We all have circumstances that have been with us for so long they become part of who we are, and we don’t remember anything different or even if there’s a better way to live. We can long for change but when it comes we are not always prepared for the consequences
John 5:1-15 – The healing at the Pool
There was a place where the disabled people hung out. It was the Pool at Bethesda in Jerusalem. Those that were there didn’t get much choice, they were left there (John 5:4). In John 5 verse 7 we find out that the Jews believed that an angel would come to touch the water and the first one in would get healed.
- This was a place of hope – healing could be attained by getting into the pool first
- A place of abandonment – sickness wasn’t welcome in Jewish society so it was easier to leave them there – much like mental hospitals used to be in our society
- A place of companionship – people having something in common while suffering in their own misery
- A place that smelled foul – pure speculation on my part but there were no public toilets, certainly none with disabled facilities. If the people spent their nights there how often did they wash? Seems it could be a very unsanitary place.
I don’t know if you have ever found yourself in a wheelchair? From my experience I’ve found you can be overlooked, talked down to, and even parked facing walls. You give up control of speed and direction. Sometimes the person pushing your chair can struggle to push it in the right direction as roads and pavements can be difficult to access, never mind getting into shops!!! It can be very difficult to make yourself understood or taken seriously. I wasn’t confined to a wheelchair so I got some very funny looks when I got myself out of the chair to check on something. It’s easy to understand why it was easier to dump the disabled in one place and leave them there.
The Dynamics of Change
The paralysed man may have had carers. People that got him up, fed him, dressed him and took him to his place at the pool. He may have lived at the Pool. We are not told much about him. We know he was paralysed for 38 years but we are not told of the extent of his paralysis. My belief is that if he could drag himself down to the pool, it was his legs that were paralysed not his arms and torso (see Jn 5v7). What is clear though, is that 38 years is a huge span of life and the paralysis was all he had known for a very long time.
We all have circumstances that have been with us for so long they become part of who we are, and we don’t remember anything different or even if there’s a better way to live. We can long for change but when it comes we are not always prepared for the consequences. Even though this man dragged himself to the pool he believed others would always be faster and that he would never be healed. He has no one to help him or support him. Life would never change for him no matter what he did. How much different from the man spoken of in 3 gospels (Matthew (9:1–8), Mark (2:1–12), and Luke (5:17–26)). A man with friends that were prepared to battle through a crowd to bring him to Jesus for healing!
Then Along comes Jesus!
Because of Jewish feeling about disabled and sick people, being clean and unclean, I wonder whether these poor souls would have heard the gossip about the Rabbi/Healer who was walking around Judea. Would they have recognised him when he came to the Pool? These people would have been considered ‘unclean’ and, like the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10v25-37) not many would have come to visit and talk to them.
And yet, here was a man, a few years younger than the paralysed man, who not only came to that place voluntarily, he actually spoke to and touched the sick! Only one miracle was recorded from that time but that wasn’t Jesus style. He had compassion on the sick and healed those that asked. If people weren’t asking before he healed this man, I bet they were asking afterwards! I bet voices and hands were raised imploringly to him then, and he with that heart of compassion, would have been moved.
In John 5:6, Jesus asked about this man. He knew something about him before he spoke to him. When Jesus did speak to him, I can imagine the resignation in the man’s face and attitude. It would have shouted ‘the pool’s right there but others are always faster. I’m so slow someone always gets there first..I am a failure’. When Jesus looked at him, really looked at him, he would see all this and more. Jesus sees him for who he is, just as He sees us. He would have heard the resignation and acceptance.
