What Would Jesus Do?: John 5:1-9 - Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

If it’s Lent, get the fish…

That’s the rule I made for myself anytime I’m eating out and I’m wearing my clerics. 

On my first Ash Wednesday in ministry, I needed a quick meal before service, so I visited the local Arby’s and ordered a roast beef sandwich. 

As I sat down to eat, I noticed a woman looking at me in shocked disbelief. Then it occurred to me: I was dressed in my clerics, and eating meat on Ash Wednesday, which is forbidden in the Roman Catholic tradition. 

Lutherans and Presbyterians are not bound by such rules, but rather than causing a stir, it’s easier to just order the fish, or a meatless breakfast (if it’s available). 

But my faux pas at Arby’s pales in comparison to the stir Jesus caused in today’s Gospel…

Photo by Robert Sciberras on Unsplash

It begins with a man seated beside the Pool of Bethsaida who’d been ill for 38 years. There was a long-held pagan belief that when the water bubbled up, the first person into the pool would be healed. 

Jesus asks him, “do you want to be made well?” He does, but nobody will help him into the water. Jesus says, “stand up, take your mat and walk.

At once, the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. This was a miracle. But the religious leaders aren’t celebrating.

A sacred law had been broken. It was the Sabbath Day, and carrying a mat was considered work. 

It didn’t matter that Jesus healed the man, or that Jesus saw no need for the man to leave his mat on the ground to be lost or stolen. 

Jesus brazenly violated Holy Law. If Jesus is telling people to carry their mats on the Sabbath Day, what’s next? Befriending Samaritans? Forgiving a woman caught in adultery instead of stoning her? Claiming to be God’s Son?

Jesus ministered in a time when obedience to divine law outweighed all other concerns, including human suffering need. That’s not to say that they wanted this poor man to suffer, but Jesus should have healed the man the right way. Jesus could’ve waited until sundown, then healed the man. Or he could’ve told the man to leave the mat where it lay.

Whatever the case, obedience to the law outweighed all other concerns, including human suffering and need. Acts of mercy and compassion were to be done in a manner keeping with the law.

This mindset persists today. If doing something helpful or necessary transgresses God’s Law, then you shouldn’t do it. And we are very quick to apply this standard to other people, especially those most different from us. Think about it: if you transgress divine law and/or civil law to save yourself or your children from persecution or starvation, does that make you a criminal? Have you committed a mortal sin? And if someone bends or breaks divine to civil law to help you, are they a criminal, too? 

Please understand: Jesus was not promoting lawlessness. The Ten Commandments are just as important for us today as they were on Mount Sinai. But godly obedience requires more than simply knowing God’s Law and following it. When you do that, you are only thinking of what’s right for you. Love of neighbor matters, too. Good works matter—not only because you’re commanded to do them, but because your neighbor needs them.  Jesus saw the sick man’s need for Sabbath from his suffering and gave it to him. 

True righteousness goes beyond knowing God’s Law and following it. True righteousness means looking to Jesus, asking that important question, “what would Jesus do?” “How will my words or deeds bear witness to Jesus?” 

Sometimes, the demands of the law and the needs of the neighbor may to be at odds. Life is full of complicated moral conundrums that don’t have easy answers. There are moral crises in society that don’t have easy answers. Not everyone is going to have the same answer to the question, “what would Jesus do?” That’s why you must always be coming to Jesus in prayer and listening to Jesus in Scripture. That’s why we should be asking the difficult questions instead of avoiding them, and having the difficult conversations, so that we can give the world something more than our silence. 

Bottom line, you cannot be righteous while withholding mercy and charity to the neighbor in need. Just the same, condemning others does not make you righteous. Nobody needs the forgiveness of Jesus more or less than the other. We are all beggars for his mercy.

There is no righteousness apart from Christ. We have no righteousness to claim apart from Christ. He is the one who fulfills the Law, he is the one through whom we know the law and obey it; he is the one we serve whenever we do good to those who are the least in God’s family.

John 5:1-18 (NRSVue)

5 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

² Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethzatha, which has five porticoes. ³ In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. ⁵ One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶ 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?” ⁷ The ill 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.” ⁸ Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a Sabbath. ¹⁰ 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.”¹¹ But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’ ” ¹² They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” ¹³ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. ¹⁴ 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.” ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶ Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. ¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”¹⁸ 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.