No scruples for the scrupulous

John 5:2-18

         There is a story in the news, still playing out, about a man in Colorado who was commissioning a cake from a bakery. All was going well until the customer asked to have several foul anti-gay remarks written atop the cake. The baker refused. The customer sued. This is no doubt payback for several "good Christians" who have decided it is against their faith to make wedding cakes for gay couples. And so it goes. 

          First, and in case no one noticed, this is not a theocracy. We may be approaching an Oligarchic Theocracy but we are a democracy and one that holds separation of church and state as foundational. So, if it is against your religious beliefs to makes cakes for certain groups or any group of people because it is against your religion, don't enter the public domain and offer cakes for sale to the public at large. You simply cannot mix your public service with your personal religious beliefs. The converse however is that a person who denies making a cake because it has derogatory and demeaning statements on it is not based on religion. It is based on yet other standards of law. It is not infringing on someones freedom of expression. If they wish to express such statements, let them make the cake themselves or buy a cake and write such epithets on it themselves.  We really should be requiring a more substantial eduction to people these days. Logic and good thought processes seem to have eluded so many, especially in the far flung right. And so it goes.

          The people that were most upset about Jesus in today's passage were clearly not the one who was cured. Clearly the cured man, the one loved and forgiven for whatever sins he may have committed, the man who walked away carrying his mat, was not upset. He was thrilled beyond measure.  So where's the beef, so to speak?  Jesus cured on a sabbath?  A man carried his mat on the sabbath? Really?? 

           Those that wish to put limitations on God's love ( as if they know or have such right ) almost universally do so by creation of some law that must be adhered to scrupulously without the slightest infraction. In other words, these scrupulous men actually have no scruples at all.

           One of my Deacon buddies who was concerned that the church was too loose and did not enforce all the rubrics said that he felt the rules should be enforced even if it meant there would be a smaller church. It would be a smaller church but a purer church he said. Oyveh!  The"church" is only as small as the population of the planet, no smaller. What this chap means is doctrinal purity and really has almost no connection to the life and love of God's holy people, His church. The arrogance of rule makers and disciplinarians is flaunted by Jesus who summarily dismisses laws and says that HE is the fulfillment of the law. The law is gone. Blasphemers unite, we are free at last for Jesus made it so by his death and resurrection.  It is not the law that rules, it is God's love. Jesus gave us two great (and I mean truly great) commandments that are generic enough so as to stupefy the rules guys and generic enough to challenge the human mind and make conscience our supreme guide. 

             It is s sad testament to the state of affairs in the United States that religion has been hijacked by arbitrary and capricious rules makers, the antithesis of scriptural exegesis and mercy as shown to us today in scripture.  The pseudo zealots of today are as self righteous as any pharisee and feel free to assert their lame and misguided agenda on any who are weak enough to listen. 

             Let us pray for guidance and hope and most of all, the strength to love with all the power and to the extent that God intended it to have. Boundless, all embracing love.

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ 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 making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’ They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.