewish rulers, prompted by the enemy, impatiently watched and spied on every word and action to find cause to accuse, and finding nothing else charged Jesus and His disciples with breaking the Sabbath for plucking, rubbing, and eating.
The charge was false, for what Christ and the disciples did was in harmony with the Sabbath commandment, so they were guiltless and innocent in the deed. Christ repelled the charge and, with a dignity He alone possesses, covered the disciples with the shield of His own divine prerogatives as God in the flesh. The incident reveals who He is: the One sent of God as the greatest Teacher the world ever knew, the One who made the Sabbath and is Lord of the Sabbath.
He kept the Sabbath according to God's law rather than conforming to burdensome human requirements that made God appear as a tyrant and Sabbath-keeping appear hard-hearted and cruel. By so doing He cleared away misconception, rejected false teachings that had distorted the institution, and reflected the character of the loving Heavenly Father, while the Sabbath remained binding. The false charge exposes the foolishness, weakness, fallibility, and blindness of human judgment and illustrates how people can misinterpret the Sabbath and work blindly against its purpose. The disciples' eating from another person's field illustrates God's provision for the needy built into His laws.