The Son gives life
Sabbath, more than work
One of my favorite Gospel stories when I was a kid is found in John 5. It is about a sick man who was healed at the pool of Bethesda. He was waiting with many other sick people to get into the water to receive healing. But, according to the story (in some manuscripts)1, you had to be first in the water after it was stirred by an angel in order to be healed. He had not been first for thirty-eight years. I think I liked the story, because (in some manuscripts) there is an angel that stirs the pool for sick people to be healed. It is very magical. I think I also liked the story because I felt the man definitely had an impossible problem - that in order to be healed, he had to be the first one in the pool - and he didn’t have anyone to help him, he was alone. I felt for his plight.
When Jesus sees him, he asks the man if he wants to be made healthy. The man doesn’t actually say “Yes,” but Jesus says to him anyway “Stand up, take your mat/bed, and walk.” Immediately, the man was whole, and he obeyed Jesus by standing up, picking up his bed and he began to walk. And then the narrator tells us the detail: “It was the Sabbath.”
In the Gospels, Jesus does a lot of healing on the Sabbath: Matthew 12:9–14, Luke 13:10–17, Luke 14:1–6, and John 9:1–4. And, in every case, someone gets mad at Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus has various answers for them, but we usually interpret his response to be something like “the Sabbath laws don’t apply when you are doing good.” The people rebuking Jesus don’t get it that caring for human need is more important than the letter of the law. I agree that the people rebuked Jesus because he was working on the Sabbath. But I think the point that Jesus was making was a little more involved.
In his blog post “The Sabbath as Key to Understanding Biblical Law (Part 1 and 2)” Alistair Roberts argues that
The Sabbath is a condensed expression of the entire meaning of the Exodus. It connects the Exodus back to the creation, the intent of the Exodus being related to the completion of creation and the enjoyment of God’s rest. It perpetuates the force and meaning of the Exodus in Israel’s continuing life, drawing their eyes back to that first deliverance and forward to its fuller realization that is still awaited.2
I think that a big point about all the “Healing on the Sabbath” stories in the gospels is to highlight how much God’s own people didn’t understand Sabbath. Sabbath wasn’t just about working/not working, it was also what it pointed to - the Rest. Yes, Jesus’ work was good on the Sabbath, but even more important, it pointed to the whole hope of the Sabbath: the restoration of life as God intended. The removal of all traces of death. By healing a sick person, Jesus was enacting Sabbath. He gives the man rest.
In the John 5 story, when Jesus gets in trouble for breaking the Sabbath, he replies:
“My Father is still working, and I also am working… Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes.” (John 5:17, 21 NRSV)
The Father is currently working, so Jesus also is working. It is not the Rest (per Hebrews 4)3 but their work points to the tastes of the Rest. What is the work that the Father is doing? He is raising the dead and giving them life. Like the Father, Jesus is gives life to the man who is living in death, sick and alone.
Recently, I was talking with some friends about practicing the Sabbath as a spiritual discipline. What people mean by this is prioritizing taking one day a week to not work. I think stopping to rest is absolutely necessary. It demonstrates our trust in God, and is a physical representation of our hope. But, I also wondered how celebrating the Sabbath like Jesus did – by compassionately giving life to the suffering – could be incorporated as a spiritual discipline as well?
I think that perhaps keeping the Sabbath like Jesus makes the whole life of a believer a potential celebration of the Sabbath. The Father is working, so the Son is working. And thus, we, like the Son, are currently working. In collaboration with the Father and the Son and filled with God’s breath of life, his Spirit, we are Life-bringers, Sabbath celebrators. We proclaim and walk and work Life in the midst of the full spectrum of death. Healing, feeding, giving, teaching, growing, protecting, nourishing, nurturing, beautifying, loving: these are all ways we celebrate the Sabbath in the Christian life.
The man who had been sitting at the pool alone for thirty-eight years also got in trouble for “working” on that Sabbath by carrying his mat after he was healed. But, by listening to Jesus, he got a taste of true Sabbath.
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It is probably the verse about stirring water was added later to the John manuscript: https://www.biblicaltraining.org/learn/institute/nt605-textual-criticism/nt605–30-some-famous-textual-problems-john-5–3b-4 ↩︎
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I super-recommend reading this blog! https://hebraicthought.org/sabbath-understanding-biblical-law/#:~:text=Six%20days%20shall%20work%20be,generations%2C%20as%20a%20covenant%20forever. ↩︎
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Hebrews 4:1–13 ↩︎
