URC Daily Devotion Thursday 22 May 2025

St John 5: 10 – 29

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

Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.  Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes.  The Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son,  so that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father. Anyone who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him.  Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life.

‘Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.  For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself;  and he has given him authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man.  Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice  and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

Reflection

John’s Gospel used to be my favourite, showing us Jesus as Love itself. God, walking, teaching, healing, prophesying, frightening worried people that their lives fall short.  John now fails for me with quite clear antisemitism and not a little misogyny.  I work at digging out what the writer laid out so that readers would believe that Jesus is the Messiah and that belief in him will bring eternal life.

Bible reading always carries the reminder that, thousands and more years old, it was – and is – edited in very different cultures than our own. In this cultural time some politicians and elite people across the planet are taking us back to historical social injustice. It is our task now, perhaps more than any other time, to name the things which don’t meet 21st Century standards of justice and, at the same time, dig for universal truth wherever we find it. God was there then, is here now, and knows how hard it is for people to love each other.  That’s the biggest Why of Jesus. That perhaps, some time in some millennia, we might just get it, we might just get Jesus, we might just realise that loving each other is what Jesus was trying to get us to do.  To make it easier, Holy Spirit was poured out to give us energy to do it.  Why don’t we?  God alone knows.

In the meantime, we can try to accept that, yes, Jesus was healing on the Sabbath. There we are. Jesus called God his own Father. Yup. Jesus restores life to those who have died. Physical dead bodies reliving, or the living ‘dead’ – people so mentally injured that they have lost all feeling of living?  Jesus definitely meant the latter and in his time, demonstrated a few times that he meant the former as well.  Let’s accept it. And get on with the new life of justice which God showers on us all.

Prayer

Eternal and always present God, help, help, help.
We don’t know our own blocks to belief, but they trip us up.
Expose them by your grace and gift us Spirit energy to accept your eternal life.
It will help us change your world and for that we always pray.
Amen and amen.