Intro
Christ is risen! Peace to you!
I have prepared for you this reflection from the Gospel of St. John which I have entitled “the Compassion of Jesus for the Weary”.
Now, be encouraged by the reading of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ our Risen Lord from John 5:1-9 (CSB):
After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. A large crowd of the disabled lay there—the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?””Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.””Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.Now that day was the Sabbath.
Who is Jesus?
From this passage we can answer the question, “Who is Jesus?” by recognizing Him as the Great Physician. Throughout the holy gospels, we see Him as the merciful Lord, healing sick and broken people. In this particular account, a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years is instantly healed at Jesus’s word, enabling him to take up his mat and walk.
It is wonderful enough to consider the Lord as our great physician, but in this passage, we can also see that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.
Let us recall Genesis 2, where God first institutes the Sabbath:
“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”
This divine pattern of rest was later codified in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11):
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Jesus teaches us in chapter 2 of the gospel of St. Mark that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. What we see in the fuller gospel narrative is that Sabbath is really intended for man’s rest and restoration both physical and spiritual.
Unfortunately, by Jesus’s time, religious leaders had transformed the Sabbath from a gift of rest into a burden through countless additional regulations. St. Mark records for us in the 7th chapter of his gospel Jesus’s rebuke of this tendency, the Lord says:
“They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines human commands. Abandoning the command of God, you hold on to human tradition.”
Some examples of these man-created rules were that you couldn’t walk more than 3,000 feet, you couldn’t tie or untie a knot, you couldn’t write more than 2 letters of the alphabet, and among many other rules, the last one that I would include is that you could not administer medicine.
Well, just as the Creator set the Sabbath as a day for rest and life, Christ—who is one with the Father—reveals Himself as the One who both rightly interprets and perfects the Sabbath. He shows that the Sabbath is not about rigid legalism, but it is really about God’s mercy, healing, and renewal, all of which are embodied in Himself.
How does Jesus encourage us?
Now we can consider the question, “How does Jesus encourage us?”
In this passage, what we find is that the posture that Jesus takes with this man is the same posture that He takes with us. Because He is the great physician, and because we are sick and He knows full well how sick we are, this is why He came to us. Not only do our ailments and shortcomings not repulse or push Jesus away, but these are the very things that attract Him.
When we work hard to build our own kingdoms and we’re performing in our strength and we are successful and set apart by the riches of the world, these things do not impress the Lord and they do not draw Him.
However, for the one who is weary, for the one with the contrite heart—these are exceptional candidates for the healing touch of the great physician. And the good news of the gospel is that it is people such as these that the Lord actively seeks out and finds.
Jesus will pursue you, and He will find you. When He does, He might ask you like the paralytic, “Do you want to be made well?” What will you say? Let us not reject the One who is the way, the truth and the life.
How can we follow Jesus?
And finally, how can we answer the question, “How can we follow Jesus”?
Imagine being a paralytic for 38 years and hearing a man instruct you to pick up your mat and walk. What would you think? What would you feel? Would this sound ridiculous? Could it even come off as offensive at first, because it is so outrageous?
Now see the man thinking and feeling similar things as you, but see the faith that he has to obey the Lord, even in the midst of all of this.
To truly follow Jesus is to hear Him, believe, and trust Him with everything. We all have our own stories, our own histories. Many of us carry scars that lead us to also carry doubts.
But discipleship looks like courage and faith, and it looks like stepping into the newness of life that He is calling us to. And when He calls us, He also empowers us. We’re never alone. We’re never without His grace and His strength.
Consider this – would the man have been healed if he allowed his fears and doubts to lead him to disobey the Lord? Perhaps not. We may never know. But what we do know is that the man heard the command and obeyed, and through this partnership of hearing and responding, he was able to walk for the first time.
Like a good doctor, Christ knows the correct prescription, He procures and administers the right medicine, but the patient must take it and consume it.
Jesus has first loved us and has called us – would we respond with obedience? Would we cooperate with His call and in so doing receive His healing?
Think about what the Lord might be calling you to. It could be many different things. Take time to consider what it might be for you.
If you’re having trouble discerning, I might encourage and reassure you. Whatever God is calling you to, it will be giving of yourself, it will be selflessness, it will be steadfastness. God is calling us all to humility. God is calling us all to self-denial and self-emptying. God is calling us all to take up our own crosses and to follow Him.
Will you follow Him?
As we all seek to take up our own mats and walk along the narrow way of Christ, may God have mercy on us and help us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.