Religious Authority
John 5:1-18
Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
John 5:1 After these things there was aa feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
John 5:2 Now there is in Jerusalem by athe sheep gate a pool, which is called bin 1Hebrew 2Bethesda, having five porticoes. 3 In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [1waiting for the moving of the waters; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.] 5 A man was there who had been 1ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He *said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” 7 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when athe water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus *said to him, “aGet up, pick up your pallet and walk.” 9 Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.
aNow it was the Sabbath on that day. 10 So athe Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and bit is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” 11 But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?” 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. 14 Afterward Jesus *found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not asin anymore, bso that nothing worse happens to you.” 15 The man went away, and told athe Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason athe Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” 18 For this reason therefore athe Jews bwere seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, cmaking Himself equal with God.
This narrative is another one of Jesus’ healing signs. We have several of them in the Gospel of John, and each one has a special message for us. Each of these messages was important for the people in Jesus’ day but also vital to us. So why don’t we look at one of the messages you can get from this story? Quickly, I say one of the messages because all of the Gospels were written by Semitic writers. They always put nuances in the narratives so that you would be driven in different directions; however, the main point would always be the same. I know that sounds a little odd, but that’s because we learned the Greek method of learning and the Greek manner of writing.
So what Jesus was trying to say about the Sabbath. The book of Genesis tells us that God created the universe in six days. It could be debatable because some people say creation was seven days. That is true if you count the seventh day of rest as part of the creation. The number seven in the Scripture usually symbolizes the completion of something. Therefore, considering creation to be seven days, including the Sabbath, works well. However, the Hebrew people did not have the seventh day of rest until they were in the wilderness of Sinai. While they were captive in Egypt, Egyptians worked the people to death. They did not have a Sabbath.
When Israel traveled through the Sinai, Moses instituted the seventh day of rest. Over the centuries, the Sabbath had become a day to worship the Lord. According to the Hebrew calendar, the Sabbath day is Saturday. The early Jewish Christians worship Jesus and God on the Hebrew calendar’s seventh day. So you might ask why we are not worshiping God on Saturday instead of Sunday? The simple answer is that the Roman religion, the Mithras cult, celebrated the rising of Mithras from the grave on Sundays, the seventh day of the Greek calendar. This led to a lot of confusion at the beginning of Christianity until Emperor Constantine declared that church worship for Jesus would now be on Sunday. There are actually groups of Christians that worship on Saturday. One that comes to mind is the Christian Adventist church.
An interesting aside for a moment is that when I was growing up in Rosedale, Queens, located in New York City, the synagogue where my grandfather was a founder worshiped God on Saturday. At the beginning of this century, the synagogue was sold. The group that bought the synagogue was the Christian Adventist Church of Laurelton, New York. That was nice to know because it allowed worship to God on the same day it was intended for. That being said, let me get back to the gospel story.
So Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath day. We can look at the circumstances of the healing. We could look at the fact that the man was a professional beggar. We can look at the fact that this changed his life and profession. We could go through a number of other areas. I want to focus on the reaction that Jesus got from the religious authorities and leaders who happened to be there. They were not very happy that Jesus cured a man on the Sabbath. The interesting question that should pop into your mind is, what’s the problem? Why can’t a person be healed on the Sabbath?
The typical commentary reaction is that the religious leaders were trying to trap Jesus in a conspiracy or heresy and that they could get rid of him that way. Obviously, Jesus curing someone on the Sabbath was a pretty good clue that he disagreed with what the Pharisees and Sadducees were teaching the people. By the time of Jesus’s life, there were numerous laws and regulations written by religious leaders and authorities that governed the life of the people. What’s important to remember about Jesus’ day is that when the religious authorities and leaders barked orders, the people obeyed. Even though it was clear that the religious authority and leaders did not walk the walk of their talk, the common people had to do what they said.
It doesn’t work that way today. Let me give you an example. About 12 years ago, the Central Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a resolution against the lottery system. The conference declared that its members were not to play the lottery and that it would be sinful to do so. In Pennsylvania, the lottery was initially created to help low-income seniors to get medications. Was the Central Pennsylvania conference saying we shouldn’t help low-income seniors? Actually, that didn’t matter because the majority of the church members of the Central Pennsylvania conference did not pay any heed to that statement. Why did the church think it had the power and authority over the lives of its members?
That day is long gone. As I mentioned earlier, in Jesus’ day, the people followed what the religious authorities and leaders said that they had to do or would not do. The problem with these laws and regulations prevalent in Jesus’ day is that they added nothing to the people’s spirituality. These laws and regulations did not help people to get closer to God. The purpose of religion is to help people come closer to God and to learn how to express their spirituality. Now that’s a general statement, and there are a lot of tangents and other things I can add to it, but I believe that’s the central core of a religion. So when the Hebrew leaders and authorities in Jesus’ day went off the rails, actually this was building up for some time and started being intrusive in people’s lives, the problem became that the people didn’t worship God as the spiritual father that God is but rather God became materialistic. Why do I say that? It is because the rules and regulations required bringing sacrifices and gifts to the Jerusalem Temple – material things. The religious leaders and authorities convinced the people that if they did not bring gifts to God, God would not be there for them.
God is spirit and not material. God is interested in spiritual awareness and a relationship with every one of us. He gives us the material we need because our physical bodies need them. God doesn’t want sacrifices of material, grain, animals, and even money. Whoops, I stepped on a land mine with that last statement. Because the church does push tithing. We like to say that God gives us the gifts and talents to produce financial rewards and that God gets the first 10% of those rewards. From the beginning of its inception, the church has pushed that idea. And perhaps in the early church, the people did give. Actually, in the book of Acts, we know that people joined the Christian community and gave everything they had to the work of the apostles.
That’s not the way it works today, is it? Being a United Methodist pastor, I can tell you from the material I get from the General Conference that United Methodist members who attend church give about 1.8% of their income to the church. There’s an old motto that we use that goes something like this, the church has all the money it needs. The problem is it’s in the members’ pockets. I have been a part of a committee that went through the conference. I was told to tell people that tithing and giving money to the church is a spiritual matter. The Bishop wanted every church to provide him with every dime expected of them so that he could do what he wanted with it. Bear in mind this is my opinion of the way things worked.
I asked the question, what do you do if a church congregation does not feel they should give all the money that the conference requires? Oh, I got a massive lecture about were only going to talk about spirituality. I must tell you that the churches that did not give 100% of the required money to the conference did feel the pain the Bishop could inflict. I’m sure you’re shaking your head, saying this is wrong.
Unfortunately, I tangent off a bit here. Let me say that when you give a donation or tithe to your local church, you are supporting the spiritual awareness of God to the community you are a part of. Unfortunately, everything costs money. I’m not talking just about the salaries of the pastor and the secretary and whoever else you might have on staff but also the upkeep of your building, like cutting your grass. If the congregation members do not give the money for the upkeep of the church, the church will close. It is unfortunate that we live in a materialistic world that requires currency to survive. If you want your church to remain open, you have to financially support it. That’s the real truth about giving. I could go on and on about this, but I want to stop right there because there’s something more important in this message than going on about giving to the church. I’ll be honest with you I did one tithing sermon in 22 years only because the administration board demanded that I do it. It’s a gruesome subject.
Let me get back to the lottery ticket, which is the real point here. Jesus was saying that religious leadership they werebeing intrusive in people’s lives. They were dictating what you could do and couldn’t do. Then Jesus came along and said that as long as what you’re doing is in compliance with what God has given us in his laws, the Torah, it is okay to do it. In other words, Jesus was saying we don’t need a governing body to tell us how to live. Instead, we do need a community to come together who will share a time of worship and learning about God. When we come together for Sunday worship in today’s culture, we should learn something about God. That’s not what happens in most churches. The biggest complaint I ever got about my sermons was that people didn’t want to know about the history, culture, or circumstances of what the Scripture was saying. Instead, they wanted cutesy stories from anywhere from 20 minutes to 30 minutes so that they would leave feeling really good about going to church. Let me tell you, that is not the purpose of the sermon. The purpose of the sermon is to teach you something about the Bible because most people don’t go to Sunday school or to study Scripture and to challenge you to live following the way Jesus taught us to live.
As a pastor, I never dictated how people should live. I might talk about Ways and Means and how they are within and without the scope of God’s laws. I strongly believe we should all emulate Jesus in how we do things and think about people. But I do not feel I was ever given the authority to tell people how to live. I do not agree with any church hierarchy that dictates how we should live. By authority for what I do should come from the words of Jesus himself. He is the true example of how to live by the laws that God has given us. He is the authority that can tell how we please God by what we say and do. That is the bottom line of this healing story from this point of view. Jesus said to the Pharisees and Sadducees that they had created laws, in this case about the Sabbath, which were not biblical. He told the people to see the miracle of healing as a lesson on how they needed to live according to the Torah and not the way religious authorities and leaders were preaching.
Honestly, by doing this, you really upset that leadership. I would also say that if someone in leadership in my conference read this, I probably would be getting a phone call. But that’s okay. Question all religious authorities in any church today, and force them to give you a good argument as to why you should not live the life the way Jesus tells us to in the gospel, as opposed to their rules.
