Materials
Real World Encounters with Jesus in the Gospel of John
Do You Want To Be Well?
John 5
by R. Todd Bouldin
The year 1966 was a long time ago – well, depending on your perspective. It’s almost as long as I am old – give or take a few years. :) The Monkees burst on to the music scene with “I’m a Believer.” Ole Blue Eyes Frank had one of his biggest hits with “Strangers in the Night.” JFK had been dead for only three years. Lyndon Johnson was president. Thirty-Eight Years!
That was how long the man in our story this morning had been coming to lay by the pool of Bethesda hoping for a healing. He knew his spot, and every day you could find him there again like a reliable homeless person on the same city street corner.
It might help us to understand his situation a little better too if we could imagine him as a paraplegic without a wheelchair. Imagine being unable to walk or move yourself since 1966. There were no nursing homes, no Medicaid, and no ADA – being invalid meant a life of loneliness, poverty and shame. Day after day, for thirty-eight years, he showed up waiting for the system to work for him, and it never did. Days and years finally give way to misery and despair. Things never changed – he decided long ago that he would just have to live this way for the rest of his life.
Then one day a man walks by him and asks him a question – it may have been the first time anyone had talked to him in days or months. “Do you want to be well?” Jesus asked. It must have irritated him – the answer was obvious. “Of course I want to be well. Who is this guy asking me if I want to be well? Duh. I have been lying here for 38 years waiting to be made well, and it has never happened. So, I just keep coming back here because I don’t know what else to do.” All he can think to say is to explain why he is still laying there after all of these years – that’s what most people want to know when they see him there day after day. “I don’t know what the problem is with this place. Can’t get anyone to wait on you around here,” he complained. Assuming the pool had healing powers, couldn’t he have found someone to put him in the pool in 38 years? I am sure he probably asked himself a few times a day, “What’s my problem? How come I’m always last? How come no one likes me? I will never get out of here.”
Some of you here this morning may be like the man who was laying by the pool the day Jesus walked by, and you just can’t seem to escape the dreaded despair and limitations life has brought you. Every morning and every night it’s the same thing all over again – life has come to be defined by what you can’t do, by what others won’t do for you, and by all the ways the system or someone is treating you wrong. Maybe you have even gotten quite comfortable with your ailment, or your depression, or your sin – you wouldn’t know what to do if you actually did not have to live this way. The good news is: You do not have to accept the way it is any longer because Jesus will not settle for the way it is in your life. He is compassionate, and He is your healer, and He invites you to take your mat and start walking in dignity again. But He first has a question for you who have gotten quite comfortable with your mat:
“Do you want to be well?”
Jesus didn’t hear the excuses or the complaint. Jesus broke right through three decades of despair and depression – and with a few words changed his world. “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” I wonder if the guy was disappointed. “That’s it? It’s just that easy? I was hoping to get in the pool.” Or maybe he was scared. “Uh –oh. Now I am going to have to make a life, find a job, and be responsible. I have never known anything else besides just laying here at the pool.” It was all so random … it was not the way he had expected to be healed. He didn’t even know the name of the man who told him to get up, take his mat, and walk.
But Jesus knew him. John shows us again how this Jesus knows us long before we ever know Him. Jesus knew how long the man had been laying by the pool, and He saw a need, and He met it. Notice that we are not told that this man demonstrated any amount of faith before or after the healing. Unlike the royal official in John 4 who believed Jesus could heal his son, this man didn’t even know who Jesus was. He couldn’t even identify Jesus in the Temple after the healing. This man’s healing had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the compassion of The God who walked by him in Jesus Christ.
So, this man with no muscle strength stands up and picks up his pallet and walks away from his pool side home for thirty-eight years a healed man. No sooner had he taken a few steps than some authorities nearby accused him of working on the Sabbath because he had taken a few steps with his mat. It was as if the sign had not even occurred – even though their complaint testifies ironically to the fact that it did. Here, a man who was crippled for almost forty years had been healed, and all they are concerned about is his mat. Compassion wasn’t their strong suit though. They were a lot more interested in rules than compassion.
The man had gotten used to playing victim for thirty-eight years, and so his first response was, “It’s not my fault. This guy who healed me told me to take up my bed and walk” (John 5:11). Then John said they asked the man the question that really mattered, to this man and to the church . . . even to you: “Who is this man” (John 5:12)?
This sign never was about the man, or even about the healing. Not for John. John provides us with these seven “signs” to tell us something about The Identity of Jesus. While the sign demonstrates the compassion of Jesus, it is something more that John is trying to tell the first century church about Jesus. This becomes clearer in the controversy that evolves between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem. They want to know why Jesus would heal on the Sabbath, and Jesus responds to them, “God doesn’t take the day off on Sabbath from His compassion – He is 24/7 – and so am I” (John 5:17). Instead of praising Him for giving life to someone, they ironically want Him dead. So He presses the case further, “The Father loves The Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing; and He will show Him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. Indeed, just as The Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also The Son gives life to whomever He wishes” (John 5:20-21).
The religious leaders could not believe Jesus was making Himself an equal with God – claiming to be the judge of the world, the authority even over Scripture, and The One who can give out life to whomever He chooses. Jesus says that dead people would hear and understand His identity as God’s Son better than those listening to His speech. Those who believed in Him would have eternal life, and resurrection life in the life to come.
“The problem with you Jewish religious leaders is – you already know everything! You think your answers are the only answers; your own power and authority constitute the only real power when it does not. You can’t see a non-person given back his dignity and humanity by the power of God – all you see is a rule being broken. You do not see God in The Flesh – you see a threat to your authority and identity as keepers of the gate. You can’t see eternal life because you choose to lead a life that is basically self-determined – where you get to determine how and to whom the justice and compassion of God will be extended. If something doesn’t fit your little box, then you refuse to see it. The box is a lot more comfortable – it’s as comfortable as an old worn out mat by the Bethesda pool. You are the real cripple here.”
For these religious leaders, though, the most stinging indictments came when Jesus announced that the two things they most prided themselves in – their knowledge of Scripture and their heritage -- were the very things that condemned them. Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet, you refuse to come to Me to have life” (John 5:39). Life is not anywhere but in Jesus alone – in a dynamic, adventuresome, and intensely passionate relationship with a Person -- not in any book or rule or heritage.
Religious people who trust in their religion are in need of a different type of healing. Their mats are not the mats of despair or disability. Their mats are their securities, particularly their religious ones. John wrote this story, not to show the power of Jesus to heal, but to show The Identity of Jesus to people who are too religious to really get up and walk.
It is possible to become attached to The Words of Jesus and yet miss Jesus. It is a very real possibility in our time, like then, to trust in particular interpretations of Scripture or to the superiority of our religious heritage rather than in Christ alone. It is still possible to miss the opportunity to show compassion because we are more concerned with who sinned than with who is in need, more worried about violating a rule than acting unjustly. It is possible to become so self-absorbed that you take on the task of deciding where, and when, and to whom God will give His favor. After a while, you can’t find Jesus even when He’s right under your nose because your Jesus is nothing more than a reflection of you.
This man and the religious leaders are just a like – life is offered to both, and they still don’t see who it is that offers it. The man can not even recognize Jesus in the Temple, and the religious leaders cannot see who Jesus really is even though He is right in from of them. It is not clear that the man, or the religious people, ever come to believe because of this sign.
Perhaps that is why John tells this story: John is asking us whether we will believe when Jesus walks by us. He is ready to offer us real and true Life, and there are many witnesses who testify to His claims. While He stands ready to meet our every need and heal us from every despair and sin, John knows that we first have to be shocked out of our desire to keep things the way they are. If we do come to believe, we are going to have to throw away the mat and get up. And that is going to require us to ask ourselves whether we really want to be well.
Physical handicaps are one type of paralysis, and I do believe this text shows the great compassion and desire of Jesus to heal physical infirmities. But Jesus passed by many more lame people on His way to this man – so the point of the sign wasn’t just the physical healing. There are other types of paralysis. The decision to keep doing what you always have done emotionally and spiritually while hoping for a different result is also paralysis. Despair and the acceptance of life as it is but less than what it ought to be can keep you coming back to your pool for a long time. Playing the victim, making excuses, blaming the system, hoping for luck – those are all just other infirmities that will cause you to miss the opportunity to be well.
But John wants the church and us to know that there is a form of paralysis that will not only maim your body but also kill your soul. It is the paralysis of clinging to your religious mat. I’ve met people who tell me that they have never changed anything they have believed about Scripture or about their faith in a long time. They know Scripture very well, but it just serves to bolster what they already think. They haven’t discovered anything new about The Person of Jesus since the Monkees were in the Top 10. They never have felt the awe and mystery of a God whose ways are not our ways, the challenge of a Jesus whose compassion surpasses our labels and boundaries, or the awesome power of the resurrection to end our fears. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever – so why should I change? I have believed this way for thirty-eight years,” they reason.
Absolute conviction and assurance is honorable, but to hold on so tightly to everything you have believed and done to the point where you are trusting in your religion more than you are trusting in God -- to the point where commandments are more important to you than compassion -- to the point where you are so Scriptural that you can’t see The God to whom Scripture points – well that is what it means to be truly crippled.
The more you think about it – Jesus is asking you to get up and live responsibly in the world, to enjoy freedom without sinning – that seems like a lot of work. The mat is sounding better all the time. It at least is peaceful and nice, and you don’t have to think much. There by the pool, the world is predictable, and your identity is clear. So you just keep coming back. And then one day Jesus walks by the place where you have gotten quite comfortable, and He asks you a question:
“Do you want to be well?”
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