By Steve Hall
John tells us that there was a man “there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.” John also makes it clear that “Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time.” So, Jesus walks over to the man and asks, “Do you want to be well?”
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Jeremiah 11:18-20
John 7:40-53
How do you respond when someone asks a weird question? How do you react when the weird question is part of a story you’re reading? Do you just go on reading? Do you stop and reread, wondering if you got something wrong? Do you even notice? We find one of those seemingly weird questions in today’s gospel reading from John.
“Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.”
OK! Now the stage is set, and Jesus enters the scene. John tells us that there was a man “there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.” John also makes it clear that “Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time.” So, Jesus walks over to the man and asks, “Do you want to be well?”
DUH?
You might just as well ask someone: “Do you want to get out of the cage with the lion?” Or ask the starving man: “Would you like something to eat?” Or ask someone screaming for help: “Would you like me to give you a hand?” But then you remember that Jesus isn’t prone to asking dumb questions. And a bit of reflection suggests that maybe, just maybe, there’s something more going on here.
John was certainly not averse to including details, but in this case, he could have said that the man had been ill for decades, since his youth, or even for a long time. Why the specificity of thirty-eight years? The Jews in John’s day would have known.
When the Israelites initially escaped slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses, they made their way relatively quickly to the Southern edge of the Promised Land. Arriving at that point, Moses sent scouts into the land.
“At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Ka′desh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.
And they told him, ‘We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Yet the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amal′ekites dwell in the land of the Neg′eb; the Hittites, the Jeb′usites, and the Am′orites dwell in the hill country; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.’
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once, and occupy it; for we are well able to overcome it.’
Then the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.’
So they brought to the sons of Israel an evil report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ‘The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.’” (Numbers 13:25-32))So the Israelites, the very people who had witnessed the plagues, the Passover, the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, the parting of the sea, and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, decided it was too dangerous. They turned away and wandered through the desert for thirty-eight more years. Why? Because at that initial encounter with the Promised Land, they were not yet ready to be ‘healed’.
And so Jesus question of the man at Bethesda’s pool: “Do you want to be well?” “Do you want to be made whole?” “Do you want to finally enter the Promised Land?” You wouldn’t expect the question to be so difficult to honestly answer. But . . .
It is said that towards the end of St Augustine’s youth, following years of debauchery, St Augustine prayed (apparently with a straight face), “Lord, make me pure — but not yet.” Is that our own position as we contemplate a full and total commitment to our Savior? Sooner or later, we will have to decide.
Do I want to be made whole and enter the Promised Land?