Today’s entry is another example of Jesus, the new wine, wrestling with restrictive religious rules and regulations…old wineskins. He has moved again, now to Jerusalem for another of the Jewish feast days: It would have been Passover or Pentecost or the Feast of Tabernacles. Today I will focus on what Jesus did and where he did it. Tomorrow I will focus on the reaction he received. Remember that wherever he went, whatever he did, his disciples, a considerable group, were with him, watching, listening, and learning.
“Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘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.’ The Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’”
The ruins of Bethesda are still there. The ‘pool’ was actually two pools surrounded by four porticos, with a fifth portico situated in between them. In Jesus’ day it was an impressive sight, very probably build up by Herod the Great, glistening in white marble. Archaeological remains indicate that the Romans sought healing there as well after taking over Jerusalem in A.D. 135. Eusebius noted that the waters were reddish in color, probably due to some factor of geology.
The waters of Bethesda were thought to be healing in nature. The people believed that if they wished a healing they must watch the waters. If the pools were disturbed or roiled they believed an angel had come down to stir the waters with his finger, and that the first person in the water would be healed. Therefore the invalid’s complaint, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is disturbed.’
But look at this setting in context. All four gospel writers emphasize the early and extensive healing ministry of Jesus. It seemed as though he was surrounded by those in need of his compassion wherever he went, and the healings punctuated and illustrated the nature of the Kingdom of God that he constantly taught. At the pools of Bethesda he was again surrounded by people blind, lame, and paralyzed. The man he healed had been an invalid for 38 years, emphasizing the severity of need in that location. Did Jesus heal them all? He certainly had done so in other settings.
But, John doesn’t include that detail, centering on the single individual, withered by 38 years of inactivity, able only to lie on his mat, unable even to roll into the pool at the appropriate time. See in your mind’s eye the reaction of that unwell crowd when Jesus healed the man; and not only healed, but made his disabled brain, nerves, muscles, and skeleton able to work together suddenly and smoothly for the first time in decades. Do you think that group saw the miracle without clamoring for their own miracle, raising a shout for help with desperate voices? In my imagination I can hear them, and see their eyes as they struggle for his attention. Do you think he just walked away from them, dismissing their need? He was the power of the Kingdom of God in their midst, with a ready audience for his words as well as his touch.
But we only have the story of the one, reminding us again that Jesus meets us one to one, concerned for our situation as well as for our soul. His ministry was deeply personal as he touched, spoke, admonished, taught, and encouraged people in a way that always included them and never left them out. That’s still the way it is today.
Prayer: “Great Word of God, you have never stopped healing. And we have never stopped needing your healing touch. We all crave strong and supple bodies in the here and now, but we know that your greatest miracle will happen at the end of all things, when you heal us of our mortality and grant a joyous life that will never end. We praise you for your compassion and for your mercy today, and we gratefully give ourselves into your care. Amen.”