Devotion for TRAC Annual Conference - Remaining on the Mark - Being a Welcoming Community

Remaining on the Mark

Remaining on the Mark

Alex Chew / General

John 5:2–24; John 6:38–39

MPP: Let us be careful not to deviate from God's purposes

Good morning, President, President-elect, delegates to the 45th Session of the Annual Conference, brothers- and sisters-in-Christ it is my privilege to lead us in this morning’s devotion.

We will start by responding to the call to worship, and to assist me will be Ps Allan who will lead you in reading the words that are in dark green, while i read the words in light green...

let us start by responding to the Call to worship.

Call to Praise and Worship

Come let us open our lips. And declare God's praise.

Let us worship our God who welcomes us all who earnestly seeks Him

Let us sing praises to our King who delights in the praises of His beloved children

Let us now join our voices and sing together the song of preparation, <speak O Lord> led by our TruthMin Team…

For this morning’s devotion, I’ve decided to turn totoday’s reading from the revised common lectionary, taken from John 5:2-21, 6:38-39 which reads...

John 5:2–21 ESV

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 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 am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.

John 6:38–39 ESV

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. <this is the word of the Lord>

in this passage that we just read, it was a bit of an interesting dynamic happening…

If you read carefully, you could probably pick up that the satirical language that was used…

here we have someone who had been invalid and suffering 38 years, who wants to be healed, and thought that the only way that he could receive healing was by following this strange ritual of needing to be first in this special healing pool that heals the first person that enters the pool when the water is stirred up…

But the problem is this..

He was invalid and hence has mobility problems…

And hence the only solution to this problem and hence the only way he could be first in the pool was if someone were to come to him and carry him in…

But this solution again has its problems…

Firstly, most of the people there were invalid themselves and wanted to be healed and hence would want to be first in the pool… why would anyone want to give up their chance to be healed themselves?

Secondly, there is very unlikely to have any able-bodied people there to help those who wanted to be healed because the able-bodied people wouldn't want to disqualify themselves from being able to offer sacrifices to God… they took Leviticus 21:18-21 to the extreme…

So it was a catch-22 paradoxical situation… he couldn't be healed because of his mobility problem… and he had the mobility problem because he couldn't be healed…

He was doomed to spend the rest of his life immobile…

It was a terrible and hopeless situation…

Well, that is until Jesus came into His life and healed Him…

And as far as the scriptures tell us, there wasn't any contact between Jesus and the person, there wasn't anything Jesus did as far as we knew that contradicted even the strict and restrictive Rabbinic sabbatical laws…

The laws that went over and beyond what was required by God's laws in Leviticus…

In any case, because of Jesus, the man who was bound for the last 38 years was finally liberated from his immobility and is now free…

Not only that, he had enough strength to carry his own mat…

This was a miracle true and true…

This was wonderful news and a break through…

The healing power of God to bring restoration to ailing bodies is upon mankind…

Praise be to God!

This is the greatest expression of welcome by God Himself, for Jesus, availed Himself to go into a place nobody wanted to go to (since people wouldn't want to be made unclean by association with the invalid people)

and extended the healing touch onto the person…

In doing so, Jesus allowed the invalid person to experience restoration of relationship between God and man, by reintegrating the person into the society once again

(that we know from reading in v14 that Jesus found the man in the temple - the center of activities in the town) and restoration of physical body…

And this we read in v17, that is something that God had been working to achieve throughout history… and now, it is clearly manifested in the eyes of the Jews…

Yet the great tragedy is this…

The Jews in the passage totally missed the point…

Instead of celebrating the fact that Jesus, who was described in v26 as the one who had life in himself

And was good as giving life to the invalid person by allowing him to be welcomed back into the society, they chose death by seeking to kill him…

Instead of celebrating the fact that Jesus had demonstrated to them that the Kingdom of God had broken into mankind,

the Son of Man, the Word made flesh, the incarnate God, the promised messiah,

had come and through the physical healing, demonstrated to them that he had the power to break down oppression and obstacles between God and man,

which basically shows that God had come to welcome man back into God's kingdom once again…

allowing the greatest reconciliation to happen…

the Jews in this story chose to reject Jesus, the real God and continued to worship their version of God according to their own terms…

Instead of celebrating the fact that Jesus had effectively liberated the invalid person from 38 years of imprisonment of sorts because of the stigma associated with his immobility, welcoming him into a life of liberty and freedom…

they chose to focus on the restrictive rules they created for themselves… and rejected freedom offered by God…

they chose bondage over liberty…

Instead of celebrating the fact that Jesus' reconciliatory act demonstrated the fact that what he did was the manifestation of the intimate relationship within the Trinitarian God,

which is extended to us insofar as us being welcomed into a reconciliatory relationship with God,

and as Jesus' ministry (as was the Father's) was that to reconcile man with God, and likewise we are all welcomed to join him in this ministry of reconciliation…

The Jews in this story chose to reject the welcome and chose the option of division…

So friends, I suppose the matter for us to contemplate this morning as we start our third day of conferencing is this…

How can we as the Trinity Annual Conference in the Methodist Church in Singapore be a more welcoming community…

How can we be like Jesus in this story, be used by God to welcome those marginalized, poor and vulnerable into our community and give them life?

How can we point people to the real God who welcomes them and loves them?

How we can help to provide freedom and liberty to people who are in bondage, be it emotional, financial etc?

How can we be more united as a community and be used by God to extend the ministry of reconciliation in this world?

As we continue with the rest of the day, may God guide us to achieve this end of being a welcoming community... Pointing the world to God through our lives

Amen