From the Daily Lectionary for Wednesday in the Second Week of Lent
John 5:1-18
After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
Here is some more critique directed toward the religious elite, the institution. The writer artfully sets up the critique. He tells a tear-jerker of a story about a man who has tried to get healed for some thirty eight years. Jesus has compassion on him and heals him. Rather than celebrate a good deed, the religious establishment upbraids Jesus for healing on the Sabbath; and in an absurdly narrow interpretation of “work” on the Sabbath, upbraids the healed man for daring to stand and to take up his mat.
Lest we miss the point of the story, Jesus informs the religious authorities, that God doesn’t take a day off on the Sabbath. God is continually about the business of healing and restoration. The point, of course, is that the institution places more value on serving itself, its rituals, its traditions, instead of on those for whom the Church exists in the first place: the poor, the infirm, the excluded, those upon whom God has cast particular focus.
In our post-modern Western affluent culture, we have experienced the same disconnection. We have spent countless hours of time and energy… and money on the care-giving of ourselves. Don’t get me wrong. We are meant to take care of each other; but the mission of the church is to bring the good news of God’s favor, that is to say, well-being and dignity, to those without those two things: the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the shamed, the left-out. We care for each other, first because that is what good people do; but more important, we care for each other so that we are empowered to fulfill our vocation of bearing God’s life to the world. We are nurtured as a fellowship at God’s table, and then we are sent as nurture ourselves into a world not so fortunate.
Our society, one might argue, is defined by self-interest being a cardinal virtue. Collectively, we call it Manifest Destiny. The church, despite its allegiance to the one who gave his life for the world, largely reflects the society in which it exists. We have to pay attention to that. The Gospels teach us that our highest priority is to live for our neighbor. That is radically counter-cultural in the world in which we live. We have to keep asking the question, “Whom do we serve?” The alchemy, the irony of God’s love, is that by serving our neighbor, we too are graciously served.
A Prayer for Mission (BCP p. 101)
Jesus our Savior, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name. Amen.
