(John 5:2-9)
This one is for those who struggle with the chunks of Greek. That’s because what matters in this passage stands out in pretty much any translation. It begins with Jesus having returned to Jerusalem for a Feast…
There was in Jerusalem near the Sheep (Gate) a diving pool called in Hebrew, Bethesda (house of mercy or grace), which had five covered colonnades. In these were lying a large number of the sickly, the blind, the lame, the shrivelled.
There was one man there who had been sickly for thirty-eight years. Seeing this one laying there, and knowing that he had already been there a very long time, He said to him, “Are you willing to become healthy?”
The feeble man answered Him, “Lord, I don’t have a man to throw me into the diving pool when the waters are disturbed. While I am still coming, someone else goes down.”
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk!”
And immediately the man was healthy and picked up his pallet and walked off.
We aren’t going to bother with the Jewish leaders coming after him for carrying a pallet on the Sabbath, nor the archaeological treasure trail it took to find a five-colonnaded cistern in Jerusalem, nor anything else except the operation of faith for healing we see in this passage.
As I have noted previously, Jesus responds to faith and not to need. But at first sight you might think this is a story with no faith, only Jesus’ compassion for someone who has been in need for so very long. But let us take a step back, first.
Jesus never prays for anyone to be healed, nor does He ever tell His disciples to pray for healing. In the Gospels, healing is something you (as Jesus or one of His disciples) do, not something you ask God for.
But Jesus doesn’t heal this man; at least, not in the way He heals others, which is most often a combination of touch (assuming they are present), and of speaking a word of completed healing over them (“you are healed”, “your child lives” or whatever). So why doesn’t Jesus just tell him, “You are healed”?
Remember the woman who was healed when she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. Jesus didn’t even know she was there, until He perceived power going out of Him. He says to her, “Don’t be afraid daughter; your faith has healed you.” And the same is true in every incident where Jesus heals; He heals where there is faith. In Nazareth “He could only heal a few because of their lack of faith.” Now look at our man by the pool.
“Are you willing to be healthy?” Jesus asks. (And there is whole lot behind that question which can be pretty confronting; illness can so easily become part of our identity. It is a good question to ask yourself, especially if you find yourself talking about “my illness”. Really? You want to keep it?)
So yes, “are you willing to be healthy?” A simple “yes” would do, but instead the man says he doesn’t have anyone to throw him in the pool. What does he think would happen if he did? Being thrown into a deep diving pool as a cure for chronic weakness and inability to move yourself sounds almost certain to succeed, but possibly not in the way he expects (he will no longer be sick; just dead). The interpolated explanation appearing as verse 4 in some manuscripts may well be correct (i.e. they thought an angel came from time to time and troubled the waters, first one in gets healed); but was it really faith in an angel troubling the waters, or just a deluded hope based on a popular myth, actually involving methane bubbling up from the leaves on the bottom? I see no evidence God can work with wishful thinking, or treat it as if it was faith.
Jesus clearly doesn’t find any faith in the man’s answer that He can work with, but His genuine compassion for the man will not be brooked: since the man didn’t say “No” in answer to Jesus’ question, He takes the conversation a step further, to the point where the man will either respond with faith or not at all. If he responds, he can be healed; if he doesn’t, he stays where he is.
“Get up! Pick up your pallet and walk!”
Perhaps the man caught an echo that warned him that this was the voice which created the Universe with a word; he doesn’t stop to consider, but leaps up – and becomes healthy again as he does. He picks up his pallet and walks off.
And yes, of course he runs into trouble for Sabbath-day pallet-carrying, and ends up identifying Jesus for the Jews as the one who told him to break the sabbath.
Once we have stopped laughing at the man; kind laughter, since he ends up healed despite himself; most of us (including me) should be laughing at ourselves. There is a fundamental issue at work here, which is that whether we are looking at a problem we have – illness, debt, family issues – or at a challenging assignment (“hey Gideon, you’re the mighty warrior who will deliver the whole nation of Israel…”), we frame the problem or challenge the way we think we can solve it. (Or more often, can’t solve it).
The disciples did it all the time, and it mostly sounds like this: “Even if I had ‘x’, which I don’t have, and can’t imagine having, it still wouldn’t be enough to solve / do even the teeniest little part of this. We’re all doomed…” Or someone asks you if you are willing to be healed, and you answer that you haven’t found anyone to throw your helpless body into the deep, deep diving pool.
So if He asks you, “Are you willing to be healthy?” (or prosperous, or reconciled, or successful or whatever it is that you need), can I suggest that we dump all the reasons “why not”, and instead just say “Yes”.
And then do whatever He tells us.
Seeing the Kingdom 