John 5:1‑8 — Jesus heals the man at the Bethesda pool
I’m told there’s a mountain road up in the county where a sign appears every spring: “Choose your rut carefully. You’ll be in it a long time.”
Good advice. Sometimes our habits are healthy and sometimes they’re not. And sometimes it’s hard to tell. The most important message is to be mindful. Be brave enough to examine your habits and change them if that will benefit you, your neighbors, or the world.
I’m in no position to judge other people’s ruts. Weekday mornings we’re up and out the door by 5:15 to get to the gym. Home at 6 to grab a fresh cup of coffee – three scoops hi-test and two scoops decaf; breakfast is ½ cup of low-fat granola with yogurt and half a banana, 6 oz. of orange juice. Give me a few pairs of khakis and an oxford cloth shirt in some variety of blue, and I’m happy.
Habits may become rituals. Certainly within the church we have an order for worship and the familiarity of the liturgy reduces the anxiety of where to turn, what to say and what to do. But rituals can become stale and lose their power to connect us to our faith and our God.
Every preacher knows that it’s a calculated risk to mess with habits around worship. I remember the tension around my use of inclusive language, introducing new sung responses in place of the Gloria Patri, and including the Prayer of Our Savior during Lent. Still, many of us have been pleasantly surprised at how we all seemed ready to retire the Pilgrim Hymnal, and now sing with enthusiasm from Hymns of Truth and Light.
Ruts and habits? Think of those Sundays in the deep winter when weather kept our worship attendance way down, but most to you headed to the same pew where you stake your claim every week, heedless of the empty space around you. Worship just doesn’t look or feel quite the same when you change your perspective.
We have ruts in our theological opinions, too. The way we think of God, the vocabulary we use, the way we perceive others whose opinions differ… all of these are habits that may have deep roots. So, too, are our attitudes toward those whose skin color, language, sexual-orientation or country of origin may differ from our own.
And, yes, sometimes our habits become addictions. And sometimes our habits and our addictions become obsessions – the underlying cause of fundamentalism and even terrorism, as one becomes persuaded his or her world view is not only right, but extremely right so that others are labeled the enemy. Certainly think of the Boston Marathon bombers and Osama Bin Laden, but also think of Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Choose your rut carefully. You’ll be in it for a long time. If changing our habits were easy we’d all be slim, athletic, energetic, alcohol-, coffee-, and tobacco-free saints, putting only grace, love and truth into the world every day.
Yeah, right. Instead, we are, as the hymn says, a “mixture strange of good and ill.” Or, as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7:15: “I do not understand my own actions – I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Today’s lesson from the Gospel of John describes a person stuck in a rut. When Jesus stepped into his world at the Pool of Bethesda it changed the trajectory of this man’s life.
I’ve stood at the side of that pool three times – once with several of you. It’s near the center of the Old City of Jerusalem, just inside the Sheep’s Gate, a short walk from the Temple Mount where Jesus frequently went to preach and teach.
Over time the original pool was covered with nearly 30 feet of ruins from successive layers of building and demolition. Modern stairs take you down to the place where archaeologists uncovered the amazing stone work and mosaics likely built during the reign of Herod the Great.
The healing pool, called Bethesda or Beth-saida, measures about the size of a football field. There’s a partition across the center, dividing it in half. And there are ruins of covered walkways down the four sides and across the center, hence the name “the pool of the five arches” or porticoes. There are also porches on all sides with steps down to the pools.
Tradition says the spirit of God would come without an appointment and trouble the water. The first person to get into the pool would be healed of his or her affliction. Everyone else was out of luck. There wasn’t a triage nurse who decided on the urgency of one patient’s needs over another, like a modern emergency room. Runners-up had to wait… unchanged, unhealed.
Scripture doesn’t say how many might have gathered there but there was room for hundreds. John tells us Jesus went out on the Sabbath and visited there, surrounded by people who were blind, lame, paralyzed.
He stepped close to one – a man who’d been stuck in a rut for 38 years, and presumably had been coming to that same spot for all that time. Jesus’ first words sound harsh: “do you want to be made well?”
It almost sounds as though Jesus was blaming the victim. He didn’t lack compassion, but he did point out the elephant in the room: for some reason the man has been living like this for 38 years. Certainly, life wasn’t ideal for him but it was familiar. Getting healed would mean huge changes. What’s going on? Do you want to be healed?
After the man explained that he’d never had the good fortune to be first into the healing waters, Jesus simply said: “Pick up your mat and walk!” And the man did.
The man threw away his crutches, picked up his mat and walked into the city to show everyone he was healed. That’s the Gospel.
It’s not in my job description to explain miracles. But I’ve seen them and you probably have too. Healing and wholeness are in the nature of God. And Jesus’ compassion was one of the agents of that healing.
But I’m moved to ask you: have you been in a rut for as long as you can remember? Are you stuck, emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially? Are you caught in a space that’s somehow better than the risk and pain of changing?
Before anything else can happen you have to answer Jesus’ question “do you really want it to be different?” Are you willing to risk the security that comes from the predictable and reliable situation, no matter how tough it sometimes seems?
How long have you said you’re ready for change but, in truth, have lain in one spot so long that you can’t imagine life being much different? Changes – even changes for the better – can hurt in the short run. So we may stay in the rut.
- Ask someone trying to leave an abusive relationship.
- Ask someone with an addiction who wants to get on the wagon.
- Ask someone who’s gone to a chiropractor to get some joints popped.
It hurts to change… it takes a lot to get out of the rut. No one on the outside really knows what the forces are.
We’re not gathered here to make judgments about anyone else’s life. That’s not up to us.
But this may be a good time to ask yourself if you’re stuck, why you’re stuck. Jesus promised abundant life to those who would open their hearts to the spirit, and open their lives to a new way of being. But first you need to ask: “Do I really want to be healed; am I really ready for life to be different?”
Change is possible; new life is waiting. Spirit invites you. But first you’ll need to answer the essential question: do you want to be healed? And can you trust God enough that you’ll let yourself imagine another way, another path, another possibility?
Whatever you’ve been carrying, I’m betting you can still imagine how it would feel if Jesus reached out his hand and said to you – “stand up – pick up your mat, and walk with me.”