John 5:1-30 - Mending and breaking with authority

time, space, Jesus

Day 10 of 47 going through John's gospel - more info at https://www.severnvineyard.org/time-space-jesus

What could happen if you take time and make space with Jesus today? This ten-minute podcast is part reading, part music, and part silence, all designed to help you create a space to picture and feel the scene with Jesus in it. You can use this space in lots of ways, including meditation, prayer, re-reading the passage or thinking about what it means for you today.

Today's reflection: Who has the most authority in your life? Whose word or lead do you trust most to deal with conflicting ideas or judgements you have to make?

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Later on, there was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, there is a pool, which is called in Hebrew, “Bethesda”, and has five porches. In these lay a great number of people who were sick, blind, lame, or paralysed, waiting for the water to move, because an angel went down into the pool and stirred up the water at times. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease they had. A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been sick for a long time, Jesus asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I’m coming, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.”

Immediately, the man was healed, and he picked up his mat and walked.

Now that day was a Sabbath. So the Jews kept saying to the man who was healed, “It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry the mat.”

He answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” Then they asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” But the man who was healed didn’t know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into crowd there.

Later, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Look, you are healed. Stop sinning, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason, the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, so I am working, too.”

This made the Jews even more determined to kill Jesus, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

So Jesus answered them, “Most certainly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing that comes from himself, only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does the same way. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him everything he does. And the Father will show him greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, the Son also gives life to whoever he wants. For the Father judges no one, but he has given all judgement to the Son, so that everyone will honour the Son, just as they honour the Father. Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him.

“Truly, truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me, they now have eternal life, and do not come into judgement, but they have passed over from death into life. Truly, truly I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the Son of God’s voice; and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, he also gave to the Son to have life in himself. And the Father gave the Son authority to judge, because he is a son of man. Don’t be surprised about this, for the time is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and they will come out; those who have done good, to a resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to a resurrection of judgement.

“I can do nothing by my own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and my judgement is correct, because I don’t seek my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me.”