Revelation 21:10; 21:22-22:5 John 5:1-9
One of my favorite places in the world is a pool in Austin Texas called Barton Springs. Barton Springs is a natural limestone pool that is fed by an underground stream – the Edwards Aquifer. The water is constantly bubbling up into the pool from what they call the mother spring, which is located under the diving board. The constant flow keeps the water a cool 68 degrees year-round. No matter how hot it gets, and it gets really hot, a dip in Barton Springs is refreshing.
There are people who can be found at Barton Springs every day. They go to swim laps in the 900-foot-long pool, or just to sit on a rock and chat with friends. There are people for whom this is church. There is something about these waters that seem to bring healing to the body, mind and soul.
There is a statue just outside the pool area of three men in swimsuits, sitting together on a rock deep in conversation. These are three well-known writers from Austin – Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter Prescott Webb. In their lives, they were seen at Barton Springs every day for years. They came for the waters and the friendship – and the intellectual stimulation. They called their perch the Philosopher’s Rock. The statue is there for the sake of remembering these three men, but also as a tribute to the wonder of this place, which nourishes the body, the mind, and the soul. Sort of like the pool of Beth-zatha.
I don’t know any more than you do about the healing waters of Beth-zatha. We are told that periodically the waters are stirred up and this is the moment when it would be advantageous to get in. The story was told that every now and then an angel of the Lord would go down to the pool and stir the water, and this is what gave the water its healing properties. Many people apparently came to this pool with hope of being healed.
It’s possible Jesus was just passing through the Sheep Gate when he noticed this particular man in need of healing.
Every healing situation that Jesus finds himself in is unique. Every person is in need of healing in their own special way, and each one Jesus responds to in a different way. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to healing. But, still, it does come as a bit of a surprise when Jesus’ first words to this poor man with a debilitating illness are, “Do you want to be made well?”
Why wouldn’t he want to be made well? Here he is at this pool, where the sick and hopeful gather around, waiting for the angel to stir up the waters so they might go in and find relief from whatever has afflicted them. The text says he has been there a long time, and I hear that as saying he has been coming to this pool daily for a long time. He has been ill for 38 years. Perhaps he has been trying that long to be made well.
I don’t know how Jesus knew that this man had been there a long time. But it would not surprise me if this man were very well known at the pool. If he had been there every day for 38 years, he is as much an institution as the pool itself is. Even when he is gone, they would probably still talk about him, possibly even erect a statue of him.
You would not think there would be any question about his desire to be made well; he is there all the time.
Yet, it may be true that the man had some ambivalence about being healed. After all, any kind of change is a hard thing, even a good change, and there are all kinds of roadblocks people put up when it comes to being made well. We want to lose weight, but we don’t want to change our diet. We want to be stronger, but we don’t want to put in the time at the gym. Being made well is often complicated.
This man has found it to be so. He has no one to help him. And with his disability, it is pretty hard to manage it by himself. By the time he gets to the water someone has pushed in front of him. Or by the time he gets there the waters have settled and they are no longer beneficial. So he would have to wait for the next time, whenever that might be.
He is probably frustrated, or maybe he is beyond frustrated. Maybe he is so discouraged by his failure that he has a hard time even trying anymore. And so Jesus brings him back to the fundamental question: Do you want to be made well?
While he doesn’t actually say yes, his explanation does point to his desire. He tries to get to the healing waters, but without help he just can’t make it.
I will admit to you that, in times past, I have pointed an accusing finger at this man. I have suggested that maybe he doesn’t really want to be made well, for he has certainly had enough time to do it. I have been suspicious of his true motivations, hearing in Jesus’ question a sort of accusation. It is easy to see it this way because we know that there are many factors that complicate being made well. There are many ways that we are our worst enemies when it comes to being truly well. We know that, if we are honest with ourselves, there are so many things we could do that would make our lives better, make us more whole in body, mind, and spirit.
But this time I read the passage from the perspective of someone who has a real disability. Someone who cannot see. Someone who cannot walk. Someone who actually does need another person to help.
And this man has no one to help. He is at the margins, unable to make his way to the center of things, whether it is the pool itself or the society in which he lives.
Jesus listens to his explanation for why he has not yet been made well, then he says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Which is just what the man does. So, yes, we see he does want to be made well.
But wait, we think, doesn’t this just show he could have done it anytime if he really wanted to? After all, Jesus didn’t do anything other than tell him to get up. He didn’t lay hands on him, he didn’t pray over him, he didn’t make a paste out of spit and mud and rub it on the man’s legs.
But, as I said, every instance of healing is unique. And there are other healing stories in the gospel where Jesus doesn’t do anything special. Sometimes he touches them, sometimes he only speaks to them, and still they are made well.
I don’t doubt that this man, like most of us, had a talent for getting in his own way of healing. But that doesn’t erase the fact that he needed someone to help him. He both needed to affirm his desire to be made well and he needed someone to help him be made well. And on this day, Jesus gave him both.
It was not the end of his troubles, though, because – as the text says – this happened on the Sabbath day. As he is walking away with his mat someone stops him and tells him he is wrong.
Perhaps people would prefer that he remain unwell, helpless by the side of the pool. Rather than celebrate a healing they are there to criticize the way and the day in which it was done. This is another way of keeping this man at the margins. Of keeping him less than whole.
The same people, we might assume, who did not offer any help to this man are now concerned that he might have been healed inappropriately. Yet, we know that, with Jesus, healing is always appropriate.
This act of healing is just one of the many ways Jesus shows us a hint of God’s kingdom, where healing is always appropriate. Where we learn that we are meant to be well, to be whole in body, spirit, and mind.
It’s countercultural – in this world that seems to celebrate its brokenness. A world that glorifies violence, relishes a good fight, enjoys tearing others down more than building them up. Like the Pharisees that stopped the man carrying his mat, we can find fault with anyone and anything.
In a world where people get up every day and look for ways to tear down and sow division, it’s not a wonder we have trouble finding healing. If only we could open our eyes; if we could find our way through the brokenness, pick up the slivers of God’s goodness and use that to help one another – and ourselves. In reality, it is every one of us that needs to affirm our own desire to be made well, and then act accordingly.
We know it is God’s desire. We see it in these last chapters of John’s Revelation, where there is a new heaven and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. And in it there is the river of the waters of life, for the healing of all the nations. The nations that have been so busy tearing down and burning up – God will bring healing.
We know that someday it will come to be. This is God’s desire for all things to be made well. Even in this broken world we still have occasions to see the slivers of God’s goodness – the healing waters of Barton Springs being one of them.
Every day we have the chance to do these things: to affirm our own desire to be made well, to seek out the good things of God that will lead to being made well, and to commit ourselves to one another for the sake of the wellness of the world.
This is God’s desire for us. May it be our desire as well.
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Photo: Barton Springs, May 2016
