Daily Lesson for March 20, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 5 verses 2 through 11:

2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ 7The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ 8Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ 11But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’

Dr. King once said, “The time is always right to do the right thing.”

Jesus clearly believed this. When he saw a person suffering, he reached out to help and restore then and there, even when it meant violating the sabbath.  For as Jesus said elsewhere, “the sabbath is made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.”

The Pharisees who opposed Jesus did so on grounds of him having violated the sabbath by healing. But the truth of the matter was they were opposed to and threatened by his ministry more generally.  The sabbath accusations were a legal tactic to stop Jesus altogether. 

Note: it’s always a mark of oppression to control someone else’s right to freedom. When Jesus healed on the sabbath he was aware of the system of oppression which he was coming up against. He knew he was putting himself at risk. Yet, he chose to act nonetheless. And he did so because it was the right thing to do.

When after 38 years of lying there, the man was told by Jesus to walk he walked. He took up his mat and walked because he too now believed it was time and he was able.

And the word for that is empowerment.