5 Real Life John 5.1–30
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 20th March 2022
Life is precious. To realize this, you only have to come close to losing it. Most of us can’t imagine anything worse than dying. That’s why it’s such a shock when someone takes their own life. What kind of a hell would someone be in, to decide on that? Covid has brought it closer than it was. Then, just as we get our third jab and don our face mask—anything to keep our own life safe and not put anyone else at risk—we are suddenly confronted with young Ukrainians with the whole of life before them choosing to fight and probably die, than lose their country’s independence. It’s all very confusing.
In John’s fifth chapter Jesus takes up the question of the life of the kingdom of God, and invites us to factor in eternity—also the question of quality of life; and a third thing, if we can handle it: judgement. The big S Secularism that rules us at the moment insists on putting up an iron curtain at the end of life: “No way through!”—“Do not think beyond this point!” If you are a social worker, or work for the government in any way, you will be called out if you as much as mention eternity—and not just the government; a doctor I know was banned from a supposedly Christian hospice because he spoke with one of the patients about their future life with God. So, John is treading on dangerous ground.
I mentioned in the first of these studies that the Pool of Bethesda has been found. It was once thought John had made it up. But there it is, right where John says it was—near the Sheep Gate. If you go to Jerusalem, you should visit it. The pool that is now exposed is large and very deep, and it is only one corner of the pool that was. On the side of the pool there is a large area of flat rock with a number of small hollows—grottos I would call them. Some of them have inscriptions connected with healing. Obviously in Jesus’ time it was an area associated with healing. Occasionally, the water in the pool would move; legend had it an angel stirred the pool. The first person to get in would be healed. The cripple in our story had been going there for a long time, but someone always beat him to it. Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed. A real no-brainer! I guess he thought Jesus was making polite conversation. He explained that he didn’t have anyone to throw him into the water, and someone always got there first. Jesus told him to rise and pick up his mat and walk. “Egeire,” he says. Remember that word!
When the Guardians see him carrying his mat—John tells us it was a Sabbath day— they tell him he is breaking the law. Jesus has vanished in the crowd so he can’t say who, but, “the man who healed me told me to do it.” This is more serious still; practicing medicine on the Sabbath is against the law. Later, in the temple, Jesus finds him and tells him to stop sinning lest something worse happen to him. I’m not sure how he took that, because he went straight to the authorities and told them who had healed him. That is the backdrop to what Jesus says next.
“My Father is working up until now, and I am working too.” How better to poke a stick up a Pharisee’s backside! I mean, “In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day—the Sabbath—he rested.” God rested, and so must we. But Jesus says, “Actually God’s been on the job every day since it all began, and I am too.” Keeping the sabbath was one of the essential things that marked you out as a serious Jew—it still is.
Tom Wright has argued that for Jews the Sabbath is where time meets eternity. Why did God create us humans? To be his representatives, and manage and enjoy his creation. The meaning of our life is not exhausted by what tires us out from Monday to Friday. We are meant to be friends of God. We are made for eternity. Our life has more meaning than keeping ourselves alive. We have a transcendent value. This is one thing our secular thought-police have retained, much as they seem to hate our Judeo-Christian heritage. The weekend is sacred. No one should be a slave. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be a slave in the ancient world. You were just an animal, to work until you died. And then the Jews came along and insisted everyone should have a day of rest—even the slaves. And rest didn’t mean lying around all day; it meant enjoying God’s creation in the way we were always meant to do. There is a story from the Anglo-Boer War where the British and the Boers agreed not to fight on Sunday. So the English organized a game of cricket, and the Boers had a church service. The Boer general didn’t think it was on to be playing sport on Sunday, and ordered his gunners to fire a shot across the heads of the British. But actually what they were doing was what the Sabbath is all about. A time for enjoying God’s creation—and God himself!
Anyway, as I said, the Sabbath is where we are meant to enter into the life of eternity—symbolically, of course—it’s just one day a week. Most of Old Testament religion is symbolic. But what actually happened? God rested on the seventh day from all the creating work he had been doing, and before a week had gone by, Adam and Eve had rebelled, evil had invaded God’s creation, death had entered the world, and the whole show was thrown into chaos. And God got to work and has been at work ever since, getting it back together.
There has never been a moment that God’s active power has not been holding the world together, fighting off the chaos, preserving human life. And right from the beginning God has been working in people’s lives and saving them for his kingdom—even Adam and Eve perhaps. But also, a lot of his work was getting the world ready for the coming of his Son, who would establish his kingdom.
For John, what Jesus did that Sabbath Day was much more than healing a cripple. It was that, but this man is also a picture of the fallen, diseased, dying creation. But God is at work, and Jesus says that is the reason he healed this man—even on the Sabbath.
This really stirred the Pharisees. Sabbath-breaking is bad, but this man is talking like he is equal to God. That would be blasphemy. John tells us that the plan to kill Jesus started right back at the beginning of his ministry. And it was the question of who he claimed to be that was the real issue. It hadn’t entered into John’s head, when he first followed Jesus, that he was anything more than a man whom God has raised up to do an important job. By the time he is writing, of course, he knows God has become a man, and he has spent three years in his company. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory.” (John 1)
But come back to the Pool of Bethesda, and this man who cannot walk, a picture of the fallen world! “Arise,” Jesus says—“Egeire!” and that is the exact word which describes what happened when Jesus rose from the dead on that first Easter Sunday, and what will happen to us, when he comes again at the close of the evil age. He rose, and so will we.
Truly, truly, I say to you,the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Fatherdoes, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so thatyou may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead (egeirei—same word) and gives them life, soalso the Son gives life to whomever he wishes.
Jesus came to raise the dead and give them life. That is his God-given mission. Remember what he said to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew who it was who asked you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water—a stream of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4)
But notice that Jesus gives life to whomever he wishes! Can that be true? It raises the question, who gets this life. Jesus goes on to say,
The Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son, that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son, does not honour the Father who sent him.
Can it be true that Jesus will judge us? That would make him a fearsome person. A school chaplain was invited to preach to a congregation in Perth. He mentioned in his sermon that we would all be judged—it wasn’t what the sermon was about, and I don’t think he specified that Jesus would be our judge, but just the mention upset them. Someone reported him to the Archbishop: “this man preaches the judgement of God.” Though the church meets in his chapel, he has never been invited back,. Some people are sensitive about the idea of judgement. They think because God loves us it rules judgement out. But you can’t get away from it. They judged the chaplain, and disqualified him. Every day people are being judged and disqualified. A lot of wrong judgements are made. It is good news that in the end the truth will be revealed—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You may have doubts about a lot of things, but be sure that finally God will judge everything and everyone… Except—he has given all judgement to the Son. At the end Jesus will judge us and decide who has eternal life and who does not. And yes, that means he will judge Anglicans and Catholics and Muslims and Buddhists, and even Atheists and Secularists. That is a fearsome thought, but then, who else you would rather be your judge, than someone who has known hunger and temptation and pain, and forgave a woman caught in adultery, and who has just restored this cripple? So, Jesus will decide who gets life and who doesn’t; Jesus will be the judge.
His next words are curious:
Truly, truly, I say to you,whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. Hedoes not come into judgement, buthas passed from death to life.
“Has eternal life”—that’s the puzzle. We are used to thinking of eternal life starting when you die, but Jesus speaks like it begins now. In Greek there are three words for life: bios (that’s livelihood, as in your living—our word “biology” comes from bios), psyche (that’s life as in life and death; you lose your psyche means you die), and zoe (that’s quality of life; some girls get called Zoe). The word Jesus uses here is zoe—quality of life. So, he is not saying that when you die, God will make you alive again. That is true, but here Jesus is talking about entering into a new quality of life.
Jews thought of two ages, this age (the evil age), and the age-to-come. Eternal life is actually age-to-come life—aeon life. Jesus says when you believe in him you enter into the life of the age-to-come—now. There’s life and there’s real life. There is the guy who lies around all day, shooting up and watching television; what sort of a life is that? Or there is the workaholic businessman. He gets a kick out of it, but ask him about his family, and why he does it, and he doesn’t know; he is just driven. What sort of life is that? And we all know people who live life to the full. It seems some people are more alive than others. What about this cripple— dragging himself around for 38 years? We would say his life was hardly worth living—only half alive. But what sort of life does any of us have, with the shadow of death never far away—aging, getting to a point of realizing it’s all down-hill from now, until we have one foot in the grave and another on a banana skin. Isaiah talks about the shroud that enfolds all people. But he also says the day is coming when God will remove the shroud and swallow up death forever. There is a new age coming, (Isaiah 25) and Jesus says it has come.
Truly, truly, I say to you,an hour is coming, and is now here, whenthe dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
Jesus is speaking the word of God to the spiritually dead, and they are coming alive. He is risen, alive, and still speaking his word today. When you find yourself responding to him, believing in the God he calls Father, when you repent of your sins, and turn to him, truly you pass from death to life, you enter into the kingdom of the life of the age-to-come. It is an awesome thought that the voice of Jesus awakens the walking dead. We pass from our godless half-life into the full-life of the kingdom of God. But Jesus says more.
Do not marvel at this, foran hour is coming whenall who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out,those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
Here is where it becomes exciting. This world is growing old. Wherever we look, death is not far away. We can hide from it, but not for long. But ever since the world fell into the grip of evil, God has been at work planning, working towards a restored creation: new heavens and a new earth the Bible calls it. The new age dawned with Jesus. God gave him to have life in himself; he is the source of real, age-to-come life. Through his life, death, and resurrection healing is coming to this crippled world, and to everyone who looks to him for life. And the day is approaching when he will reappear. And then it will be his voice once again that wakens the dead—this time the physically dead. Those in their tombs, those whose bodies have been burned and their ashes and gases scattered to the four winds—even the sea will give up its dead, says John in another place. All will be raised, all will stand up, all will be judged. Those who have done good will rise to life; those who have done evil to be condemned.
And this must be my last point. Why does he say the good will live when he has just made it clear that we enter eternal life when we are spiritually dead—not when we die, but when we begin to believe. The first thing to say is that believing in Jesus is good. Ceasing to rebel against the one who gave us life, and preserves our life, and gives us every good thing we ever had—that is surely good; and it is evil to hold out against God. But also, when you start to follow him, he begins to teach you. His word becomes our teacher; his Spirit becomes our motivator and guide. None of us will ever be fully good in this life. “Good” is big. But we will do a lot more good, and become a lot “gooder” than if we continued to hold out against God. The point is, you can put yourself on the right side of judgement today. Look to Jesus! Listen to Jesus! And start living!