Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 30, 2022

John 5:17-30

Jesus answered the Jews: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.  Jesus answered and said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes. Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself.   And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation. I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”

The Lord Jesus is speaking here to the Jewish leaders who hunted for him after he healed the lame man by the pool, as recounted in the Gospel reading for yesterday’s Mass.  It is not immediately clear whether they desire to kill Jesus because he cured on the Sabbath or because he told the cured man to pick up his mat and go, thus encouraging him to break the Sabbath according to their reckoning.  The other Evangelists make it clear that the Jewish leaders hated him for curing on the Sabbath.  But by both curing and causing someone to carry something on the Sabbath, the Lord was challenging the Pharisees about their interpretation of the Law.  On the one hand, there is a miracle that could only be performed through the divine will and power.  On the other, an apparent breaking of the Law.  But rather than reconsider their interpretation of the Law, they ignored the miracle and clung to their own ideas.  This ought to remind us of the behavior of the lame man after the Lord healed him: he seems to forget the marvelous sign of God’s mercy and rather than examine his life so as to live in accord with God’s will, he prefers to cling to his sinfulness so that Jesus warns him of the consequences for doing this.

The Jewish leaders charged the Lord with “breaking” the Sabbath.  “Breaking” is perhaps not the best word to elucidate their meaning.  The Greek word actually means “loosing” or “destroying”.  When we today speak of someone “breaking” the law, we mean on one occasion, as in, The man broke the law when he stole the necklace.  However, the meaning in the Gospel text is that the whole Sabbath law was destroyed.  The Jewish leaders saw the Lord’s actions as invalidating the law on the Sabbath that had its origins in God’s creation of the world.  For them, this amounted to a challenge against the rule of God and the Law that made them the Jews his people.  The Lord answers this charge when he says, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”  The Greek text does not make the first clause causative of the second, but joins them together with the conjunction “and”.  This allows the Jews to understand that he is claiming equality with God.  The wording also implies that the Son, equal to the Father, is not ruled over by the Father.  The Father does not cause the Son to work by his own work, but the Son works of his own will.  Equal in nature, and distinct as Persons.  Jesus appears to contradict Exodus 7, 11: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it”, explaining the basis for the Third Commandment.  For the Pharisees, the “rest” ordered by the commandment meant almost no activity at all, though, as the Lord pointed out to them on another occasion, “On the sabbath days the priests in the temple break the sabbath, and are without blame.”  He then added, “But I tell you that there is here a greater than the Temple” (Matthew 12, 5-6).  The point Jesus is making is that the commandment applies to human beings, not to God, and he is God.  Furthermore, God was said to have “rested” once, but he is not said to have rested ever again.  The Sabbath was made for human beings, not for God.  The Jewish leaders knew exactly what he was saying: “They tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.”  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.”  The Lord Jesus explains what he meant in referring to himself as the Son of God in these next several verses.  He wants to make clear that he does not claim to be the Father though he is equal to the Father.  And he reassures the Jews that the Son does not depart from the will of the Father, but does what he does.  For us, as the Son does only what he sees the Father doing, so should we do only what we see the Son doing.