John 5: testimony weightier than that of John



Eigenheim Church - Photo by Maryvel Friesen - thanks, Maryvel

John 5: Jesus vs. the "Jewish leaders."

Now here's a story that should bring a chuckle. Near the pool of Bethesda lies a paralytic on a mat, hoping someone will help him into the healing waters of the pool. Jesus walks by, sees him and heals his paralysis. The man gets up and walks away. He's spotted by some elders/rabbis/pharisees—John doesn't make their identity clear—who charge the man with breaking Sabbath law . . . by carrying his mat.

The oddities of other people's beliefs was in the news lately when Stephen Harper defended the refusal by a citizenship court to allow a woman wearing a Niqab to take the oath. Some dozen years ago, we were all bent out of shape here in Canada because a man of the Sikh religion wanted to wear a turban AND be a Mountie. I imagine there are people who find the Christian choice of a cross as its symbol somewhat odd, or the importance they place on Jesus' mother conceiving while a virgin.

Carrying a mat on the Sabbath strikes me as pretty odd and counter-intuitive, especially given the circumstance of the healing of the paralytic.

We sometimes note discrepancies in the scriptural message when we read it as one book. Jesus' admonition to the healed paralytic to "Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you" seems to tie physical health to holy living. Yet in John 9, we read: "As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him." These were two different men, of course, and two different situations but together they create an ambivalence about the relationship between sin and health.

We know, of course, that illnesses strike the general population almost indiscriminately, pious and "sinner" alike, but we also know that life style choices affect health, so the connection can't be dismissed either.

It's little surprise that the temple leadership would take exception to Jesus' healing on the Sabbath, even more so that he should claim to be the Son of God. The remainder of John 5 is Jesus' defense of his authority over matters including the Sabbath by virtue of his kinship with the Father, the same Father under whose direction they believe themselves to be acting. The conflict lines are clearly drawn. At the core of his defense are two "proofs:" the works he is doing and has done, and the testimony of the prophets who promised his coming.

"I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸ nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹ You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life."

Clearly, there is a call to awakening in John's account, a call to replace religion with spiritual renewal. For the early church, I imagine, the reading of the Gospel of John would help recall where they had come from and where their hopes lay in this new Kingdom, a Kingdom in which the numbing legalism of the past is vanquished and the spirit of a living faith takes its place. It's no longer a regime of orthodoxy and legal repression that stultifies, it's a place where, for instance, the restoration of a paralytic to life obviously takes precedence over the carrying of a mat on the Sabbath.

But there's comfort in the arms of orthodoxy. Many—the "Jewish leadership" included, would reject the call to renewal and the awakening of a living faith.