There are borders and then there are borders. When I was a child, my mom would darken the outlines of characters in coloring books because she saw how I tended to go wild with my crayons and go outside the lines. She would say, “Color within the lines.”

As a new homeowner more than 20 years ago when we lived in New Jersey, I learned what it meant to shovel mounds of snow. I also learned what being a good neighbor is. One neighbor and our side of the street took a snow plow and stopped right at the edge of our property sidewalk. But our other neighbor, Frank, who lived across the street, would use his motorized plowing machine to clear his sidewalk, the neighbors on both sides of his home, and then come across the street to our home and clear our sidewalk.

Why is it that we humans draw such strict, sharp border lines that say, “Do not cross. Do not pass.” Think of the southern U.S. wall. Then there’s the opposite human tendency – to cross over the border line and possess the space as if it were yours to do what you will. Think of Russia invading Ukraine, and the protracted incursions and invasions which the Near East region knows all too well. Whenever and wherever there’s gender-based violence and human trafficking, there’s crossing the line, the border of one’s humanity into another. It’s a violation against one’s personhood, one’s right to live freely. It steals another human’s agency through force. It’s inhuman. It’s anti-human.

Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, is the Savior of the world and is the very embodiment of what it means to be human, fully alive. In who Jesus is, in what he does, in what he says, and in his being, he exhibits what humanity is meant to be. So why does he get questioned, scolded, and berated for allowing his friends to pluck some wheat, presumably to make bread in order to eat and/or to share with others to eat? And why does he similarly get questioned, scolded, and berated for healing an unnamed man in the synagogue? The text says that his detractors were ones who wanted to keep the straight, permanent line of the Sabbath as strictly no work, none whatsoever, not even to feed the hungry or heal the sick and brokenhearted.

Jesus shows another, more excellent way. He teaches that he is the Lord of the Sabbath, the giver and maker of our days. How do we number and spend our living days? In Spirit-time, Jesus teaches and shows that our days, particularly the God-given Sabbath, are well spent when we are helping others so that they may rest, so that they, too, may flourish. How unjust it would be for me to kick-up my heels and rest when there are many at my neighborhood who can’t rest because they have to find food. How inhuman it would be for us to walk past someone needing immediate medical care. There are borders that are helpful. But there’s a whole lot of borders that are unhelpful and hurtful. Spirit-time shows us the helpful kinds. And Jesus tells and shows the difference: love neighbor and stranger. Against such, there is no law nor limit.