On Line Bible Study - For the Week February 27-March 4, 2012

Lesson 525

John 5: ¹ Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ⁵ One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?”

We are considering John 5:1-15 - the full text is available by clicking on the link. The photo above is a picture of excavations at the site of the Pool where the text took place.

Amid all the complexities of this story - such as:

• What exactly is the name of the pool?
• There is no evidence of faith on the part of the paralyzed man, only pity on the part of Jesus.
• We aren't certain as to which 'feast' the story refers to.
  

... it seems to come down to one issue: the Sabbath. This is one thing Jesus does over and over again - he violates the laws of the Sabbath. In this story, by telling the man to "pick up your mat ..." Jesus is commanding the man to violate it as well. And this becomes the sticking point. The fact that the man is healed gets lost in the story. Adhering to the laws associated with the Sabbath becomes more important than the fact that, for this man, he once was paralyzed, but now he is free.

Another interesting fact - we don't find out it is the Sabbath until after the healing has occurred. Unlike the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) where such stories often begin with this information (see Mark 1:21 and 2:23), John waits until the healing has taken place and Jesus has 'slipped away' in the crowd - then he tells us as with an almost "by the way" tone - That day was the Sabbath ... Once this fact is introduced it completely takes over the story.

This is a "sign" in John's Gospel - a way of indicating both the power and the authority of Jesus. What is Jesus' relationship to the Law of Moses? It also presents us with a connection between sin and suffering - a connection Jesus will reject later in the Gospel (John 9:1ff). In verse 14 Jesus cautions the man to sin no more lest worse things befall him. Perhaps our suffering is the result of sin; in any event, Jesus is master over the effects of sin in our lives.

It is also a reflection point - How many of our "important rules" are really all that important? The fact that , for the Jewish leaders the Sabbath rules seem to take precedence over the miracle of healing, now we have the opportunity to ask ourselves how much time we spend obsessing on the irrelevant. How many blessings slip away because they don't come wrapped quite the way we think they should be?

No ... this story isn't about 'healing'; it's about Jesus and his authority. That will become apparent in our next study.