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Friends,
in today's Gospel we find the beautiful healing of a paralyzed man who
had been ill for thirty-eight years. Jesus sees the man lying on his
mat, next to a pool, and asks, "Do you want to be well?" The man says
yes, and Jesus replies, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk." Immediately,
the man is healed. Now at this point, the story really heats up. We
notice something that is frequently on display in the Gospels: the
resistance to the creative work of God, the attempt to find any excuse,
however lame, to deny it, pretend it's not there, to condemn it.
One
would expect that everyone around the cured man would rejoice, but just
the contrary: the Jewish leaders are infuriated and confounded. They
see the healed man and their first response is, "It is the Sabbath, and
it is not lawful for you to carry your mat."
Why
are they so reactive? Why don't they want this to be? We sinners don't
like the ways of God. We find them troubling and threatening. Why?
Because they undermine the games of oppression and exclusion that we
rely upon in order to boost our own egos. Let this encounter remind us
that God's ways are not our ways, and that there is one even greater
than the Sabbath.
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