John leaves his section dealing with Jesus superseding the symbols of Judaism and moves on to the next section which deals with the Jewish feasts.  There are a number of these feasts and Jesus takes on 4 of them before the middle of John’s gospel.  The first is Sabbath.

Every week, the Jews celebrated work and rest with Shabbat, or Sabbath.  Based on the fact that during creation, God rested on the seventh day and commanded us to as well (oops), Sabbath was the most common and most celebrated feast of the Jewish calendar year.  On it, you did no work but rested from your labors.  Imagine having a whole day each week that by law was set aside from work to celebrate family, rest, and God.

But as with any command of God, humans began to try to find loopholes and ways around it.  So the Pharisees invented a whole set of rules to determine what was work and what wasn’t, what could be done on the sabbath and what couldn’t.  And so what began as a wonderful day of rest, peace, family, and worship soon became a day of duty, law, and judgement.  One of these rules had to do with carrying your bed around.

Side Note: it is always fascinating to think about what was going on when a rule was originated.  For example, when parking your elephant at a meter in Orlando Florida, be sure to deposit the same amount of change as you would for a regular motor vehicle.  And if you stop for a beer in North Dakota, don’t expect to get any pretzels with your beverage. It’s against the law in that state to serve beer and pretzels at the same time.  Now what circumstances had to happen for anyone to even think up rules like these?

Back to the text.  Jesus heals a man from his lameness, and tells him to take his bed home since he didn’t need it at the “healing pool” anymore.  He does and is confronted by the Jewish leaders who accuse him of breaking their Sabbath Law about carrying your bed around.  And Jesus uses this opportunity to tell them that he is doing God’s work, and God is always working, even on the Sabbath.  Jesus, doing God’s work, will follow God’s rules, not theirs.  God’s work is more important than their sabbath laws.

Do you take a sabbath?  If so, do you do it out of worship, rest, and peace, or out of duty and regulation?  A good habit if done for the right reason.

Yesterday Jesus showed Himself to be more than the sacred well where He met the woman in Samaria.  While the water from this well that Jacob dug generations ago will leave you thirsty again, Jesus said, the water I give you (meaning a relationship with God lived through the Holy Spirit) will not only never leave you thirsty again but will overflow so you can share it with others.

Today, in the same setting and the same time but with a different audience, the disciples in this case, Jesus uses a similar metaphor for a different point.  Rather than water which the woman was coming to draw, He uses food which the disciples urged Him to eat.  And rather than a gift given to us from God, Living Water, Jesus shares with His disciples a gift they can give to God, harvesting the food God has produced.

Which of these two gifts do you need today for your own spiritual growth?  Sometimes we are in need of a reminder that we have received the Living Water, the Holy Spirit, which overflows in us, satisfying our thirst for God and giving us all we need to share God with others.  Sometimes we are in need of a mission, a good hard day’s work in the harvest field, so that we don’t become lazy Christians, or selfish Christians, or nominal Christians.

Take some time today and ask God to supply what you need, water or food, gift or mission, and then receive with thanksgiving.  And be sure that you never go too long only quenching your thirst and not harvesting the crops – that’s one of the greatest temptations in our suburban culture.