Not the sharpest stick in the forest

(John 5:9-15)

I wasn’t going to cover the “after story” of the feeble man at the Pool, but changed my mind: because it raises one absolutely fundamental issue.

The easy part is this: when Jesus tells the man to get up, pick up his bed and walk, he does exactly that, and walks off, while Jesus disappears into the crowd. When the Pharisees tell the man off for breaking the law – “It’s the Sabbath; it is not legal for you to carry your pallet!” – the man replies, “The one who made me healthy, this one said to me “pick up your pallet and walk”. And when the Pharisees ask “who was that?”, he has no idea. It is almost as if it hadn’t occurred to him that this might be important.

But later, Jesus finds him in the temple and says to him, “See, you have become healthy. No longer stray, lest something meaner comes into being for you.”

First thing: Jesus originally asked the man, “are you willing to become healthy?” Now Jesus is pointing out that exactly this has happened: “See, you have become healthy.”

But what happens next? Because this is the big deal. Is Jesus threatening the man with punishment if he doesn’t reform his ways? “God will punish you with something worse if you don’t stop sinning”?

First question, if the man was paralysed (or enfeebled) for 38 years because of God’s judgement upon him, why didn’t Jesus insist that he stop sinning first, so he could be healed? Second question, why had God not judged every other sinner the same way? (And I really suggest you don’t go down the “his sin was one of the really bad ones” path, because that is Pharisee thinking.)

We only think like this, seeing God’s judgement at work in illness, because we have bought a lie. If you want to trace the lie back, read Genesis 3 again. God does not say “I have cursed the earth because of you.” He says, “Because of you, the earth is cursed.” Adam is the one who activated and enacted the curse; the curse is a consequence of his actions. It wasn’t something God did. Neither did God punish the man at the pool, nor threaten to do worse if he didn’t stop sinning. Sin separates us from God because it aligns us with the rule on earth of God’s enemy, Satan. How did Satan ever get to rule? In Genesis 3, Adam hands over his authority over the earth to the Serpent. That’s how. As God knows full well, Satan in charge means Adam and his descendants are going to no longer experience the provision of God’s blessing, but rather live in want and abject poverty, because that is where Satan wants to keep God’s beloved children.

And – here comes the big lie – he is especially keen to leave them believing they are in this mess because God is mad at them.

Jesus had compassion on the man from the start, and when he wasn’t sharp enough to answer “Yes!” to His leading question, came up with a simpler solution that even this man could respond to. (“Get up!”) Knowing that, even after he has been made healthy again, he isn’t necessarily going to help himself going forward, Jesus seeks him out and warns him: “You just spent 38 years unable to fend for yourself. Stop sinning / straying / missing the road (insert your preferred translation of μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε) lest something meaner happens to you”; or even “lest a greater weakness comes upon you”.

We are never told how he has been straying, but Jesus clearly knew enough to issue the warning, and was trying to help the man avoid a worse fate than 38 years, lying incapable by the pool. But the key point is that Jesus wasn’t threatening him with something He, Jesus, would bring upon him, but rather warning him against continuing on a path that could allow even worse consequences to come upon him.

Choosing to go our own way, or sinning, or anything other than following God’s way, especially after we have come to know something of God’s invitation to us, is like saying to the Evil One, “Come on in and mess with my wealth, my household, my marriage, my family and my health. I give you all the authority.” Of course, not many people are dumb enough to do that wittingly. But it is what Adam did, and his descendants don’t seem to do much better.

Grace is God finding something so simple that even we – not exactly the sharpest sticks in the forest – can respond to His invitation and instruction, and be healed and saved. And then not go back to making ourselves subject to the Serpent.