From John 5 – imagine this with me

I lie outside, on the ground by the Pool of Bethesda. It is HOT, and the ground is hard, making me ache anywhere I can feel my body touching it, but I do not move. I barely can, and it is not worth the effort. There is no comfortable way to lie here. At least they built some colonnades for shade.

The sores grow where my body rests on this mat, but I can only shift so much, and there are sores there, too. I am filthy, but no one cares to wash me, and I cannot. What does it matter? No one looks at me anyway. They all know who I am, and they all know I am here. But no one looks. I have been broken now for thirty-eight years; I know exactly how long – or short – human compassion lasts. I know what it looks like when it runs out; charity satisfies its own conscience long before it satisfies real needs. “God will help him,” they say to comfort themselves so they don’t have to anymore. They’re tired of my needs. I can’t even blame them. I am a heavy load to carry.

So now, I am sitting beside the pool of God’s “help.” That’s what they called it, years ago. “There is a pool in Jerusalem by the Sheep’s Gate. Sometimes an angel comes to stir the waters, and if you are the first person into the pool after that, you will be healed!” They dangled the hope of healing in front of my eyes, and like a fool, I reached for it.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

This plays on loop in my mind. I’ve heard the proverbs of Solomon my whole life. When people run out of their own wisdom, they grasp for someone else’s, and no one has their own wisdom to help me anymore. They don’t know what to do any more than I do, and I can’t even blame them. Can a human help where God will not?

I have seen the angel stir the waters. I have seen people get healed, people who had others to help them into it. Hope is real – healing is real – just not for me. God may heal broken bodies, but what can he do with my rock hard, sun-baked, cracked clay soul?

My heart is sickened by this pool of hope.

Let the others have it. There are people here at this pool, broken people, who do still have hope, who have people to help them. People who actually want to help, people who haven’t given up or been turned off yet. I pushed all of my people away years ago. Sometimes I am still angry at them for leaving me. Other times – I just can’t even blame them! I am so angry, so hurt, so needy. So cruel. What reason did I give them to stay?

-but-

A man walks up to the pool and looks at me. He must be new here; I hear him asking people about me. I see their furtive looks, I hear them answering his questions politely: coldly, but politely.

The man comes and sits near me. I do not look at him, but he keeps right on looking at me. I feel the filth he must see.

“Do you want to be healed?” He says to me.

What kind of question is that? Do I want to be healed? Why else would I even be here? What, does he think I haven’t tried, that I haven’t done everything everyone else has done, that I haven’t thrown every last hope at this broken body of mine?

…And why has no one ever asked me that before?

Do I want to be healed?

Thirty-eight years is a long time to live broken. It’s a long time to learn how shallow the pool of human compassion is, and it’s a long time to sit beside hope and wonder if it’s even worth trying at all. Hope deferred and deferred and deferred made my heart sick – very sick. I’m not sure it’s worth it to try anymore. No one else cares if I am healed. I’m not even sure I care if I am healed anymore… or if I just want to die and be rid of it all.

I have never said those words to anyone. But when he asks me if I want to be healed, I am so surprised I look him in the eye – and I think he knows.

Pivot!

“I have no one to help me,” I say. “When the water is stirred, someone always gets in before me.”  

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. I look up to find him staring at me. He knows I did not answer his question, and so do I. The sorrow there is profound. I wonder if that’s what my eyes look like. Maybe that’s why no one looks at me.

He stands up suddenly. “Get up,” he says, as if to say enough of this. Enough moping. Enough pity. Enough despair. “Pick up your mat and walk.”

I almost laugh at him. But at that moment, life comes back into my dead limbs. I am too astonished to laugh. I move them; I stand up; I pick up my mat;

I walk.

Thirty-eight years I have laid here broken, asking for a miracle. Thirty-eight years, broken, forgotten, alone. Then in one moment. ONE. MOMENT. It took years for my heart to die, and only a moment for it to come roaring back to life.

…but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

This man must be from God.

I look up to find him, but I find the Pharisees instead – the Pharisees, who call themselves men of God. Men who refused to help me because they did not want to muddy their hands with “God’s judgment on sin,” which is what they called my brokenness. But here I am, set free by God himself.

“It is the Sabbath; it is illegal to carry your mat.”

Really? Really?? These men know me. They know I have been paralyzed for thirty-eight years – they know I was paralyzed this morning. Do these men not recognize the hand of God when they see it?

“The man who healed me told me to pick up my mat and walk.” Forgive me if I side with him.

I am healed. How are they missing this? God alone can heal!

“Who is this fellow who told you to break the law?”

I AM HEALED –

…And then I realize. I did not even ask the man his name. I am no better than any of them, any of the people who left me alone beside the Pool of Bethesda. I am so wrapped up in myself… that I missed the living pool of compassion deep enough to heal me.  I missed the miracle standing in front of me.

I don’t even know my miracle’s name.

I have to find him. And I can. I can find him because I am healed.

I run all over Jerusalem, but I cannot find him. The crowds are too thick. He is nowhere. For the first time in years, I see the temple. The temple of the God who healed me. In a jolt of gratitude, I rush inside it to make an offering for my healing.

He finds me there. It’s like he was waiting for me. He is from God; I should have known I would find them both here.

“You are healed now. Go and stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.” He knows? He knows… and he healed me anyway.

Now I know who he is. He’s the one they keep talking about, the one the people love and the leaders hate. He is Jesus.

I’m not sure why I did it, why I told the Pharisees. Maybe it was revenge; these men who had gloated over the consequences of my sin were finally being put in their place by this man. Maybe it was fear; I passed the buck to Jesus for the law I had broken, hoping he could handle their ire better than I could. Maybe I thought I could convince them to follow Jesus with my story. Or maybe I just hoped they would like me a little better if I did. But I told them, and they didn’t like me better. They didn’t like him any better, either. I told them he healed me, and it just made them hate him more. How?

It’s funny. I spent thirty-eight years praying for a miracle, and when it finally came… it didn’t do what I expected it to do. It didn’t solve my problems. It didn’t create faith, or draw the praises of God from other’s lips. But it did show me something new about the people around me. It did show me something about myself.

And it showed me everything about God, and the Son He sent.

Because the real miracle wasn’t the healing of my body… it was the man who took the time to look at me. To meet my needs.

The miracle was compassion.

The miracle was Jesus.

It was always Him.

*Proverbs 13:12 – “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”