“Have you never read,” answered Jesus, “what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and his companions –
too often caught
reactive
yesterday’s gift forgotten
blind
today danger looms
ultimate
blockading perspective
vanity
it’s my responsibility
recycledmemory
remembers to share
opening
intersecting pathways
creative
depths and movements
future
possibilities available now
options
caught and applied
“Said” is too neutral a word in this scene, Consider something closer to “retorted” or “responded in kind”.
If Jesus has not recently been on retreat it would be understandable that he is using arrogant rhetoric intended to end an argument before it can be lost. It would be expected that any Pharisee worth their salt would know all the stories about David. The reader might also be expected to know any David reference.
From this it is not unreasonable to see a glint in Jesus’ eye as he readies his return trap.
This anticipatory sparkle continues a long history of a question/counter-question form of argumentation among the Rabbis. Such back-and-forth questions as these offer a possibility to put us on track to reason together. Unfortunately, this same process can also be condescending rather than honest and deepen divides.
It will be important to be scrupulous in picking and choosing what, out of a common pot, is going to be focused upon. When we are coming from different perspectives but want to claim ourselves as the primary interpreter of history, we are but a step away from revisionism in its most difficult sense. So it is that differing Orders were formed within Roman Catholicism; a multitude of Lutheran Reformations reformed away from one another; United Methodists are using differing strands of their Wesleyan heritage to find yet another way to split apart. Without agreement on various pictures of an elephant by blind-men, we dissect the soul out of life. Simply naming David, like naming Jesus, does not give any assurance that we are talking about the same David or Jesus or Torah or Muḥammad or ….