An Insightful Moment at Bethesda

this story is absolutely hilarious to me....

here is a man walking around carrying a mat around in the street, and the religious leaders of the day come up to him and they have this conversation (paraphrased by me, of course)

Religious leaders: hey you, you cant be carrying a mat around on the Sabbath, what are you, a heathen or something?

Man: well, this man just came by and told me to pick up my mat and start moving, so I did

Religious leaders: who told you to do this?

Man: I dont know, just some guy

ha ha ha - just some guy..... and the religious leaders were so concerened about this guy carrying a mat around - crazy! they also obviously didnt recognize him since they didnt realize this was a miracle for him to just be walking - he had most likely been at the pool of Bethesda for quite some time, but the religious leaders couldnt go there, they might get sick or something....

then later Jesus comes and finds the man in the temple and tells him to quit sinning - makes me wonder what this guy was doing now to make Jesus to tell him to stop sinning.... him being in the temple makes me think he was offering the proper sacrifices for the priests to claim him clean (like the leper man earlier), so why would Jesus tell him to stop sinning now....

also, I didnt cross reference this story with the other gospels, but I found it interesting that this wasnt necessarily a faith healing - this man didnt even know who Jesus was....

and now the religious leaders are so angry - they missed the whole point again... here is someone doing good things, but He is not following every little tittle and jot of the law, so He cant be of God - this still happens in today's churches.... "he is not dressed properly for worship so he must not be here for the right reason", "she waves her arms around in the air when she sings, so she is probably of the devil b/c she is just trying to be a distraction to others" etc, etc..... the church would be much stronger if it was unified, if we would just love and forget the rules - now that would be something!