Dear Friends:

The account of Jesus healing the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:2-15 has always intrigued me. John tells the story in an uncharacteristically spare fashion as the prelude to describing some of the most incredible claims of Jesus to divinity.

The story stands on its own with the kind of rich, nuanced humanity and grace that is one of the proofs of the authenticity of Scripture to me.  The man is powerless, but obsessed with one plan for healing that hasn’t worked for 38 years and never will. That’s obvious to Jesus who questions whether the man really wants to be healed.

Challenged on his core identity, the man projects the blame for why he hasn’t been healed onto others. Jesus cuts right through the excuses and posturing with some tough love. “Pick up your bed and walk,” he tells the man and that’s exactly what happens, setting off a theological firestorm over Sabbath-keeping and the claims of Jesus to be the Son of God.

I have written on this story before, but I’ve never felt that I really touched its humanity. In the last few months, I have received a profound healing of my crippled leg and my overall health through the blessings of surgery and physical therapy. This has allowed me to connect with the story of the paralytic in a new way because I now have glimpsed what it is like to be on the other side of the experience. It is out of that context that I write this week’s message, “The Pool.”

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids­blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.”  They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk?”’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God (Jn 5:2-15).

Do you have a clue of what it means to be an invalid? To  be disabled, lacking the capacity for the physical movement that living demands of us?

How can one have hope without ability to realize the goal of that hope? Is that what faith is–hope for the hopeless?

For thirty-eight years, I have lain here beside a pool, a public bath, in a place called Bethesda, the House of Mercy, waiting . . . to be first.

There is a legend running back to the time of the captivities, maybe before, that an angel swirls the water around. The first one in the pool when that happens will be healed.

That’s the story, anyway. It gave my family a reason to bring me here when they decided that they couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of me at home.

Even those who should love us, by all reasonable expectations, have a hard time staying with us when we have problems they can’t fix. We humiliate them by showing them their limitations. We terrify them by reminding them of their own fragility. We disgust them because care for us necessarily involves the repulsive sights and smells of a broken and weak body.

Survival for the broken and powerless means learning the desperate substitute for love–manipulation. To get by longer than anyone else here, I’ve had to learn how to successfully whine and beg others to help me despite their disgust. I’ve had to borrow the life of others to live.

My only hope for getting out of here is the pool and that’s no hope at all. I’ve tried to crawl toward what they call “The Stirring” many times, but the blind and the lame push ahead of me. I’ve no one to carry me and put me in the water.

Is the legend even true? I have seen and heard enough over the years to wonder if the sloshing is really just the sound of a release of fresh water into the pool from the reservoir above the Brook Kidron?

It’s Sabbath which means I’m hungry. No one is going to bring a piece of bread or a cup of water to us unfortunates with the Pharisees around and on the lookout for Sabbath-breakers.

Yet, the pool is a gathering place even on the Sabbath. Visitors enjoy the shade of the colonnades as they talk. I lie on my mat, listen and watch what I can. Useless legs mean I only see one point of view.

I hear a new group walking by. They are a mix of teachers, religious scholars and Pharisees who are discussing points of the law.

“Discussing” is hardly the word for what they are doing. They are arguing–the kind of wind-blowing that carries away the wheat and leaves the chaff, with the people starving for God still hungry for more.

What can their religion do for my pain? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s like salt on the sores I get lying here to have to listen to them go on like this.

The group passes between the pool and my mat. I hope this isn’t the moment the angel stirs the water because I have no chance to get there with them in the way.

A young rabbi seems to hold the attention of the rest of the group. He stops suddenly by my mat and smiles at me. It isn’t the cold-eyed sneer that I usually get  from those who won’t get their robes dirty coming close to me. No, he is giving me an honest grin of greeting and his eyes are warm.

But when he speaks, his words are tough. “How long have you been lying here?” he asks me.

“Thirty-eight years, Teacher.”

The quizzical look on his face tells me what he thinks about the legend to which I’ve pinned my hopes all that time.

“Do you want to be made well?”

I flush with quick anger at the question. What does he mean, “Do I want to be made well?” Why, if he knew everything that I go through every day to live! How can he ask such a thing of a destitute paralytic who obviously needs help? It’s not my fault I can’t make it to the water. If I could get to the pool, does he really think that I’d still be here?

Besides, this is what I know. This is all I know. This is my life. I get by here. I have no place else to go. Do I want to be made well? What do you think? You tell me how you are going to help me be first into that pool?

That’s what I think, but who am I to challenge this man of learning? After all, the priests, the rabbis and the religious scholars all believe that my sin has made me sick.

I try to deflect his question with self-pity and blame. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

He looks at me as if he can see right through me–all my pain, bitterness and defensiveness. I know he can tell that I have no choice but disappointment–that my hope to be healed in the pool is foolish.

I can also tell that he doesn’t care about any of this. He sees me just as I am–a wreck of a man–and he doesn’t flinch away in disgust.

Instead, his words cut away my shame like a surgeon cuts away diseased tissue with a knife.

“Pick up your mat and walk!”

That’s it! That’s all he says to me, but as soon as he speaks the words I know that he has given me the power to stand up and I do.

I reach down without stiffness or difficulty, fold my mat and walk back and forth–every step a gift of strength and health. There are disconcerted looks on the faces of the religious crowd that parts silently before me. I am so happy that it doesn’t matter why they’re upset.

My lame and blind companions who have moved in close around us break into hallelujahs of amazed joy and praise God for my healing before they start moving toward Jesus greedy for his blessing. When I turn to thank Jesus, I cannot see him through the jostling crowd.

I have a sudden yearning to go outside in the sunshine. I tuck the mat, my one earthly possession, under my arm and head in the direction of the temple to give thanks.

The pool had been my obsession for 38 years. Now, my last view of it is my reflection on the Sabbath-quiet surface as I walk past, with a grin.

A line of frowning, crossed-armed priests, scholars and Pharisees block the gate in front of me. I can see that they do not intend for me to pass. They cannot contain their indignation and shout at me, “It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”

Unbelievable! I lay here by the pool for all those years as half a man and none of them gave me even a word. They never paid any attention to me until this moment and they don’t recognize me, but I know them. They spend so much time looking for the wrong, that they easily miss what’s right.

Could I be healed on the Sabbath except by a miracle of God? But these joy-killers would rather that I remain sick and paralyzed than walk out whole and happy into the light. They didn’t give me my joy and they can’t take it from me.

I look them straight in the eyes–another new experience for me–and tell them the truth that all of their rules can’t stop, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.'”

They snap back at me with the unanimity of suspicion, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk?'”

“I . . . I . . . ” I look back at the crowd now moving in around me to witness the confrontation. The man is nowhere to be seen. They keep hissing the question to me and I don’t have an answer. “I don’t know who he is,” I finally reply/

My inquisitors arch their eyebrows and nod at each other. For a moment, I feel like crawling back on my mat in shame, but I am standing and I can walk and that can’t be denied to me. I take courage in the thought.

The religious enforcers have made their point and turn away from me. I walk on and head for the temple.

There, in the outer court, my healer comes to me with a smile. “I am glad I found you, my friend. My name is Jesus. See, you have been healed. Don’t go it alone without God again because worse things could happen to you.”

I am so excited to find out who healed me that I tell everyone in hearing distance. “This is Jesus. Praise God! Jesus is the one who made me well today at the Pool of Bethesda!”

Some of the same religious scholars and Pharisees who had demanded to know who told me to pick up my mat and walk are in the crowd. They move in and wag their fingers at Jesus. They snarl, “Sabbath-breaker. How dare you violate the holy commandment?!?”

I feel bad to have caused this good man this trouble, but Jesus is unfazed. He faces them and says, “My Father is working and I am working still.” He leaves no doubt that the Father Jesus is talking about is God, which would make Jesus the Son of God if he is telling the truth. Could he be the Messiah? That would explain my healing. Who knew?

No matter for now, because the crowd around us has turned ugly and seething with rage. “Blasphemer!” they shout.”He dares to make himself equal to God!”

I’ve had a lot of time to learn to interpret men’s eyes and what I am seeing now is “intent to kill.” They want to murder my healer.

I turn on my strong, flexible legs to shield Jesus, but he is calm and still smiling. “Let me explain,” he says with a voice that carries over the storm of accusations and subdues his persecutors. “I tell you the truth,” he continues. “The Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing” (Jn 5:19-20).

Before Jesus finishes, he claims to be the source of life and the judge of sin. He says that he, and not the Scriptures, are where eternal life is to be found. He says that what he does, he does for love.

Jesus tells the religious leadership that he doesn’t care what they think about him because the only approval that matters comes from God. He clearly claims to be divine. Somehow, his words hold a tough crowd that has killed men for lesser claims.

I, who had no use of my legs just hours ago, stand on the hard paving stones through the whole talk without fatigue. When he finishes and leaves unscathed, I believe that he is the Son of God.

The late afternoon sun gilds the temple steps with gold when I walk down them. I have no idea where, or if, I will sleep tonight. That doesn’t concern me. I only need a place to think and maybe get some bread. All this walking makes me hungry.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” Ps. 34:8)

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

 

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

 

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.