The Father's Apprentice

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
John 5 (click the link)


KEY VERSES:
16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 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.

24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. (John 5:16-27, NIV)


REFLECTIONS:
In our modern Western world, where the attending of college and the chasing of personal dreams is now common place, we have largely lost our understanding of apprenticeship. But, believe it or not, there are still plenty of places where it is the normal and expected things for sons to follow fathers into the family business. And, particularly where the business involves working at a skilled trade with one's hands, apprenticeship means literally being side-by-side, with the son watching every move that the father makes and learning to do it in exactly the same way. That is how many traditional skills are handed down from generation to generation. That is the way my brother Phillip learned the electrical trade, and that is the way my cousin Hank learn the ins and outs of my uncle's business.

We see a similar thing at work in the story we read today. Jesus performs an astounding miracle—he heals a man who had been crippled for 38 years. But there was just one problem: the healing takes place on the Sabbath. This is a big No-No according to the religious leaders. As we discover in the Old Testament, one of the Sabbath's original purposes was to highlight the seventh day as the time when the creator God rested from his work in making the world (see Genesis 2:2-3 and Exodus 20:8-11). Week by week, faithful Jews kept a strict day without work. And to help ensure that there was absolutely no doubt as to what was acceptable, the religious leaders came up with a quite detailed list defining quite carefully what "work" might include.

Jesus, however, seems to have systematically continued doing things on the Sabbath that could be understood—and were clearly understood by some of his opponent's—as deliberate "work" (Mark 1:21-28; Mark 2:23-28; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 13:10-17; Luke 14:1-6; John 9:1-41). After all, in the present case Jesus didn't have to heal the man that day. He waited nearly forty years to be healed; surely, waiting another day wouldn't have hurt him. But Jesus seems deliberately to have chosen to do bring about this man's healing on the Sabbath day. It's almost as if he intentionally stuck a stick in a hornets’ nest.

Jesus' explanation was a simple one, yet full of controversy: His Father was at work, and it was important for him to be as well. What could he have possibly meant?

The heart of it seems to be Jesus' belief that Israel's God was then and there in the process of launching the new creation. And, somehow, this new creation was superseding the old one. God was healing the sorry, sick old world, and though there might come a time for rest, at the moment it was time for the work of new creation to go steadily forward.

What's intriguing to me about this story is the way in which Jesus defends his ministry, particularly in verses 19-23. What he says is almost like a parable, a story about how he has apprenticed under his Father. Jesus is explaining more fully how it is that Israel's God is working in a new way, and how he, Jesus, is watching carefully to see how it's being done. He is working harmoniously alongside the Father, continuing on with God's plan of redemption. He does nothing by himself and only does what he sees his Father is doing. And the most astonishing thing the Father is doing—which, like everything else, he is showing the Son so that the Son can then do it with him on his behalf—is this: he is giving life to the dead.

The Jews believed that there would come a day when God—who, as the creator, was committed to bringing justice to the world—would put everything to rights. This would involve bringing all evil to scrutiny and condemnation, and vindicating all who had followed God's ways. As part of this, the creator God, would bring people back to bodily life, to face the consequences of their evil deeds, or to share the rewards for their righteous ones.

What Jesus is now saying is that with his coming and public ministry this work of raising the dead has already begun. This is central to the work that he's watching the Father do, and that he is doing alongside him. This work will eventually come to a head when he raises Lazarus from the dead (chapter 11). And then, it will ultimately reach its full flowering when Jesus himself goes through death and out the other side into the full splendor of resurrection life (chapters 20-21). This whole discussion is a foreshadowing of what lies ahead.

But Jesus also lets us in on the secret that helps us to see what is going on when people see and hear what he's doing and come to believe in him—to believe that he is indeed the Word made flesh. This is the extra, hidden truth inside John's statement that anyone who receives him, who believes in his name, gains the right to be called a child of God (1:12-13). This is the secret truth inside the promise of new birth (3:1-8).

Those who are born from above in this way are not just receiving a new spiritual experience, the life of God's Spirit welling up within them like "living water" (4:14). They are passing from death to life. The miracle of resurrection is taking place inside them, so that, when they finally die physically, that event will be irrelevant to the new life they already have. What God does in the present he will complete in the future, when the present "resurrection"—the new birth during the present life—finally produces the future bodily resurrection that will correspond to Jesus' own.

What the Father has given to the Son, then, is the right to execute judgment on his behalf. The explanation Jesus gives here ("because he is the Son of Man," in verse 27) draws on the ancient Jewish picture of "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7:13-14, who is given authority over the whole world, and particularly to bring God's just judgment on the forces of tyranny and evil that have oppressed God's people.

You could put it like this: God has longed to put the world to rights; and now, with his apprentice Son on the job, he is doing so at last. The Father has conferred ultimate authority upon his Son to judge the evil that has corrupted the old creation and to give resurrection life to anyone and everyone who believes in his name.


QUESTIONS TO PONDER:
With Jesus' resurrection, God's new-creation project is launched upon the whole world. And people still react angrily to it. Where are the followers of Jesus today who are prepared to say: "Jesus is at work, and so am I"?

A question keeps pinging around in my pea brain: How does faith in Jesus' authority help us—as ambassadors of Christ—to live in a world where tyranny and injustice are still rampant?

Another Scripture raises a similar question in my mind: 

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20) 

If all authority has been given to Jesus, and he has commissioned us to go out into the world in his name, with the promise that he is always with us, how should that affect the way we engage our world today?

 

 

WHO AM I?

I am Tres Sansom, and I am proud of my brother Phillip. At a very tumultuous time of his life, he began apprenticing to be an electrician. He put in a lot of long hours doing the sorts of tasks that are typically relegated to the low man on the totem pole. But he eventually began to acquire a wide variety of skills and to progress as an electrician. He is currently a journeyman electrician, and a dang good one! He's worked in a wide variety of fields, and I'm amazed at his knowledge and skill at his craft.