Thursday, 21st October 2010, 22:29 hrs
Most of us would have heard, I assume, that God never forces us anything we never want or desire, for example, salvation. In other words, if we do not want to go to heaven, God is unlikely to carry us kicking into heaven! However, today we do hear often that there are sick people who in fact never want healed, much like those who, mistakenly, refuse salvation. One of the interpretations of the Gospel of John chapter 5 and verses 1-18 is precisely one such example of mistaken hermeneutics, which posits that the man paralysed for 38 years in fact did not wish to be healed.
If we examine more closely, the text has not an iota of hint that the man did not want to be healed. For in verses 2-5, the reader is introduced to the context in general, i.e. the place, the many different kinds of sick people, and then verse 5 zooms in on the paralysed man with these words, 'One man was there who had been ill...'. In other words, the writer of the Fourth Gospel did not intend to focus on healing per se, since only one out of so many was chosen for the story. Rather, the paralysed man plays only a small role in the larger scheme of things of the writer. And for all we know, this is not even the main focus of this passage! Still, we would need to clarify this particular point.
So clarify we must! We are told in verse 6 that Jesus 'saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time' (italics mine). In other words, Jesus must have observed for a while and so discovered about the paralysed man's desire and hope. And the end of verse 6 reports Jesus' question to the man if he would want to be healed. Verse 7 records the man's answer, almost as if he was saying to Jesus, 'What do you think? Just look at the situation I am in - whenever the water was stirred and I was trying to get in, someone would go ahead of me'. And the fact that this man had been there for so many years shows that he truly wanted to be made well. Thus, Jesus must have understood from the man's response that he genuinely wanted to be healed. That is why Jesus followed up with the imperative, 'Stand up, take your mat and walk' (v 8). This is where what Jesus has done is what we have said earlier, would Jesus impose healing upon the paralytic if the latter did not want healing? And as verse 9 tells us, 'At once the man was made well' (emphasis mine). The term for 'at once' in the Greek is eutheos, which hints at the possibility that the man did indeed want healing.
If we should accept the idea that the man in fact refuses healing, but that Jesus nonetheless made him well, then we are as good as making the suggestion that Jesus would impose on someone or, indeed, anyone or even everyone, what he or she does not want. And if we push this idea or argument to its logical conclusion, there would be no need for evangelism, since God will after all make everyone believe in him!
But the more important is that the healing of the paralytic is not even the central point of the story! We are told it was on a Sabbath that Jesus did the healing, and the Jews were displeased over the fact that this act of 'lifting' the mattress and the healing itself were both acts which broke the Sabbath rule. The act of Jesus in healing the man posed as a direct challenge to the Jewish authority, which in turn challenged the authority of Jesus. More interestingly, the act of healing speaks of Jesus' rule over sickness. This further puts him on a level quite above human ability. And later we are told that the Jews started persecuting Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath, and the Gospel's writer has Jesus say that he and God are one (v 18).
Indeed, the penultimate paragraph is further confirmed by the verses that follow, which focus on Jesus' authority as the son of God. The same theme then keeps running for many more paragraphs to come.
But interpreting the Fourth Gospel is not easy and cannot be done simply by looking at a little story without considering the overall structure of the Gospel, the overall theological thrust of the biblical author, and the literary and social contexts. For example, the question of the severity of breaking the Sabbath in John 5 cannot be overlooked, nor the structure of the 'Seven Sign's'.
We need to be strict and not draw applications in a haphazard manner. The overall theme of this passage is the authority of Jesus, we therefore cannot say that the intention of the biblical author is unimportant, or unnecessary. If the meaning of the base text is not established first, how can we ever go further? And if we do go further, without regard for the meaning of the text, then are we not guilty of corrupting the Word of God?
How then should I approach this passage? It depends on what I wish to do. If, supposing, I am going to preach on this particular passage, what I wil do is to set the text as deeply as I can in its social context. In other words, the first thing I will do is to draw attention to the Jewish setting as mentioned in verse 1. This will set the tone and mood of the story, and rightly! I would then focus on the 'implications of Jesus' healing on a Sabbath'. I think this is a far better title, and a more nuanced one. A rough outline would be as follows:
(1) Introduction - introduces the title, the text, the flow of the sermon.
(2) How the text came to focus on this healing event
(3) Implications of breach of the Sabbath - who Jesus really is!
(4) What theological meaing there might be for believers today
Blessed be the God who has given us his Word, so that we may not only study it, but also analyse it, debate it, quarrel with it, and above all, love it.
