Healer in a Dangerous Time 1
John 5:1-17
"Now that day was the Sabbath."Sounds fairly unimportant doesn't it. Not very exciting. But to a Jew, those six little words would have been like an electric shock. Like a billboard in BLACK and RED.
Jesus does this thing, this healing, to a man who has been ill for 38 years, on the Sabbath.
According to the law, it would have been ok if Jesus did some sort of life saving rescue, on the Sabbath. But this man was ill for 38 years. Why not wait until tomorrow?
To put it in our terms you might say that Sabbath keeping was an important sacrament for the Jewish people, showing God's ordering of creation.2 A sign for them that pointed to the fact that the one true God was sovereign, and in control of all. Isn't that true? Why not wait until tomorrow?
What was Jesus saying? What was he showing us when he did this thing?
This is not a man who will die if he was not rescued, some man bleeding in a ditch. This situation was not a good analogy to a sheep that had fallen into a pit. A sheep that needed immediate rescue like the one Jesus talks about in another place, when asked about another Sabbath healing. This man had been ill for 38 years!
It wouldn't have been that hard, even for the lame man, to wait another couple of hours, until the sun went down, and then be healed. Maybe Jesus could have said to him "wash yourself at Sundown, and then get up and walk". But Jesus did it right then. Now. No waiting and no fooling around.
"Do you want to be healed?" And then "get up and walk".
Another question we could ask ourselves, is who was it that was healed? Was this a faithful person who deserved to be healed? Did he have great faith? Or of all the people laying about at the pool that day, did he stand out in the crowd as the one that was most virtuous?
Not as far as I can see. This was a man whose only professed faith was in the healing pool. This isn't one of those healings where Jesus says "your great faith has made you well". This was a man that didn't even know who had healed him at first. And this is a man who went tattling to the religious leaders, when he did find out who healed him.
What is this Sabbath healing pointing to?
I think that this once again shows how radically Jesus was departing from the understanding of God that surrounded him. He, over and over, demonstrates that the world is to be turned on its ear. It's to be upended. That he truly came to pronounce release to the captives and recovery of sight for the blind. God's nature is to heal and to love.
It is not the right people, at the right time that the kingdom of God is for, it is for everyone. Even for a man who has been lame for 38 years.
Of course this healing couldn't wait. Now is the time, the only time.
Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. He is seen talking to a Samaritan WOMAN. He is called a drunk and a glutton. This is not the first or the last of the situations where Jesus will reach out and touch and heal in places and times that are wrong. He was often seen with the wrong people. Encouraging them. Loving them. Healing them. Being with them. And finally, giving them the courage, the love, the will, the resources, to go and to sin no more.
It was in himself that he most clearly challenged the expectations of the day. How could a Galilean be the Messiah? How could a peasant carpenter be the one that they had been waiting for? How could a man who was beaten, mocked and executed be the Savior of the world?
The healer we have read about today, is here offering healing, true healing to everyone… and every one of us needs healing in some way or another. Most in many ways.
It could be that the key to understanding this healing by the pool, is in understanding what this healing is not.
This is not a healing that points only to when the healing happened. It's primary message is not that it happened on a Sabbath to challenge the religious leaders of the time.
This is not a healing that points to who is being healed. We are not called to lie around and wait for Jesus to come and find us at a pool side.
But it IS about who this healing is done by. It points to the character of Jesus. Jesus healing, his reaching out to each of us, is not based on our performance, or our understanding, but because healing broken humanity is the very character of God, God is aching to rescue us from all of our brokenness.
Did you notice what Jesus asked the man before he was healed?
It wasn't; do you deserve to be healed? It wasn't; do you truly understand me and all I stand for?
It was "do you want to be healed". We are all faced with a choice when we encounter Jesus. Do we find in him a friend, a savior? Or do we find one who is too uncomfortably challenging our understanding of the world. One who scares us with the implications of what he is and what he calls us too.
Jesus is not one to be frightened by. While he turns the world upside down, and the new perspective is a little strange to our human understanding, it is there that we can come to know true healing and the peace that only God can give.
One of the great things that Jesus came to say, was that God loves us no matter what the situation. He will heal us, in the ways we need to be healed. Unfortunately for me at least, this is not always the ways we think we need to be healed. But his message IS one of wellness and comfort.
I have known people who have had amazing physical healings, and maybe more amazingly, I have known many who have been transformed from being lost and confused to faithful followers of Jesus. People who have gotten it together. People who have, quite unexpectedly, the resources to face all that life has dished out. As Jesus promised, he sends the Spirit to each of us.
We are each and every one broken and lost in some way or another. Let us look to Jesus, from all of our different places in life and say to him, on the Sabbath or any other day, "Yes Lord, I want to be made well".
Amen
©2004 Steve E. Timpson
1 The title is with apologies to Bruce Cockburn for the allusion to his "Lovers in a Dangerous Time"
2 Robert Capon makes this point in reference to Matthew 12 in "Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997) however it is applicable here too.
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