In the gospel today, we find two different conflicts. The story of King David shows a conflict between the law and the right to life. And we see another one between the law and the Son of Man.

Conflicts or competitions among different desires, demands, rights, duties and responsibilities call for an order of priorities. In other words, we have to decide what is more important. From the time of old, the man evaluated various values and attempted to synthesize a value system. Despite differences, world civilizations agree on most key values such as life, family, human dignity, peace, and equity.

But when the Church preached the gospel, humanity gladly accepted Christian values. Why? Humanity recognized the truth in Christianity. Humanity saw Christianity lift humanity to the union with divinity. By accepting the Son of Man as the Lord of all, humanity became adopted children of God. No longer the Sabbath law or any other human authority could take precedence over humanity. The man is elevated to the brotherhood of the Son of God.

When humanity ignores the Son of Man it enters again into the darkness of confusion and conflict. Once again, all kinds of desires and demands compete against one another. And the ones with power and deceiving tongues prevail there.

Western societies have so highly developed legal systems that even lawyers cannot encompass all the laws. But daily, we encounter unreasonableness and injustice in our justice system. We doubt if our laws faithfully reflect people’s values. As Western societies remove God from their public sphere, humanity suffers its degradation. The Son of Man does not want to be the Lord of the Sabbath for his gratification. When he becomes the Lord of the Sabbath, we will recover our true human dignity as his brothers.