Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?” “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.” Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!” Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! (John 5:1-9)People do what they do for a reason. Sometimes the reason may be buried in obscurity, but they have some origin and purpose for what they do.
Sometimes that reason is that they just have always done it. It is a silly reason, but it is also a strong one, because it disguises itself as tradition.
Jesus came to this place that had a tradition of healing. The waters evidently had an underground spring and every once in a while the waters would bubble from an outpouring. When they did, the story was that the first person in would be healed.
The problem with this is that the first person in usually was well of enough to jump up and jump in. The truly sick and lame couldn’t move fast enough. Sometimes family members would stay with the sick person but that got old after a while and they wanted to be somewhere else.
Probably, if a person was well enough to jump up and jump in the pool when the waters bubbled, they weren’t that bad and had a “healing” that healed nothing more than a hypochondriac disease. They really weren’t that sick and were healed easily. Or maybe the faith in the water was so great it made them better.
Whatever the outcome, this man was too sick to move quickly. He was a victim. He was sick and couldn’t do anything about it so he sat wishing all day. He had sat wishing for 38 years.
When Jesus asked him if he wanted to get well, Jesus saw that he had given up. Would you like to get well? I can’t, I have been here too long, no one will help me get healed, everybody else gets everything before I can get there, I am defeated.
Jesus got tired of hearing the excuses the man had so he said, Stand up, pick up your mat and walk!
He cut to the chase and just healed the guy. Suddenly, the man was fine. He had no more excuses. He was well. He was upright. He had no more reason to hang around the well.
What do you want to bet he came back to the pool after a while. He came back, maybe, to show his friends his good fortune, to visit, to reminisce about old times. After a while, he would stay longer and maybe feel in his mind he would help some of the other ones get in if they needed it.
The Bible doesn’t say, but it is entirely possible that he ended up spending his days at the pool again. He wasn’t sick any longer but it was just hard to leave so familiar a place. This was, and everybody said so, his corner at the pool.
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