“John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,

John 5:40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (English Standard Version)

In this story from the Gospel according to John, Jesus is immersed in a controversy with some religious leaders who thought (and said) that Jesus was in the wrong because he had healed a lame man and then had told the formerly lame man to get up, pick up his sleeping mat, and walk. The healing wasn’t the problem, although at other times, Jesus was indeed accused of working on the Sabbath because Jesus healed people on the Sabbath. However, the problem in this story was that the man was carrying his mat on the Sabbath. That was work, and the Jewish leaders knew that the Torah forbade any and all work on the Sabbath.

The man who had been healed had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. For thirty-eight years his mat had been holding him. Now, he was holding it and walking. Was that work for this man? I have my doubts. I have a hunch that the former cripple was holding his mat close to his chest and dancing around with it. This reminder of what he used to be was now a beloved dance partner.

Now, allow me to come in with a word of commendation for Jesus’ opponents.

“Don’t you mean condemnation?”

No, I mean commendation. The Old Testament Law did indeed forbid any and all work on the Sabbath. This was absolutely clear to the Jewish teachers of the Law. They were trying to love God by keeping God’s Law quite strictly, and that can be a very good thing.

Here was the problem: The Old Testament does not spell out precisely what work is. So, the religious leaders helped God out by defining what work is. They wanted to be obedient to God and to love God in every corner of their lives, but they got out of focus. They began to put their interpretations of God’s Word above God’s Word itself.

But it may be even worse than that. If, as some of us believe, Jesus was God in the flesh, then the religious authorities were seriously out of focus. The One who had authored the Old Testament through humans and human words was standing in front of them as a human, but all they could see was a Sabbath-breaker.

However, before we get all high and mighty about these Jewish religious rule-makers, we had better take a long, hard look at ourselves. We all have interpretations of everything. We all sometimes elevate our interpretations to the level of Absolute Truth. Democrats do it, and so do Republicans. (Independents, too.) Men do it and also women. Atheists do it. Christians do it a lot. Getting out of focus is an incredibly human thing to do.

Getting out of focus is also an incredibly dangerous thing to do. When we can’t see things clearly, we are likely to stumble and fall. When we get out of focus, we can’t see God, other people, the world, or ourselves clearly. When we are certain that our interpretations and our rules should rule the world, we come unraveled and so does our world. Before too long, we can’t even walk. We become the invalid. Even worse, we become dead folks in need of life. Our rules are killing us and we don’t even know it.

So, just for today, I am challenging myself not to live by rules, but to live graciously and lovingly. Today, I will choose to refrain from judging and critiquing. Instead, I will choose to dance around with my mat. Who knows? I may discover that my real dance partner is God.