Family
Read John 5:1-30.
Families are complicated. Family relationships get twisted, tangled and confusing. If you haven't experienced that already in your life, you will. Add a little bit of stress or a traumatic event and things get crazy. In such times, you either see the best of humanity in your family, or the worst. Add faith into the mix, and it's bound to get even more intense.
What we have at the end of this passage is a family squabble—a family of faith squabble. Jesus is sparring with the Jewish leaders over the matter of authority. Jesus, remember, was a Jew. He was a faithful Jew, and he reminds us that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). But he wasn't toeing the line. He wasn't doing what, in their estimation, a good faithful Jew should do, and he certainly wasn't being who the Messiah was supposed to be! After all, he broke the simplest rule: the Sabbath rule. It was quite simple: you don't work on the Sabbath, and yet Jesus has just healed a man on the Sabbath. That was work. And it was wrong. He should have waited until the next day, in their understanding.
But Jesus insists he's in the right, and the reason is because his Father is always working (5:17). Now, every good Jew knew the creation story, and especially the part that said God rested on the seventh day (the Sabbath, Genesis 2:1-3). Is Jesus contradicting what they have always known about God?
Jesus goes on to give a long, somewhat rambling dissertation on the relationship between the Father and the Son—and he never really addresses the matter of the Sabbath (though he does over in Mark's Gospel, where he reminds his hearers that the Sabbath was a gift for humankind, and not meant to be a legalistic burden). What I hear him saying in these verses, over and above everything else, is that as the Son, he is committed to doing exactly what the Father tells him and shows him to do—even if that includes healing a man on the Sabbath. His call, his desire is always and only to please the one who sent him.
Talk about complicated family relationships! How do we even begin to untangle the relationship between Father and Son in this passage? That's not Jesus' point. He wants us to know that when we watch him, we're seeing him do exactly what the Father would do. The Father has a bigger agenda and a wider view than the rules and the guidelines of the religious leaders allows for. Jesus is calling us to get on board with his agenda rather than our own. Are we willing to do that, even if he challenges some of our most cherished (though human-made) rules?
Families are complicated. Family relationships get twisted, tangled and confusing. If you haven't experienced that already in your life, you will. Add a little bit of stress or a traumatic event and things get crazy. In such times, you either see the best of humanity in your family, or the worst. Add faith into the mix, and it's bound to get even more intense.
What we have at the end of this passage is a family squabble—a family of faith squabble. Jesus is sparring with the Jewish leaders over the matter of authority. Jesus, remember, was a Jew. He was a faithful Jew, and he reminds us that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). But he wasn't toeing the line. He wasn't doing what, in their estimation, a good faithful Jew should do, and he certainly wasn't being who the Messiah was supposed to be! After all, he broke the simplest rule: the Sabbath rule. It was quite simple: you don't work on the Sabbath, and yet Jesus has just healed a man on the Sabbath. That was work. And it was wrong. He should have waited until the next day, in their understanding.
But Jesus insists he's in the right, and the reason is because his Father is always working (5:17). Now, every good Jew knew the creation story, and especially the part that said God rested on the seventh day (the Sabbath, Genesis 2:1-3). Is Jesus contradicting what they have always known about God?
Jesus goes on to give a long, somewhat rambling dissertation on the relationship between the Father and the Son—and he never really addresses the matter of the Sabbath (though he does over in Mark's Gospel, where he reminds his hearers that the Sabbath was a gift for humankind, and not meant to be a legalistic burden). What I hear him saying in these verses, over and above everything else, is that as the Son, he is committed to doing exactly what the Father tells him and shows him to do—even if that includes healing a man on the Sabbath. His call, his desire is always and only to please the one who sent him.
Talk about complicated family relationships! How do we even begin to untangle the relationship between Father and Son in this passage? That's not Jesus' point. He wants us to know that when we watch him, we're seeing him do exactly what the Father would do. The Father has a bigger agenda and a wider view than the rules and the guidelines of the religious leaders allows for. Jesus is calling us to get on board with his agenda rather than our own. Are we willing to do that, even if he challenges some of our most cherished (though human-made) rules?
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