Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 16, 2010
John 5:1 – 16
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
"Sir," the invalid replied, "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."
Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."
But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.' "
So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?"
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.
The challenges of being healthy of body, mind, emotion, and soul sometimes outweigh the difficulties inherent in sickness and disability.
Spiritual health does not happen by osmosis. It is not a matter of joining the right church or being a regular attender in worship or having parents who live with a growing faith. Spiritual health, like physical or mental health, happens with intentionality. We make decisions about how we intend to live life, about the kind of persons we want to be.
While often – at least in the spiritual life – the transforming work belongs to God and not to us, at the very least we have to act on the desire to be more and more connected to God. We have to be open to whatever work God does within us. We don’t stumble upon it accidentally.
So Jesus encounters this man who had been in ill-health for 38 years. “Do you want to get well?” Jesus asked. He asked the question of the man’s physical health. He also may have been asking about the man’s spiritual well-being or his emotional health.
Well-being begins with desire, with a growing awareness of the hunger that resides in the inner caverns of my life. At its most basic, this yearning is the stretching of our soul towards God. This inner hunger is a sign of my human emptiness and my need for God. Before I can be “well” I have to “want to” be well.
For many of us, the point of healing in the story is not in the actual physical healing, but in healing our “want to.” Healing, while it comes from God, also invites us to diligence and sacrifice. We are invited to lay aside the ways we have seen ourselves and the lies we have believed about ourselves in order to come into a new way of relating to God, self, others, and the world.
This new way of relating is often very painful, as it stretches us to the bounds of what we thought was possible, as it pushes us to the edges of ourselves, as it invites us to explore more deeply who we are in God, and as we see more clearly the truth that resides at the core of us.
Today the prayer is that God would heal our “want to,” and that having our “want to” healed, we would step more deeply into physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wholeness.
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
"Sir," the invalid replied, "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."
Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."
But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.' "
So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?"
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.
The challenges of being healthy of body, mind, emotion, and soul sometimes outweigh the difficulties inherent in sickness and disability.
Spiritual health does not happen by osmosis. It is not a matter of joining the right church or being a regular attender in worship or having parents who live with a growing faith. Spiritual health, like physical or mental health, happens with intentionality. We make decisions about how we intend to live life, about the kind of persons we want to be.
While often – at least in the spiritual life – the transforming work belongs to God and not to us, at the very least we have to act on the desire to be more and more connected to God. We have to be open to whatever work God does within us. We don’t stumble upon it accidentally.
So Jesus encounters this man who had been in ill-health for 38 years. “Do you want to get well?” Jesus asked. He asked the question of the man’s physical health. He also may have been asking about the man’s spiritual well-being or his emotional health.
Well-being begins with desire, with a growing awareness of the hunger that resides in the inner caverns of my life. At its most basic, this yearning is the stretching of our soul towards God. This inner hunger is a sign of my human emptiness and my need for God. Before I can be “well” I have to “want to” be well.
For many of us, the point of healing in the story is not in the actual physical healing, but in healing our “want to.” Healing, while it comes from God, also invites us to diligence and sacrifice. We are invited to lay aside the ways we have seen ourselves and the lies we have believed about ourselves in order to come into a new way of relating to God, self, others, and the world.
This new way of relating is often very painful, as it stretches us to the bounds of what we thought was possible, as it pushes us to the edges of ourselves, as it invites us to explore more deeply who we are in God, and as we see more clearly the truth that resides at the core of us.
Today the prayer is that God would heal our “want to,” and that having our “want to” healed, we would step more deeply into physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wholeness.
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