“Do you want to be healed?”
(John5:6 ESV)
Have you ever had days when you feel like you’ve taken three steps forward only to find out that you are now two behind?
Or moments when you feel like it’s hard to get past a certain past, or to be made whole and healed again?
“Stuck” may feel like the word of the day —- yet, that’s not the place we’re meant to stay.
In John 5 we see Jesus on his way to Jerusalem where the worship in the house of the Lord was to take place. Passing through the Sheep Gate, he came to a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda. Itmeans a house of mercy, a public hospital.
A great number of disabled people used to lie there, waiting for the appearance of an angel who would come and stir the water. Apparently whoever steps in first would be healed.
There was a man who had been waiting there for 38 years.
He had decades of being stuck in his paralysis, of waiting in hope for a miracle to occur.
Friends, have you ever felt like that before?
When you feel like the night is too dark, the pain runs too deep, and the prognosis is too petrifying — and you feel stuck…. you’re desperate for some rescue, but you can’t help but wonder if anybody would ever come — or if anyone even cares.
When our world feels scary, when the pandemic seems to persist, when our nation gets shaken, we long for everything to just get fixed, yet Jesus went up to him and asked: “Do you want to be well?” (John 5:6)
To one desperate for healing, the question seemed counter-intuitive; obviously jarring, inwardly jolting.
Perhaps Jesus knew that the man’s real issue wasn’t merely his physical paralysis, but also his internal physiology.