Do You Want To Be Whole?

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted. A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?” But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. (John 5: 2-13 NASB)

The pool of Bethesda with its five porticoes was a site of misery for a multitude of humanity. The Hebrew word Bethesda means “house of mercy” or “the flowing water.” Re-discovered in 1888 by archeologist K. Schick, it was later found a hundred years after that there were actually two pools separated by a wall which served as the five covered colonnades, or porticoes. The depth of one of the pools was determined to be extraordinarily deep—over forty-two feet. Symbolic, I think, of the infinite depth of God’s mercy.

As I imagine the scene I am reminded of my own past visits to hospitals and nursing homes. Places filled with the infirm. They are places I do not enjoy visiting. Sounds and smells assault the senses: cries for help and odors particular to those who are ill and, in some cases, dying. Pleading eyes dart about looking to connect with another—anyone—who might offer words of encouragement and care. Recognition that those who suffer are not alone. Not abandoned. We avoid such places at the peril of disobeying our Lord whose presence awaits us there. For he is a curious God, one who feels the joys and miseries of the creatures he has made and looks to see if our love will respond to his through our ministrations to “the least of these.” I find myself gently chastised for my own slackness in this regard and set myself to a better course. For where Jesus is, we must be there as well.

Although the oldest manuscripts omit the portion of the text relating the occasional stirring up of the waters by an angel I have included it. Make of it as you will. For my part, I find it contrary to imagine the Lord pitting neighbor against  neighbor in a competition to see who can be first at the expense of another. A friend suggested the possibility of myth or legend being of influence, the pool having gained a reputation over time not altogether accurately conveyed. At the least, it is plain to see that the pool offers a measure of hope to those poor souls in misery all around. Including a man who has been ill for some thirty-eight years.

We are not told the nature of the man’s infirmity and the word used can be applied to either body or soul and so we are left to speculate. As for me, I learn towards the soul but acknowledge the interrelating impact on the physical as well. 

From the text we realize that the man is mobile but not quick. He seems to be able to reach the pool from wherever he has chosen to recline but is either unable or unprepared to get himself into the water. As mentioned earlier, the water is deep. Perhaps he can’t swim and needs someone to lower him into the water while keeping hold of him. 

It isn’t clear either for how long the man has been at the pool. Was it for the entire duration of his illness? Or is the pool a last resort, his response to the tiniest flicker of hope not yet altogether dead?

We must press ourselves to imagine the thoughts filling the man’s mind day after endless day. It has been thirty-eight years, nearly fourteen thousand days. If we let our mind linger on this fact, stretching the days out before us like trees, we find ourselves wandering about in a vast forest searching for the way out.

 Of his own testimony he is friendless: there is no-one to help him. No caring friend. He is utterly alone. How did it come to be so?

The text suggests his infirmity was the result of sin in his life. I doubt it was a single event. More likely, it was ongoing for a time, maybe not even yet forsaken, exacting its toll of death on soul and attached body. Sin does that. It is death at work in us. Was the nature of his sin such that it alienated him from the affections of his fellow man? Sin does that too. It is a fearsome separator, a relational predator devouring what is good, corrupting and twisting God-given desires out of their intended shape, drained of virtue until they become recognizable now only as vices.

The man had come to life as a living thought of Almighty God, a child of the Father of Jesus Christ. Out of the countless number of people in the unhappy throng about the pool, Jesus appears before him. He has come to do what his Father is always doing: healing.

“Do you wish to get well?”

The question seems an absurdity. After all, the man has been ill for thirty-eight years as Jesus well knows. But the question is penetratingly relevant for Jesus never asks the merely rhetorical. I appreciate even more the question as it appears in the King James: Wilt thou be made whole?

And there’s the rub. After such a long time in one condition, a state gotten used to and perhaps having become a singular part of the man’s identity, would the known be traded for the unknown, even if it means wholeness, soundness?

This is the place where we must recognize our kinship to the infirm man in that we too sometimes cling to that which stands in the way of our becoming whole: a habit, a stubborn opinion closed to challenge. An unbecoming personality trait we’ve come to tolerate and give in to, yielding it more and more of our will as its roots sink ever more deeply into the soil of our being. In other words, the sin we refuse to forsake in the face of which Jesus asks, the eyes of his Spirit locked onto the eye-gates of our soul, Do you want to be whole?

Why, of the multitude of sick, blind, lame and withered has Jesus chosen this particular man? 

I don’t know. 

I think the truth of the answer greater than my mind can comprehend. But there are perhaps elements of the reason we can relate to, at the forefront of which lies love-infused compassion and mercy. God will not be satisfied until all his children are made whole and is all the while working to achieve this grand and glorious end. We live in an infirm world corrupted by the aggregate of our individual wrongnesses. And what Jesus sees his Father doing, so he does and gives us illustration and insight into the Father’s heart. 

Have you been long held in the grip of death producing sin? Even now God has set his Son to rescue you if you would have it. And you will have it. Either this side of the grave or that for God’s love doesn’t fail and he will have you whole. And so it will be until sin is no more to be found in all God’s universe though it take ages and ages.

The man’s reply to Jesus’ question is straightforward: I can’t do it alone.

A more truthful utterance was never spoken!

No, he cannot do it alone. God’s severe mercy has led him to the place of this grand realization. He needs a friend. A friend who has the passion and power to deliver him from his sin and the death it has been working in him for thirty-eight long years. A friend that will be his friend always and at all times. Who will extend to him unceasing,  white-hot goodness born of a Father’s infinite love.

The day of liberty has come at last and Jesus gives him something to do, a means of recognizing that the time of wholeness has arrived: Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.

The man responds with obedience, the only currency in God’s kingdom that matters. Faith is measured by obedience.

What was it about the One standing before him, challenging him and telling him what to do that elicited such a response? Again, I confess I don’t know the full of it. Is it not that the voice of the incarnate God, of the true and perfect Son and Savior, generates hope and trust where once there was only emptiness?

It is a voice still speaking to each one of us, inviting us to be made whole…

By no means coincidentally, the act of healing has taken place in the midst of the religious dead. The Jews, seeing the cured man carrying his palette are offended, it not being permissible to do as it was the Sabbath. Their interpretation of God’s laws were not to be challenged but obeyed. And so it is in our day as well: orthodox opinion sacrosanct, enforced in ways varied and unrelenting.

The man, whose name is never revealed, is questioned as to who gave him such unlawful permission, having painted a target on the man by his divine command. The man cannot say. He doesn’t know. Jesus had slipped away in the crowd, leaving the man to wonder in amazement who it was who had made him well.

It is not enough to be healed of our infirmities apart from knowing the One who is our Healer. Jesus has given the man time to reflect, to stretch his mind towards the truth that beckons him to follow. The Lord finds the man in the Temple. He has a warning to deliver: “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

Behold… It is a command—and one of Jesus’ most frequent. The listener is admonished to pay heed, to take the most careful notice of what comes next. It is a divine jab in the ribs so that nothing said is lost to inattention. 

Wholeness has come. The consequence of the man’s sin has been overcome by the redemptive power of God, a gift of grace and love to be treasured.

Jesus’ words imply that both he and the man share the knowledge of the sinful practice that brought on the illness. Sin must be forsaken, for wholeness is not a given as if it were the ongoing fruit of a garden forsaken.

I was once given similar words of warning, delivered to me by the Spirit’s faithful voice though it was inaudible to any but the mind to which he was speaking. I say warning, not threat. There is a difference. A warning that love has at its disposal ever more severe mercies should they be needed to set us free from sin’s terrible grip. Hell itself is perhaps the severest of such mercies, a tormentor meant to drive us into the arms of Jesus Christ when all that mortal life offers proves of no avail.

To my great shame and sorrow, I failed to heed the Spirit’s warning, allowing fear to hold sway over the clear admonition of my Lord. The result? The “something worse” happened, a terrible consequence for my disobedience that I have yet to recover from. 

But I will. And so will you if you happen to be in similar straits. God’s forgiveness is ever reaching out to us and his redemptive love able to heal the deepest wounds. Especially those inflicted for our good by him who is our ever faithful Friend.

Do you want to be whole? There is but one means of doing so: follow Jesus as he leads us home to the Father’s heart. 

~m