John 5
Jesus Heals on the Sabbath
After this 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 ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. 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 ill 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.
If it feels like the gospel reading this morning started and ended in a weird place, that’s because it did. This story happens kind of in the midst of many of Jesus’ healing stories. He has spoken to the Samaritan woman, he has visited Cana in Galilee and turned water into wine, and then Jesus is approached by a royal official whose child is about to die. John tells us that through these miracles many people came to believe and word started getting around that Jesus was able to heal people and do miracles.
That’s where our story from this morning starts. Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a Jewish festival and went to a place where many ill people were laying around a pool of water. We know from later writings that the reason people laid around this pool is because it was thought that an angel or spirit would stir up the waters and the first person to go into the waters would be healed. We aren’t told if that worked, but it seemed like enough people were gathered around that at least many of the most ill people believed that it did.
So when Jesus approaches this pool and sees the man who has been ill for 38 years, he asks him, “do you want to be made well?”
You would think that the man would exclaim YES and beg Jesus to heal him. 38 years is a long time to be ill and who knows how long he had stayed next to that pool day after day waiting to be healed by the waters.
But unlike many of the other people Jesus has encountered so far— this man gives Jesus an excuse as to why he can’t be healed: “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.”
I actually love this story because it is so different from the other healing stories.
Usually we see that people approach Jesus to be healed or have their loved-one healed— there is an element of faith and desperation for Jesus in these people. They go after him, sometimes risking quite a bit to make sure that Jesus notices them…
The women who pushes through the crowd just to touch the hem of his coat.
The man who seeks him out to heal his daughter.
Mary and Martha who send word to him that their brother has died and then admonish him that he didn’t come sooner.
The man whose friends open up the roof of a house to send him down to be healed by Jesus.
Even Jesus’ mother presses him to perform the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding.
But this man looks at Jesus and, instead of saying, “yes, please! I’d like to be healed!” Gives an excuse as to why he can’t. Perhaps it because this man didn’t know much about Jesus or hadn’t heard about the healing and miracles that had already happened across the land. Or perhaps the man didn’t bother to glance up at Jesus because he didn’t think he was worth of being healed. 38 years is a long time to be ill. Perhaps by then, he had been told by everyone around him, the systems and powers and even religious leaders that he was not worthy of healing. And maybe even believed this lie himself, that he would never be healed, that he wasn’t worth it. And he wasn’t necessarily wrong— he knew that the way things worked— that you had to be the first person down into the pool when the water was stirred up by the spirit… he would never be able to be healed by the systems of this world. It doesn’t matter if I want to be healed, the man says— it’s not an option for me.
But Jesus, undeterred by this man’s attitude, heals him immediately and tells him to get up and go, leave this place that his been lying to you for all these years about your worthiness. And the man picks up his mat and walks.
What is missing from this story is that this is not the end of the story. Our lectionary ends by saying that all of this happened on the sabbath, which implies that there are going to be some problems for Jesus.
And there were. The healed man is approached by some officials who fuss at him for carrying his mat on the sabbath and immediately he says, “well, the man who healed me told me to!” But he doesn’t know who Jesus is and Jesus had slipped off into the crowd. Later Jesus sees the man again and tells the man to stop sinning and the man immediately leaves to tell the religious officials about Jesus.
In so many other healing stories, we hear about how the person goes into town and tells everyone what Jesus has done for them and many come to believe in him. But in this story, Jesus heals this man, and then he goes and immediately tattle-tales on him to the religious officials!
That’s exactly why I really like this story.
Because it doesn’t matter to Jesus that the man is ungrateful. It doesn’t matter to Jesus that the man cannot heal himself by dipping into the waters. It doesn’t matter to Jesus that the man doesn’t beg him for healing. It doesn’t matter to Jesus that the man doesn’t leave the portico believing in the goodness of God and proclaiming the good news of Jesus to the rest of his community.
In this story, Jesus is concerned with healing for this man. Jesus is concerned with wholeness for this man. Not just in his body, but in his soul.
That is the God incarnate I can believe in. That is the God incarnate I can be in relationship with and love to the depths of my bones— not one who expects much of anything from me, because I know I will fail over and over again— but a God who is concerned with my healing and wholeness and the healing and wholeness of the world. Simply because we are a part of God’s creation.
That’s what I hear as the good news of this story— that God desires for us to be whole— regardless of whether or not our response is faithfulness or not. God desires for us to be whole because God desires for us goodness and abundance— not so that God might get something back from it, but simply because.
Every time we come to this place, and we lay ourselves by the waters, waiting for the spirit to stir something up, Jesus approaches us and says, “do you want to be healed?”
And despite the world telling us that we are not worthy of healing and wholeness. Despite, perhaps, our own minds and hearts telling us that we are not worthy to come and be a part of the community. After such a long time, it is easy to believe the lie that we are just never going to be whole and healed again. But every time we dip our fingers into that font, every time we come to this table, Jesus says, “take and eat and go.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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