Muchacho Polaco

After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

John 5 places the context as during a feast of the Jews, but the particular feast is not specified. Some commentators suggest it is inconsequential, but simply intended to explain why Jesus is now found in Jerusalem. Some, however, suggest that the identification of the feast has relevance in regard to determining the duration of Jesus’ public ministry. For instance the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary has this to say:

1. a feast of the Jews—What feast? No question has more divided the Harmonists of the Gospels, and the duration of our Lord’s ministry may be said to hinge on it. For if, as the majority have thought (until of late years) it was a Passover, His ministry lasted three and a half years; if not, probably a year less. Those who are dissatisfied with the Passover-view all differ among themselves what other feast it was, and some of the most acute think there are no grounds for deciding. In our judgment the evidence is in favor of its being a Passover, but the reasons cannot be stated here.

To help clarify why the year variation in the public ministry of Jesus is relevant to identifying this feast as Passover is explained more from Meyer’s NT Commentary:

 If this feast itself is taken to be the Passover, we are obliged, with the most glaring arbitrariness, to put a spatium vacuum of a year between it and the Passover of John 6:4, of which, however, John (John 6:1-4) has not given the slightest hint. On the contrary, he lets his narrative present the most uninterrupted sequence. Hengstenberg judges, indeed, that the gap can appear strange only to those who do not rightly discern the relation in which John stands to the Synoptics. But this is nothing more than the dictum of harmonistic presuppositions.

The Expositor’s Greek Testament succinctly sums up the two predominant and competing views:

It is chiefly between Purim and Passover that opinion is divided, because some feast in spring is supposed to be indicated by John 4:35. Against Passover it is urged that in chap. 6 another Passover is mentioned; but this is by no means decisive, as John elsewhere passes over equally long intervals of time. Lampe, Lightfoot, Grotius, Whitelaw, and Wordsworth argue for Passover: Tischendorf, Meyer, Godet, Farrar, Weiss, and others strongly favour Purim; while Lücke seems to prove that no sure conclusion can be reached. [For a full and fair presentation of opinions and data see Andrew’s Life of our Lord, p. 189 sqq.] The feast, whatever it was, is mentioned here to account for Jesus being again in Jerusalem.

I’ve been asked to preach twice in June. I’m inclined to stay with the Gospel of John. Previously I’ve preached on John 4, John 11, and John 13. I think I am going to backtrack now and pick up in John 5. Particularly, the story of the healing of the 38-year-old paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda. This is such an interesting story with great themes that parallel those in the other 3 chapters I’ve gone through. However, there is a fairly complicated textual issue that exists in John 5 (verse 4) akin to that of John 8. Since I am preaching back-to-back on the same day (June 28th), I think I may follow John 5 with John 9 (the healing of the blind man). Similar stories with dissimilar responses by the healed men. That greatest challenge is always in the translation, since I still need a translator. I am on the cusp of trying to preach in Spanish, and I think I could do that if I translated the text before hand. But since there is a wedding that weekend with a number of English speaking people from out of the country in attendance, I’ve been asked to preach in English with translation.

Here is the text from John 5 that I would like to pursue (from the ESV):

“After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

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.”

The above is from the ESV which, like most modern translations, does not include verse 4. The omitted verse reads as follows:

for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.