Sermon Notes on John 5:1-9

 

Obedience brings healing, healing brings obedience.

 

There are some scholars who believe this pool is still in existence today. Some people in Jerusalem still believe it has healing properties. It’s the sight of an intermittent spring not too far from the modern day city of Jerusalem.

 

Bethzatha, or Bethesda (depending on which document you’re looking at) must have been a strange place to visit in Jesus’ day. I think If I lived in Jerusalem at that time I probably would have avoided it. Can you imagine walking through a place filled with the blind, lame, paralyzed, and withered? I picture them all begging for alms, sitting around all day, and hoping for the pool to become stirred up.

 

Call me a cynic, but I have a hard time believing that every person who was the first to get into this pool after the water was stirred up was healed. There must have been a few though. Otherwise why would all of these tragically hurting people hang out there?

 

I guess it’s not surprising that Jesus was a far braver man than I would have been. Not only does he walk into this creepy place, but he walks up to someone who had been lying there every day as a cripple for longer than most of the people of that time lived. 38 years is a long time to lie on a mat each day hoping that the next time the water is stirred up you will make it there first.

 

We don’t know why, of all the people in this sad place, that Jesus picked this man. Perhaps it was because he had been there longer than anyone else. Perhaps healing him would give hope to everyone else and reveal something about Jesus that would be hard to ignore.

 

There are so many strange things about this story, so many questions we could ponder, but there is one question in this text that wouldn’t leave me alone; one question that I felt like I had to explore with you today. It’s the question that Jesus asked the man before he healed him. Do you remember it? Before Jesus heals him he asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

 

At first I thought, “Well, duh! Why would he be lying by the pool if he didn’t want to be made well?” But when I looked at the man’s answer it became clear to me that he must have been asked this before. Why? Because he had a prefab excuse for Jesus, all ready to deliver as if on cue. You notice he doesn’t really answer Jesus’ question. He doesn’t say, “Yes! I absolutely WANT to be made well!” He just makes excuses for why he is still lying there after 38 years by a pool of allegedly healing waters.

 

And then it occurred to me. I don’t know of anyone who is suffering from a physical ailment who doesn’t want to be cured, to have their body restored to a more normal condition, but I know a whole lot of people who, if they are perfectly honest, don’t really want to be made “well”.

 

In a spiritual sense, every one of us could be sitting or lying around that pool. Each of us is suffering from illnesses of the soul.

-         How many of us are so caught up in the junk we have allowed to fill our lives that we have become blind to the things that break the heart of God?

-         How many of us are so convinced that we are trapped by our circumstances, that we have become paralyzed, certain that God can’t work through us?

-         How many of us sit here today making excuses for how lame we are in the world, unable to reach out to the lost and the needy?

-         How many of us have allowed our hearts to be poisoned by the voices of the evil one so that we are blind, unable to see every human being of every race, nation, and tribe as being just as precious in God’s sight as our own?

 

As we sit around the baptismal water, our hearts and our souls are blind, lame, and paralyzed. Jesus has a very disturbing question for us: “Do you want to be made well?”

Jesus asks:

-         Do you want to see the things that really matter to me?

-         Do you want to know how I feel about the things that take much of your energy?

-         Do you want to see how I feel about the things that make you angry?

-         Do you want to know that I love Iraqi civilians as much as I love US soldiers?

-         Do you want to understand that I love Palestinian Muslims and Christians as much as I love Jews?

-         Do you want your heart to break as mine does for all immigrants and for the poverty that often brings them to this nation?

-         Do you want to be opened up to the power and the leading of the Spirit so that you will be my light and my voice to everyone in the world?

-         Do you want to choose discomfort, hardship, and change for the sake of my kingdom, so that others can know my love?

-         Do you really want to be my disciple? Do you want to see what I see? Do you want to follow me?

-         Do you want to be made well?

 

I’m afraid most of us would react a lot like the poor man in our text for today. We would begin to make excuses. We would come up with a thousand reasons why we couldn’t possibly actually see what God wants us to see or do what God wants us to do. We would rather nurse our prejudices and hidden hatreds.

 

I’m afraid most of us would choose to be comfortable rather than whole. We want God to bring us to the pool each day and let us lie comfortably on our mat and then tuck us in bed at night. As if God were there to make our lives better.

 

NO! We are disciples of Jesus Christ. The same Jesus who healed a Roman occupier’s servant as well as the daughter of a synagogue leader. We exist to serve him, to follow him, to do whatever it is that he asks us to do, and to leave behind whatever it is that he asks us to leave. We exist to see what he longs to show us and to turn our eyes away from those things that make us blind, lame, and paralyzed.

 

Today Jesus is asking us a profound and powerful question. “Do you want to be made well?” Understand this. If your answer is “yes”, be prepared for the next thing Jesus will say to you, “Stand up, take your mat, open your eyes, and follow me.” No more excuses. Amen.