SUNDAY - "METSAGU"

Jesus Healing a Sick Man John 5:1-25

After this, there was a Jewish religious feast, and Jesus went to Jerusalem. There is in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, a pool with five porches; in the Hebrew language it is called Bethzatha. A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches--the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. [They were waiting for the water to move, because every now and then an angel of the Lord went down into the pool and stirred up the water. The first sick person to go into the pool after the water was stirred up was healed from whatever disease he had.] A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he said ti him, "Do you want to get well?"

The sick man answered, "Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first."

Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your mat, and walk." Immediately the man got well; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day this happened was a Sabbath, so the Jewish authorities told the man who had been healed, "This is a Sabbath, and it is against our Law for you to carry your mat."

He answered, "The man who made me well told me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.'"

They asked him, "Who is this man who told you to pick up your mat and walk?"

But the man who had been healed did not know who he was, because there was a crowd in that place and Jesus had slipped out.

Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said, "Look, you are well now. Quit your sins, or something worse may happen to you."

Then the man left and told the Jewish authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him. For this reason they began to persecute Jesus, because he had done his healing on a Sabbath. Jesus answered them, "My Father works always, and I too must work."

This saying made the Jewish authorities all the more determined to kill him; not only had he broken the Sabbath law, but he had said that God was his own Father, and in this way had made himself equal with God.

So Jesus answered them, "I tell you the truth: the Son does nothing on his own; he does only what he sees his Father doing. What the Father does, the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. He will show him even greater things than this to do, and you will all be amazed. Even as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, in the same way the Son gives life to those he wants to . Nor does the Father himself judge anyone. He has given his Son the full right to judge, so that all will honor the Son in the same way as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

"I tell you the truth: whoever hears my words, and believes in him who sent me, has eternal life. He will not be judged, but has already passed from death to life. I tell you the truth: the time is coming--the time has already come--when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will live"

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"Patience is better than pride." Eccl. 7:8