Going along

Today’s Gospel (Jn. 5:1-16) presents the incident at the Pool of Bethesda in which the miraculous healing of a helpless man leads to a conspiracy against Christ.

The conspiracy begins when our Lord is “ratted out” by the very man he had healed.

It seems strange that this man would so quickly betray someone who had helped him and who obviously had miraculous power, especially after he had been warned:

Behold, thou art made whole:
sin no more,
lest a worse thing come unto thee.

(Yet another reminder that there are worse things than mere physical suffering.)

So why would this man do this? There is no clear evidence that the man betrayed our Lord out of malice or greed.

Then why? Perhaps it was as simple as the man just wanting to do what someone asked and not being aware of the evil involved.

It is an important lesson for us, for we too can sometimes just dumbly go along with others and find ourselves going against God.

Some people take the extreme of isolation and alienation: adopting “haughty looks and (an) arrogant heart,” taking it upon themselves alone to be the ultimate judges of what is right and who is evil (thereby committing evil themselves).

Some of us take the opposite extreme: going through our lives as obsequious fools, following the crowd, wanting to “fit in” at all costs (unthinkingly at the cost of our own souls).

Most of us are somewhere in the middle: we want to be godly, but we also "like to be liked" and don’t always have time to think deeply about those we may be trying to please or the implications of what we may be doing.

We are all sinners, subject to the judgment of God alone and desperately in need of his grace and mercy. With charity, humility and faith, we must work with each other and reach out to others, yet we must also be careful not to be swept along in ungodly directions.

The first psalm of this morning’s Lauds reminds us more poetically:

I will sing of loyalty and of justice;
to thee, O LORD, I will sing.

I will give heed to the way that is blameless.

Oh when wilt thou come to me?

I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house;
I will not set before my eyes
anything that is base.

I hate the work of those who fall away;
it shall not cleave to me.
Perverseness of heart shall be far from me;
I will know nothing of evil.

Him who slanders his neighbor secretly
I will destroy.
The man of haughty looks and arrogant heart
I will not endure.

I will look with favor on the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me;
he who walks in the way that is blameless
shall minister to me.

No man who practices deceit
shall dwell in my house;
no man who utters lies
shall continue in my presence.

Morning by morning I will destroy
all the wicked in the land,
cutting off all the evildoers
from the city of the LORD.
Psalm 101

(Some of us may recoil at that last verse, but it is not telling us to become violent vigilantes of virtue. Formal excommunication and the physical destruction of evildoers are matters for lawful authorities [the Psalmist himself is a King]. The “land,” the “city of the Lord” for which we are responsible is our own selves.)

By the Lord’s grace, we must strive
to keep ourselves on “the way that is blameless”
and to destroy the spiritual and moral evil within ourselves,
not to develop an “arrogant heart”
but neither to let ourselves dumbly “go along”
with people or things
that lead us away from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.