The Gospel According to John Chapter 5
Originally posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008
General Comment: The Chapter begins
with the time reference to a festival of the Jews. Based on the previous
passage which is set in Samaria, there is a grain harvest near Schechem. This
establishes an approximate time as May/June indicating that the festival
is probably Shabuoth (Pentecost or Feast of Weeks), a celebration of Moses'
receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. This would be
Jesus' second visit to Jerusalem. The scene is in the Temple
precincts on a Sabbath day. Jesus will heal a crippled man setting the stage
for the first of John's accounts of Jesus' controversies with the
Pharisees. John will follow this confrontation with a long
theological monologue in which Jesus establishes his authority as the Son of
God to heal on the Sabbath. He will then
present several witnesses to the truth of his authority as the one
sent by God..
We have already read
John's use of the term "the Jews." Occasionally this is in reference
to the Jewish people in general as in 4:22 where it is used positively. Most
uses will be negative with the "Jews" used as a collective term
for Jesus' antagonists who seek to kill him. Such a use reflects more
than Jesus' experience. It is also the experience of John's community as
it struggles with well established Rabbinical Judaism that
is strongly reacting to John's insistent emphasis on Jesus' divinity.
John's location for
the story is confusing. The description of a pool with five porticoes
fits a site northeast of the Temple where such a pool has been discovered
in recent excavations. The area is named Bethesda as is the pool. It is near
the Sheep Gate through which sheep were brought into the Temple for sacrifice.
There also may have been a sheep pool in this area for "purification"
of the sheep prior to slaughtering. The Pool of Bethesda is in the shape of a
trapezoid, 165 feet wide at one end and 220 feet wide at the other.
The pool was 315 feet long with a center partition. At each corner there was a
stairway into the pool allowing descent into the water. On all sides and
on the partition were a series of regularly spaced columns (the five porticoes
of vs. 2).
The pool was thought to have healing powers. As the folktale went, on
occasions an angel would descend into the pool stirring the water and whoever
stepped in first while the water was stirring would be healed. More probably
the spring that fed the pool flowed intermittently causing the water to move.
It is in this portico that Jesus will find the man whose limbs have atrophied.
In the time of Jesus such a condition was thought to be the result of sin, a
spirit of illness. Jesus seems not to have held that belief and his healing
frequently occurs in the context of his role in the cosmic battle
against Satan.
John Chapter 5 Part I 5:1-18 Jesus Heals on the Sabbath
The man had been an
invalid for thirty eight years. Today he came to the pool and lay on
his poor man's mat among many others, some like him, some blind
or lame. He intently watched the water to see if would be stirred. When it did
he made a valiant effort to crawl along the stone trying to reach the stairs
into the water. But he was too weak and others, some with the help of a friend
or relative to help, reached the water before him. He was alone. There was no
one to help him and he returned to his mat to wait. It happened that day Jesus
walked along one of the porticoes and saw the man laying there alone. He knew
the man had been there a long time. His face was lined with the years of his
suffering. It was the face of hopelessness Jesus saw on so many of the
poor and sick peasants. "Do you want to be made well?" Jesus asked.
"I have no one to help me into the water." The words were more
of the sigh of one who had given up hope. "I will help you.
Stand up, take up your mat and walk." He did and he could walk and before
he could turn to thank the stranger for this gift, Jesus was gone.
It was a Sabbath day
and the newly restored man was walking through the Temple precincts when a
gathering of Pharisees saw him carrying his mat. To them this was an
unconscionable violation of the Sabbath ordinance against work and they were
quick to berate the man for his infraction. "But the man who made me well
told me take it up and walk." So there was someone abetting this wrongful
act. They demanded to know who this other guilty party was, but Jesus had
slipped away into the crowd. Later that day Jesus found the healed man walking
about the courtyard, enjoying his new found freedom. "You are walking
again are you? Be sure now that you do not sin any more lest something worse
happens to you."
The man was quick to
find the Pharisees who had asked him about the one who healed him. Surely they
would want to find him and thank him for his act of compassion. They did
indeed want to find him but not for any congratulatory reason. When they did
find him they bitterly attacked his actions as blasphemous. Not only did
he tell the man to act in a way which violated the tradition, but by his
healing of the man on a Sabbath he too had acted in a way that
was considered to be work. Jesus' answer was quick and to the point:
My Father is working every day, even on the Sabbath and so am I. The
Pharisees are livid. Not only does this shameless sinner admit his wrongdoing,
he claims his sin to be on the same level as God, whom he calls his own
father. He claims the authority to act as God who
alone has the prerogative to work on the Sabbath. This Jesus has
the audacity to commit the sin of Adam, to presume himself to be equal to God.
John Chapter 5 Part II 5:19-29 The Authority of the Son
Jesus will not let
this charge go unanswered. He does not consider himself as God's equal.
Rather he understands himself to be in an intimate unity of purpose. God's
works are Jesus' works. He can do nothing on his own. He does only what he sees
the Father doing. He says only what he hears the Father saying. Like a parent
who loves the child God shows Jesus everything he is doing and gives the
Son the authority to do the same, no matter the day of the week. As the Father
gives life so the Son has authority to give life so that all may honor the
Son as they honor the Father. Indeed, not honoring the son is the same as not
honoring the Father who sent the Son.
All those who hear
Jesus' words and believe in the God who sent him, already have eternal
life and do not pass through judgment but pass from spiritual death to eternal
life. The hour is coming when even those in the grave will hear the Son's voice
and come out to the resurrection of eternal life or eternal condemnation
according to their deeds.
John Chapter 5 Part III 5:30-47 Witnesses to Jesus
John frames the
issue of witnesses to Jesus' authority. Jesus cannot give testimony on his own
behalf but there are several witnesses who testify to Jesus' authority as
the one sent by God. John the Baptist was in the wilderness and he testified to
the truth about Jesus even before he saw him. But there is a testimony
greater than John's. The works God has given to Jesus to
complete and which he is doing now testify to his
authority as the one sent by God. Even God testifies to who Jesus is and his
authority as the one sent by God. God does so through the Scriptures
which the Pharisees vainly search for their salvation. But they are mistaken,
for the Scripture itself testifies to Jesus as the one who brings eternal life
and yet they refuse to come to him for that life. They neither have the love of
God abiding in them nor do they accept the one who comes in God's name.
But when the time comes it is not the Son who will judge them before God, it is
Moses (Torah), on whom they have set their hopes, who will be their
accuser. If they cannot believe Moses neither can they believe the Son.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Much of vss. 19-47 is
difficult to follow. There are several themes John would want
to understand as constituent parts of his image of Jesus as the
Son of God.
1. Jesus is not
God's equal. He relies on and trusts in God for everything he says and
does in his ministry.
2. Jesus has a deep
sense of connection to God, intimate to the degree that he has come to know
that God has given him certain works to do and he is under what he feels is a
divine necessity to complete them - what we might call a unity of purpose.
3. As the one sent
by God, it is Jesus through whom God conveys the gift of eternal life, a life
which begins in the believer's present, to be fulfilled in the coming Kingdom.
4. Jesus is the
spiritual axis around which turns the human need to choose for or against God
as represented by and revealed in and through Jesus. Jesus is the light that
shines on and brings clarity to the choices we have.
5. There are many
witnesses to the meaning of Jesus' life open to all who would wish to learn from
them. Among them are the Scriptures and the human witnesses who have already
experienced the life offered by Jesus.
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