Word to the Wise
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
[Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12 and John 5:1-16]Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.
Thirty-eight years is a long time to be sick! According to some apocryphal verses that are not included in modern translations, there was a tradition about an angel that came down periodically to stir up the water. Supposedly the first person to get there after the water was stirred would be healed. One can imagine the pandemonium! It explains the response of the sick man to Jesus when Jesus asks if he would like to be healed. I have heard more than one preacher suggest that the response is evasive. The guy may have made a living begging there and didn't want to get to the pool first since that would deprive him of his living! It's an interesting thought but the text suggests that the guy simply misunderstands Jesus, as do many others in the Gospel of John. Like the man born blind (Chap 9) and Lazarus (chap 11), this incident serves as a way of setting up conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities because the healing takes place on a sabbath. Jesus' message is that God continues to "work" on the sabbath. That gives us the big picture. The statement quoted above is a smaller picture but still an important one. Elsewhere, (especially Chap 9) Jesus rejects a necessary connection between illness and sin as if illness is a punishment for sin, especially vicarious punishment (punishing the children for the sins of the parents). His statement to the healed man is a warning that worse things than being lame can happen to a person who fails to live the right kind of life. Perhaps putting both the big picture and the small picture together we might come to the conclusion that God never takes a vacation from us and it's not a good idea for us to take a vacation from God! AMEN
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