Do you want to get well?

In Jesus’ day, it was custom and practice for all Jewish men to come to Jerusalem to attend the key pilgrim feasts and festivals in Spring and Autumn, including the Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks (also called Pentecost), and the Feast of Tabernacles. These were times when thousands of people gathered in Jerusalem, both people who were healthy, as well as people who were sick. It wasn’t unusual for those who were sick to make pilgrimages to the pool of Bethesda to receive the healing benefit of the waters. Bethesda means “house of mercy”, “house of grace”, or “house of flowing water”. This sets the scene and setting for today’s reading.

This pool, surrounded by five covered colonnades, was a place of collected human suffering—the sick attracted by the hope of being healed. As is so often the case, Jesus stepped down into the brokenness and was present amidst the suffering, coming to this place with purpose and intention, where he offered the grace and mercy of God in bringing healing of all kinds: healing the sick in mind, sick in body or sick in spirit. St Francis reminds us, “We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.” This is precisely what Jesus did.

In this passage, Jesus encounters a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years – in those days, almost his whole life! After such a long time, this man’s problem had become a way of life. The things that we might struggle with so often end up wrongly defining us. Here was this man, who no one had ever been able to help. The context of the passage suggests that he had lost hope and had lost the desire to reach out and ask for help as a result of that. The irony that we see is that the man was doubly paralysed; paralysed by his physical condition, and paralysed in this place of healing. That must have been harrowing and heart-crushing – to be so tantalisingly close to healing, and yet so far – a living torment.

Among the many trying to be healed, Jesus chose the one who had lost hope and was living in torment and asked him directly “Do you want to get well?” This is a profound question framed with respect, compassion, and concern. Jesus always notices these things doesn’t he, drawing alongside and asking questions that evoke a response that takes us straight to the heart of the situation? The man’s hope for healing was stuck behind his hopelessness since he never received help to get to the water in time and get through the clamour. No wonder he said, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

But there is also the underlying question which is, “Was the man who had suffered for so long ready to be healed?” Sometimes we get so acclimatized to the suffering we endure, that the prospect of that burden being taken away scares us. Jesus’ response was to say to the man, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” And at once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. Thirty-eight years of suffering, gone, in an instant.

Instead of the Jewish leaders taking delight in such compassionate relief of suffering, all they were concerned about was seeking to obey the letter of the law, in the way that they chose to uphold it – completely losing sight of the spirit of the law. The Pharisees were more concerned about their petty rules than the life and health of a human being. It is easy to get so caught up in our man-made structures and rules that we forget the people involved. Their response was one of criticism, saying to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” Instead of looking at the fruit of Jesus’ ministry, the leaders instead began to persecute him because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Having healed the man physically, Jesus also wanted to heal the man spiritually and in his subsequent encounter with the man in the temple, Jesus declares, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” Jesus’ declaration was that the man’s thirty-eight years as an invalid would be nothing compared to something worse—that is, eternity in hell. The man needed to stop sinning and come to salvation in Christ. Yes, he had been lame, but now he could walk. This was a great miracle. But he needed an even greater miracle—to have his sins forgiven. We too always need to look to eternity.

Augustine of Hippo said, “…the true health of bodies, which we are expecting of the Lord, will come at the end in the resurrection of the dead. What comes to life then will not die; what is healed then will not get sick; what is filled then will not get hungry or thirsty; what is made new then will not grow old. Now though, notice the deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ: the eyes of the blind that were opened have been closed in death; the limbs of the paralyzed that were steadied have fallen apart in death; and whatever was healed in mortal limbs in this world of time has ended up as nothing; but the soul which believed has won its passage to eternal life.” Amen