"Pick Up Your Mat and Walk"

Read: John 5.1-47

Back in Jerusalem for an unnamed festival and on a Sabbath (the Jewish day of weekly rest), Jesus encountered a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. The man was located at a pool called Bethesda near the Sheep Gate, which many believed was a place of divine healing. Many individuals seeking such healing spent long hours (and even days) by the pool, based on the commonly-held notion that the person who first touched the pool’s water when it appeared “stirred” would be healed. Jesus approached the paralytic and took the initiative by seeking from him a desire for healing; the man failed to understand what Jesus could do for him and made excuses for his ongoing illness. Jesus then told him to “pick up your mat and walk,” and “at once the man was cured.”

The fact that the cured man carried his mat is no incidental detail. It was, first of all, solid evidence that he had been healed. But it is also the basis for what follows, for, as the text emphasizes, it was a visible violation of Jewish law to carry one’s mat on the Sabbath. When accused of committing this violation, the former invalid explained that “the man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” He was at that time still unaware of Jesus' identity, but, when he did discover it, through another initiative by Jesus, he made it known to the Jewish leaders. Jesus’ command to stop sinning speaks of the man's spiritual condition but does not necessarily imply that his past illness was caused by his sin; the point of the episode is to illustrate the type of holistic salvation Jesus provided.

As far as the Jewish leaders were concerned, Jesus was a Sabbath-breaker because of His healing of the paralytic and of His subsequent command to pick up and carry his mat. His justification of His actions on the basis of the activity of God served only to make the Jewish leaders even more angry. They correctly understood that He referred to God as His Father and that He was making himself equal with God, and they saw this as blasphemy because they viewed Him as a mere human. But Jesus was not a mere man: He was the incarnation of the divine Word.

In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Dr. Joseph Dongell writes:

“…the majesty and submission of the Son go hand in hand, each only enhancing the other. The more the authority of the Son is portrayed, the more clearly His complete dependence upon the Father comes into view. The more His dependence upon the Father is stressed, the more brightly His derived authority shines. So perfect is the harmony between them that the Father and Son are not ‘two gods.’ Rather, ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10.30).”

In verse 20, Jesus says, “…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.” Our amazement at Jesus is only beginning!