Do you want to be healed?

John 5:1-15

“Do you want to be healed?”  Jesus asked the invalid by the pool called Bethesda.  He was waiting and watching the water among all the paralyzed, blind and lame; each one wanted to be first into the pool when the waters were stirred up.  Usually crowds of sick and hurting people clamored around Jesus.  Yet, here in a space full of invalids, there is no mention of a commotion.  Did anyone see the Healer walk in?  Wasn’t there anyone who recognized him?  What was it about this one man that caught Jesus’ attention?  Was he the only one who looked up when Jesus arrived?

 Jesus knew the man had been there for thirty-eight years.  And He who always asked the right questions and gave the right answers asked this, “Do you want to be healed?”  But the man did not answer directly.  Jesus questioned the heart of the man, and the man responded by pointing out all the circumstances and people preventing his healing.  “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”  So, Jesus replies, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”  The man was healed.  He took up his bed, and he walked.

But, it was the Sabbath.  When the religious leaders saw this invalid walking around with his mat, they went to work enforcing the laws against work on the Sabbath.  They informed him that he should not be walking around carrying a mat.  It was against the law.  (Don’t you know people like that?  They did not even comment on the fact that this man was walking after 38 years!)  Then, instead of rejoicing because he can move, the man insists that it is not his fault that he is carrying his mat.  The man who healed him TOLD him to carry it.  Who was he?  The man didn’t know. 

Jesus found the man later and said, “See, you are well!  Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” (That’s the way you talk to a pessimist.  Because, let’s face it, something worse could always happen!)  Jesus was speaking this man’s language.  He wanted this man to see.  Really see.  He is well!  Sin no more.  This man could be transformed; his life could be forever changed.  Instead, he walked away and told the religious leaders that it was Jesus who healed him.  He tattled. And the leaders had one more reason to hate Jesus.

This story bothers me.  If Jesus came and asked me if I wanted to be healed, I would not have missed Jesus’ question or turned aside the opportunity to be transformed.  I would not have missed Jesus, focusing instead on the circumstances and people surrounding me.  As a main character in the story, this man is really disappointing.   I would have done better.

What did you want the man to do?  What did I want the man to do?  I wanted him to really answer the question, to see how much he needed you, Jesus!  I wanted him to say ‘Yes, I want to be healed!’  I wanted him to stop thinking about everything and everyone around him, about who was at fault and who to impress.  I wanted him to follow you out of the temple and listen to your teaching.  I wanted him to spend time with you!  If he had spent time with you, he would have been changed. 

 Do you want to be healed?  Yes, Lord.  But I give you so many excuses.  Help me not to make excuses.  I want to be healed.  I need to be transformed.  Come, spend time with me.

Empty Jar, Thirsty People, Living Water

John 4

Jesus and his disciples set out for Galilee.  Tired and thirsty after traveling a long way, Jesus sat down at Jacob’s well.  He was in the middle of Samaria.  When traveling between Judah and Galilee, the route through Samaria was usually the shortest.  But Jews and Samaritans despised each other, and no Jew would have wanted to spend too much time there.  Samaria was a lost cause.  In fact, strict Jews would travel across the Jordan River and walk all the way around it.  This way they would avoid being defiled by associating with Samaritans.  But Jesus was not concerned about travel time or direct routes.  He walked to Samaria because he had a divine appointment with thirsty people at an old well.

I wonder about the Samaritan woman who walked to the well that day.  What began the downward spiral she was on?  She had lost or divorced five husbands.  In a culture which afforded women so few choices, I don’t believe that she had control over every negative event in her life.  Still, her current living arrangement, with a man who was not her husband, would be enough to cast her out of respectable society.  Now she found herself traveling to an out-of-the-way well at a less than ideal time of day.   Did she suffer under a general stigma that something was wrong with her?  Was she scorned because she was immoral, or was she avoided because she was mean?  She walked alone with her empty pot, hoping to find the well deserted.  Did she hurt?  Was she numb?  Was she bitter?  Did her heart sink when she saw Jesus sitting there?

It didn’t matter.  Jesus was compelled to meet this unacceptable and expendable woman.  She was so thirsty for something good in her life, something that might last!  Jesus began the conversation with a request, “Give me a drink.”  The woman did not respond politely at all.  “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” She bitterly pointed to reasons Jesus should not have even asked.  Men and women did not generally converse together in public, for one thing, and Jews and Samaritans did not share dishes or much else. According to the Jewish cultural standards, Jesus would be defiled if he drank water from her jug.  The woman must have wondered what rock Jesus had been hiding under. How could he not know this?  But Jesus knew it was this woman who was hiding, struggling under the weight of her broken life.  She should be asking him for a drink.

Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”   The woman’s attitude changed slightly.  Was it all she would have done differently, if she had only known?  Was it simply that living water sounded so wonderful and good?  She called Jesus ‘Sir’ as she asked her next question, “Where do you get that living water?” Surely not from this stagnant well.  Jesus had nothing to draw with, and the well was deep.  “Are you greater than our father, Jacob?” This man’s words sounded too good to be true.  But, Jesus went on. He even promised, drink my living water and you will never thirst again!  This empty, thirsty woman knew what it was to be out.  She was out of water, out of friends, out of place, and out of love.  She said, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”  That would be one less thing she would be out of, and according to this man, one thing in her life that would last.  Imagine, a lifetime supply of fresh water!  But, Jesus doesn’t want to fill empty water jars, he came here to the well to fill empty people.

Jesus’ next words put this woman face to face with her life. “Go, call your husband,” he said.    But she had no husband.  The men in her life had come and gone, and the man she was with now was not her husband. Many who study this passage say that at this point, the woman changes the subject.  But I don’t think she did.  This stranger has just reviewed her life in a few short sentences.  She realized that Jesus may be a prophet with some real answers!  So the woman asked him, where should we worship?  At a time when God revealed himself in specific places, through set traditions, specific people and circumstances, she must have wondered,   where is God?  How can I make things right with Him if He is not here, but in Jerusalem?  How can I get to Him if I am barred from the place He is? With each decision, each heartbreaking turn of her life, it probably seemed that He was increasingly out of her reach.  Jesus did not scold her for changing the subject; he answered her question.  In fact, after gently reminding her that salvation does come from the Jews, He gave her a great promise, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

Imagine the Samaritan’s new found hope!  She had searched for just a glimpse of Him. But, no longer would she be separated from the God whom she so desperately needed!  No longer would she stand alone at the base of a sacred mountain, by a deserted well dug long ago.  No longer would she be unable to enter the sanctuary of God!  God had sought her out.   This man said the time is now here!  She would be able to worship Him!  Could this man be the gift of God?  Could he be the Messiah?  Could he be her Savior?  “I am he,” Jesus said!

Running all the way back to town, this woman was not thirsty for anything, except that others share the joy which now overflowed in her heart.  She shouted to those who, for so long, met her with silence and disdain.  She sought out those who had turned away, those she had hurt, and those who hurt her.  “Come!  See a man who has told me everything I have ever done!” (That turned some heads, sharply, I imagine!)  “This man, he couldn’t be the Messiah, could he?”  The people in town followed her back to the well for a few reasons: curiosity (what HAD this woman done, exactly?) to prove her wrong, (No. Of course he is not the Messiah!) and damage control (did he say anything about….?).  What a brilliant woman.  She knew human nature.  She knew how to get people to move!

Back at the well, Jesus was too excited to eat!  He had just seen one woman’s life change, one woman who believed.  He was tired; now he is energized!  When he looked up to see the thirsty Samaritan crowds coming, he must have felt such joy!   The Jews rejected Samaria for good reasons, but Jesus took his time there.  No person or community is beyond his reach.  All who are hopeless, take heart!  Jesus came to restore what was rejected, rebuild what was broken, and graft in what has been cut off.  The dead are raised to life in Jesus.  Hope is not only for those who can be salvaged, those who have potential, or those who have not hurt us.  Life is given to those who are dead!  Living water flows not only in pre-existing river beds, but across deserts and down rocky mountainsides!  It even springs up through deep and stagnant wells.

“Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” –John 4:15