House of Mercy

John 5:1-15

March 4, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Tom Wright tells the story of two boys who discovered a tennis court in the backyard of an elderly neighbor. The neighbor was sick and the court was rather overgrown, so the boys, not knowing what tennis was, developed their own game to play on the court since the markings on the court indicated it was meant for some sort of game. The net hung slack in the middle of the court, and the only ball they had was a soccer ball, so they began kicking the ball back and forth over the net, trying to land it within the boundary lines. It worked, but they had to admit it was not the most exciting game ever invented. One day, the neighbor’s son was visiting, and he happened to see the boys playing on the court as he looked out the window. Smiling, he gathered up tennis balls, rackets and other equipment from a cupboard and headed out to meet the boys. At first, they were a little frightened to see the man coming toward them, since they didn’t really have permission to play on the court, but the son wasn’t angry. Instead, he called out to them, “Hey, would you like to play the real thing?” The boys were confused. “What’s the real thing?” they asked. “Tennis, of course,” the son replied. “Here, let me show you how to play” (cf. Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, pgs. 54-55).

Sometimes we are far too quick to settle for something less than what we could have. These boys settled for a rather dull game rather than the harder but more exciting game of tennis. And we, very often, settle for a made-up or a cultural idea of who Jesus is and was (maybe one of those pictures from the video) rather than the real thing. That’s a big part of why we’re walking through the Gospel of John this Lenten season, to try to catch a glimpse of the real Jesus, the real thing. Last week, as we looked at the prologue of John’s Gospel, we talked about how Jesus is full of grace and truth, and I encouraged you to watch out for those words or those ideas as you read this week. Today, then, we come to a story that is a miraculous story and yet it’s not all that miraculous. We can call it one of Jesus’ unmiraculous miracles—and I’ll explain in a bit what I mean by that—and we see it happening in the life of a man who has settled for less than what God wants for his life.

One of the things you may have noticed about John as you read is that he focuses a lot of attention on stories of individual people. The other Gospels focus more on Jesus’ teachings, and the stories he tells, which is valuable, but John wants us to know about the people Jesus encountered, the lives he touched individually (cf. Card, John: The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 75). If you spend much time with elderly folks, you’ll notice that’s the case. While in our working life we’re often focused on the projects, the work, the schedule, how to do things and so on, older folks tend to remember stories of people, of lives they have intersected with. John is somewhere his 90’s when he is writing this; he’s at the age where he knows people are what really matters. And so this week in our readings we met Nicodemus, and a Samaritan woman, and a royal official in Capernaum. Then we come to chapter 5, where we meet one of the most annoying men Jesus ever encounters: the invalid at the pool of Bethesda.

Let’s first get the setting in mind. Bethesda is a word that means “house of mercy.” Some texts say the place was called “Bethzatha,” a word which means “house of the olive.” Either way, the name points to a place of healing, because olive oil was used in the ancient world as an agent of healing. John describes this pool as being near the “Sheep Gate” and have five covered colonnades. For centuries, scholars and archaeologists doubted John’s description, because there simply wasn’t a pool that would have had five colonnades. A pool only had four sides, after all. And then, between 1957 and 1962, a site near the modern Lion’s Gate was excavated and there they discovered that, in Jesus’ time, there were two pools in that location separated by a 20-foot wide porch—five colonnades, just as John described. The pools were part of the water supply for the Temple and so they were extraordinarily large, going down to a depth of forty-five feet. The whole area was larger than a football field, and even before Jesus this location had a reputation for being a place of healing. Romans had dedicated the site to the god Asclepius, the god of healing (Price & House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, pg. 287; Luker, Illustrated Guide to the Holy Land, pg. 106; Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 106). Today, this location is still known as a place of healing, and the church that is there, the Church of St. Anne, has the most beautiful acoustics, producing music to heal your soul. When we were there last summer, I told Pastor Rick that even he would sound good singing there. You be the judge; take a listen.

VIDEO: Singing at St. Anne

Bethesda—the house of mercy—was a place of healing. So it’s no surprise that people would gather here in anticipation that the waters in the pool would have miraculous powers. In verse 4, which is not in most of our modern Bibles because it’s not in the earliest texts that we have, someone inserted an explanation for later readers (it’s something the first readers would have known): “From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the water. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.” Now that sounds more superstitious than spiritual, but nevertheless, it was a belief that had caused people to gather around this particular pool.

I wonder what drew Jesus to this place, or what caused him to pay attention to this particular man. It’s possible someone pointed the man out to him, and it’s also possible that Jesus could see the hopelessness in this man’s eyes. He has come to this pool, every day, for thirty-eight years. He has been in this condition (and we don’t know exactly what that condition was, just that he was an invalid) for thirty-eight years. That’s a long time, long enough that he has pretty much given up. In fact, he’s more than given up. He has created a list of reasons—excuses, really—for why he is the way he is. He is the “man of excuses,” one of the most miserable characters Jesus encounters (cf. Card 76).

Jesus asks him what sounds to us like a rather rude question: “Do you want to get well?” Now, in the text, we of course have no idea what the tone or inflection of Jesus’ question was, but I imagine it wasn’t said in a harsh way. It’s a simple, straightforward question: “Do you want to get well?” And I can also imagine I would think of all sorts of sarcastic responses to the question: “Of course I want to get well! I’ve been coming to this place of healing every day for thirty-eight years! Why would you think I wouldn’t want to get well?” But Jesus already knows this man is full of excuses, and instead of sarcasm, that’s what the man gives Jesus. An excuse. A flimsy excuse. “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” (5:7). Now, he had to have had someone get him to the pool each day, but for whatever reason, he had no friends to help him during the day. It seems whoever brought him there just left him for the day, perhaps because they knew it was a safe place for those who were disabled to stay. This place of healing had become a place of abandonment for some, and that likely contributed to the man’s poor mood. Year after year, he had hoped to get well, and year after year, he had been unable to so that by the time Jesus comes along, he can’t even answer a simple “yes” to Jesus’ question. “Do you want to get well?” Jesus asks. “Well, you see, here’s why I can’t,” the man replies. A flimsy excuse keeps him from seeing what Jesus is offering. It’s often a flimsy excuse that stands between us and Jesus (cf. Card 76).

Jesus chooses to ignore the protest—and the lack of a real answer—and heal the man. This is what I mean by an unmiraculous miracle: Jesus doesn’t wave his hands, do something spectacular or do anything at all that draws attention. All he does is speak; remember what I said last Sunday about how, in the Hebrew mind, “word” and “deed” are the same thing, the same word. Jesus is the Word made flesh; what he says is what happens. So he commands the man: “Get up!” It’s the same word used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe resurrection, the power of life over death (cf. Wright 57). Just as John told us he would at the beginning of his Gospel, Jesus is bringing new life and new creation. He isn’t just reversing the effects of sin; he is making all things new.

And how does this man of excuses repay Jesus? How does he respond to the one who healed him? Well, John tell us that the day Jesus healed the man was a Sabbath, the day of rest. It was the day in which God commanded that no work be done, and since that was too general a prohibition, the Jewish oral law, the Mishnah, had outlined 39 different and specific classes of forbidden work, things that must not be done on the Sabbath (cf. Card 77). One of those things that you could not do was to carry anything, and yet Jesus commanded this man to carry his mat, so when he’s stopped and asked why he is “working” on the Sabbath, what does he do? He blames Jesus. Actually, he doesn’t even know Jesus’ name—and isn’t that amazing, that he didn’t even get the name of the person who healed him? But after Jesus finds him and he’s able to get Jesus’ name, he still doesn’t thank him or show any gratitude. Rather, he sells Jesus out to the Pharisees. Verse 15 says he went and told on Jesus, like a kid afraid he’s going to get in trouble if he doesn’t tell on the other person. Even after his body is healed, his soul is still ill.

I want to take a brief detour here and deal quickly with what Jesus says to the man when he finds him after the healing. It’s a verse that bothers us, and rightly so. Jesus says this: “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (5:14). Some people, on the basis of that verse, will tell people who are sick that their misfortune, their illness or whatever bad thing is going on in their lives is because of their sin. I’ve heard preachers and others say things like, “If you just get rid of the sin in your life, you will be well.” Is that what Jesus means? Is sickness caused by sin? The problem with that theology is that it doesn’t line up with what happens in the world, with our experience. Job’s friends in the Old Testament told him something similar, that Job’s misfortune was caused by some sin Job hadn’t confessed, and God came along at the end of that book to inform them that they were wrong. You could point to a contemporary example like Billy Graham, who suffered for the last part of his life with Parkinson’s Disease. Now, I’m not saying Billy Graham didn’t have any sin, and he would have been the first to admit that he didn’t always serve Jesus perfectly, but did God “strike him” with Parkinson’s because of that, this man who probably won more people to Jesus Christ than anyone in recent history? Does sickness happen because of sin? This verse is an example of where we take a word directed at an individual and try to make a principle out of it. Jesus is speaking to this man, and he knew his heart. He knew this man’s inclination to make excuses, to push God away, to refuse the help he most needed. Even in his actions here, he is pushing Jesus away even after Jesus found him, came after him a second time. Jesus says elsewhere that sickness is not a punishment from God, though at times it certainly feels that way. Sickness, Jesus will say in John 9, is an opportunity for the work of God to be revealed (9:3; Hamilton, John: The Gospel of Light and Life, pg. 39). Whether that happens through direct healing or through God’s presence giving the sick person strength and peace, God’s work is revealed in our illness. As God told Paul in the midst of his own struggle with some sort of illness, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). When we are weak, his strength shows through. The “something worse” Jesus is referring to here is having received the power of God and failing to allow it to transform your life.

Because that’s the real miracle here. If the healing is unmiraculous, the real miracle is summed up in three words: “Jesus found him” (15:14). You see, the real gift Jesus came to give is not healing and not teachable lessons, it’s not doctrine or theology (as important as those are). The real gift Jesus came to give us himself (cf. Card 78). James uses the same word we find in Jesus’ command here when he talks about healing: “The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up [there’s the same word]. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven” (James 5:15). James isn’t necessarily talking about physical healing here, however, any more than Jesus is. The word for “well” is the same word as “salvation.” Jesus comes to give us himself. He comes to give us what we need, not always what we want. The healings in the Gospels are never the point; the healings, including this one in John 5, happen so as to remove a barrier that prevents a person from getting to Jesus. Personally, I’ve had both experiences. I’ve had times when I have been prayed over for healing and healing has happened, at least one time instantaneously. But with my heart issue, God chose not to heal that supernaturally. Instead, he used the hands of a skilled surgeon, twice, to bring healing and wholeness, and more than that, he used those times of illness to bring me closer to him. When we receive what he really comes to give—himself—rather than demanding what we think we need or what we want, then God is glorified. In our weakness, he is strong. In our brokenness, he is glorified, because as we live faithfully even in weakness, even in brokenness, we show that a life lived with him is always more whole even than a life lived in perfect physical health without him. We learn to trust in ways we would not have otherwise. Though the road may seem long, he is offering us himself always, showing us how he can be our strength.

So, two things I want to draw out of this story for our purposes this morning. First of all, in our staff meetings recently, we have been talking a lot about vision and dreaming and asking God what kind of church we want to be. What is our legacy to be? When the community thinks of Mount Pleasant, what do we want them to think of? You may be surprised to know there are still people in Terre Haute that I come in contact with who don’t even know we’re here. They will ask what I do and when I say I’m the pastor here, some will say, “Where is that?” So we have some work to do on that, but the bigger question is what do we want to be known for? Bishop Bob Farr asks it in these terms: what is our signature ministry? There are a lot of ways to answer that question, and a lot of single ministries that we could pinpoint, but as your pastor, I would hope we are known as a Bethesda, a house of mercy, a place of healing. That healing may come in the form of hope for a broken spirit, release from an addiction, or an oasis of peace in the midst of a chaotic life, but my prayer is that this would be a place where people find hope, peace and healing. And to be that place, we’re going to have to more and more become a place where the broken come to hang out. That’s what Bethesda in John 5 was; John says “a great number of disabled people used to lie” there (5:3). While John may be referring to those with physical challenges, I see us becoming a Bethesda in a much broader way. We’re a place where those with addictions can come and know they won’t be judged; they’ll be loved back to health. And increasingly, we’re becoming a place where those who have special needs, manifested in a thousand different ways, can come and find grace, mercy, hope and love. Repeatedly, in the Gospels and especially in John, Jesus is a friend of the friendless (like this man with a thousand excuses) and he is close to the broken and the brokenhearted (cf. Psalm 34:18). Becoming more and more a Bethesda place will likely cause some disruptions and some discomfort, but the wins, the changes we will see in lives are more than worth it. Mount Pleasant Church, can we become a house of mercy to all those who need it?

That leads me to my second thing we can take home from this passage, that healing requires our cooperation. Jesus asks, “Do you want to be well?” We must have a desire to be changed; if we’re content to stay the way we are, we will not really be open to change. This man demonstrated that, because even after he was healed, he was the same man, blaming others, and throwing Jesus under the proverbial bus. So we must want to be well; we must cooperate with what God is doing. Jesus asks the man to get up, which he does. God’s power and our effort must cooperate. You know, when someone is sick, I always pray for healing. I believe God can and does sometimes heal without any other intervention. But that doesn’t seem to be the way God normally does it. He asks for us to cooperate, to do what we can. For whatever reason, as I said, God chose not to supernaturally heal my heart condition, so I had to allow the people God had given skills to be his hands in the healing process. I had to allow others to pray for me, to carry on the ministry here, to even cook for me, and I am grateful for every single one who did any of that. You were the hands of Jesus to me and my family. I still often get asked how I am doing, and as I wrote on Facebook this week, I don’t really notice how far along I’ve come until I see a new patient come into cardiac rehab and realize not that long ago, that was me. That slow walk, slow breathing and painful look on the face was me. It would still be me had I not allowed the nurses at rehab to work with me, to push me, to challenge me. They, too, became the hands of Jesus in my healing. Jesus wants to bring us to wholeness, but he expects us to cooperate (cf. Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 1, pgs. 181-182).

So, this morning, as we share in the bread and the cup of communion, I invite you to a time of prayer for healing, for wholeness, for whatever you need. Centuries before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah said there would come one who would bring healing through his own life. Looking down the corridors of history, Isaiah described it this way: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). In this season of Lent, we are preparing to walk with Jesus to the cross, and to remember that what Jesus did there is meant for making us whole. This bread and this cup points to that action, that healing hope Jesus provided by giving his life on the cross. So, this morning, after you have received the sacrament, you are invited to spend some time praying on either side of the chancel here. If you want, there is a vial of oil on both sides. There is nothing magical in the oil, but in the Bible, as I mentioned earlier, oil is a symbol of healing. And because there’s also no magic in who anoints you, you’re invited to anoint one another with the oil, perhaps making the sign of the cross on the other person’s forehead, and to pray together for those places where you most experience brokenness. Let’s make this place this morning a true house of mercy as we pray for one another so that we may find healing, wholeness, salvation, and hope. Will you you join me as we pray to prepare for holy communion?