Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath. John 5:1-9(NLT)
For Reflection:
“Would you like to get well?” "What a silly question, Jesus. I’ve been sick for 38 years, you think I want to stay this way?..." I picture the man retorting back. Instead, his response is logical yet lacking all hope… “I can’t sir, for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.” The simplicity of his words… and yet the emptiness… the despair… the hopelessness. And I wonder about this man. Had he been lying there waiting for healing for 38 years? His hope waning as day by day no one came to help him enter the pool? Where were his family? His friends? How had he gotten there? And again, the question from Jesus, “Would you like to get well?”
“Would I want to get well?” We all struggle with injuries, illnesses, aches and pains… and then I realize the depth of the question behind Jesus’ words. “Would you like to get well?”. Do I want to be well? Healed? Whole? Do I want to feel peace? Find hope? Be anchored in him? It’s not that Jesus doesn’t care that we are physically hurting, but he also recognizes that healing of our spirit is what really matters. I think back to the story and what follows the man’s resigned response. Jesus heals him. He didn’t have to get into the water. He just got up and walked. I think about that healing and wonder if perhaps Jesus healed more than just the man’s physical body that day. He spoke to a man who’d been sick for 38 years and in one short command I like to think that he restored both his health and his hope.
I’m reminded of the passage in Mark when people are lined up outside the home of Simon and Andrew and Jesus is healing everyone until nightfall. “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go to the next towns, that I may preach out there also, for that is why I came out.” Mark 1:35-38.
“For that is why I came out.” Not to heal the sick, but to bring true healing by teaching and sharing the hope found in Jesus. Jesus did heal the sick. And he can heal us too. But Jesus’ message is that our physical pain is temporary. He is seeing past the temporary brokenness and is instead asking a much deeper question when he says, “Would you like to get well?”
Let us pray:
Dear Jesus, please take away all the things that are creating barriers, causing me to not want to be well. You may not heal all our broken bodies, but you came to bring hope and life and heal our brokenness. Please help me to trust that your desire is to bring healing and wholeness and life to each and every one of us. Help me to emphatically be able to answer yes when asked if I want to be well. Thank you for healing us. Thank you for loving us. Amen.
Can you think of a time when you felt Jesus asking you if you want to be healed?
What might it look like if you decided to say yes to his wholeness and healing?