Thirty-eight Years (and Still Waiting)

I’m returning to a text in the gospels that I’ve commented on before. Sorry if this is a repeat. In John’s gospel, there are only seven of what we would call miracle stories. John calls them “signs”. The third of these signs (John 5:1-14) happens in Jerusalem during one of the great pilgrimage festivals celebrated for seven or eight days around the Temple. There was a double pool in the area called Bethesda, near the Temple, surrounded by five covered walkways. It had become a kind of open-air gathering place, or hospice, for those with illnesses or disabilities who had no one to care for them. There was a legend that said that every now and them an angel of God would come and stir up the waters in the pools. The first person who made it into the waters after this would be healed. 

Jesus is in the Holy City to celebrate the Feast and comes across a man who has been sick for thirty-eight years lying among a large crowd of equally needy people. Jesus recognizes that this man has been in this condition for a very long time and asks, “Do you want to be well?” The man has thought long and hard about his life, or lack thereof, and has thirty-eight years of excuses for why he can’t possibly be better than he is. Jesus simply says to him,”Get up, take your mat and walk.” Surprise! The man does just this.

It is the Sabbath. Some Jewish would-be authorities stop the one who has been healed and tell him, “It’s against the Law for you to carry your mat. That’s doing work on the Sabbath” The man replies that the one who made him well told him to pick up and carry his mat. They ask him, “Who told you to break the Sabbath Law?” He replies, “I don’t know.” Later Jesus finds him in the Temple area and tells the man, “You’re well now. Don’t keep sinning, or something worse may happen to you.”

I remember hearing this gospel passage when I was thirty-eight years old and crippled interiorly from early childhood. The question, do you want to be well, haunted me. Part of me strongly wanted, but part of me didn’t want to be well. I had all kinds of well-reasoned excuses for why I was the way I was. I was functional, but I was not well. I wasn’t ready to do whatever was necessary to become more fully myself.

We can have plenty of rehearsed responses to ourselves or to others who might ask us if we want to be free, fully alive and more loving- like this is just the way I am! Not so! We can be well. We don’t even need to know who Jesus is. But we do need to do what the Spirit urges us to do to be well.

We need to stand up, pick up whatever comforting or cushioning mats we have relied on to justify our un-well-ness and carry them away to the nearest trashcan. And if anyone challenges us with how wrong it is for us to be different than they thought we should be, ignore them. If we choose to fall back into our old bad habits, it can be more difficult to become well again. Just as Jesus informed the person who was cured, “If you really want to live your life in all its fullness, stop doubting, hiding behind the past, and feeling sorry for yourself. Live this newness!”