your choice

From Time to Time, and today, the 6th Sunday of Easter (Year C) is such a Time, the Sunday lectionary offers options about one reading or the other. This is such a Time because next Thursday, May 29, is Ascension Day. The lectionary framers give us the choice of either continuing Easter so to speak, or anticipating Ascension. Ascension is one of the seven Principal Feast Days of the church year; but, because it falls in midweek is often, not necessarily to say usually, forgotten, ignored, overlooked. 

At any event, the two gospel choices for today are printed below. 

Who makes the choice? The rector, or the preacher with the rector's permission; and the decision might depend on the preacher's sermon topic or on the parish plan for Ascension.

The John 14 reading anticipates Jesus' imminent death followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost soon after the Ascension. 

In the John 5 reading, Gospel John tells about a healing sign (in John, the events that in the Synoptics we call "miracles" (dynamis, works of power) are called "signs" (semeia) because Gospel John reports Jesus doing them to signify who and what Gospel John proclaims Jesus to be - - the eternal Word, God the Son. Jesus' healing the man at the pool is significant anyway: ill men gathered there in hopes of being the first in the water and therefore healed (there was always the scramble to get there first) and Jesus healed one of them - - a legitimate Bible study question is Why did Jesus not heal all the invalids - - blind, lame, paralyzed men there? instead of singling one out? The other question is the significance of Gospel John's statement, "Now that day was a sabbath," and the answer is that it's part of the story of why the Temple authorities connived to kill Jesus: one of the reasons is his profaning the sabbath by doing "work" - - healing someone, AND having the healed man get up and carry his mat.  

You can take your own decision about which Gospel reading to prefer for today. I've decided to prefer the John 14 reading because (1) I did both of them variously over my years as a parish priest, and (2) I'm especially fond of Salvador Dali's painting of the Ascension, above.

Anyway, RSF&PTL

T89&c.  

John 14:23-29

Jesus said to Judas (not Iscariot), "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, `I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe."

or

John 5:1-9

After Jesus healed the son of the official in Capernaum, there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids-- blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" 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 making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.