John 5:1-9 and Revelation 22:1-5

Have you ever had one of those days where it seemed like every little thing that could go wrong did? I’m not talking about big things happening that are bad, but those little things that add up. A day where you spill the coffee first thing in the morning, hit every red light you come across, and realize you don’t have every ingredient you need for dinner–right in the middle of cooking. When those kinds of days happen, how do you tend to react? I wish I was more patient and resilient. It’s something I’m working on. But, when those frustrations happen, I don’t always handle it very well. Usually, I take it out on myself. How could I be so forgetful? Or how could I be so clumsy? I make the situation worse by beating myself up.

Last week, I was in the middle of making a meal that I was certain we had everything on hand for. I had the chicken cooking, rice in the rice cooker, and it was time to make the stir fry sauce. I opened the cabinet and realized we were out of one of the main ingredients. Not just low, but completely out. I looked at the whiteboard on the refrigerator where we write down household staples in need of replacing. No one had written it down. I got annoyed with myself. I’m sure I was the last one who used it. Why didn’t I think to write it down on the list? I tried to think of substitutions for the missing ingredient, but I couldn’t think of anything that would work. Reluctantly, I got in the car to go get what I needed. 

The whole way to the store, I was berating myself. I went back and forth between being angry with myself, and angry at anyone else who might have used up the rice vinegar. How dumb, right? It’s one ingredient, and everyone makes mistakes, but here I was in the car convinced that I was doing the most frustrating thing in the world. When I had almost made it to the store, I had to stop at a red light. As soon as the car stopped, I heard a voice in my head ask me plain as day, “Do you want to be made well?”

Out loud, I said in the car, “No, I want to be angry.”

Whew.

I reminded myself of Jonah as he sat under the shade of the plant God had made when God asked him, “Is it right for you to be angry?” and Jonah responded, “Yes, angry enough to die.” I always laugh when I read that part of Jonah because what is he even angry about? He’s angry that God showed love and grace to the people of Nineveh, and he’s angry that a bush he didn’t even plant withered in the sun. He’s so angry about these things that he could die. Doesn’t that seem just a little overdramatic? 

Yet, there I was in my car refusing to stop being angry about rice vinegar. Rice vinegar that I could afford to replace when so many people aren’t sure where their next meal will come from. Rice vinegar that makes my food taste good, but isn’t a necessity. Do you want to be made well?

As I read and studied our passages from John and Revelation for this morning, I came across commentaries that suggested the man in John 5 didn’t want to be made well, or that he wasn’t grateful for the offer of healing from Jesus. One commentary put it bluntly: “The man healed in this story is perhaps the least willing and the least grateful of all the people Jesus heals in John’s Gospel.” The more I’ve thought about that perspective, the more I both agree and disagree with this interpretation. On the surface, it’s true. Jesus asks the man if he wants to be made well, and the man responds with an excuse about why healing wasn’t possible for him. But deeper down, I don’t think it’s that simple.

First, people in the area believed healing was possible at the pool of Beth-Zatha. John tells us that many ill and infirm people were gathered at the same pool as the man Jesus talks to. They are all gathered at a pool called Beth-Zatha or Bethesda, a name that means “house of mercy,” because they believed healing was possible there. That’s why they were there. In many Bibles, and in our reading for this morning, verse 4 has been omitted. This is because verse four is not found in the oldest manuscripts, and likely was not part of John’s original gospel. That said, It offers some insight into what the people at the pool might have been thinking. The omitted verse says this: “From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.” Basically, they believed healing at Beth-Zatha was only possible for the people who could get into the pool first when the waters were agitated. Many people came for healing, but only one person could receive it at a time. The rest had to wait their turn…which might not ever come.

Our passage tells us this man had waited at the pool for 38 years. We do not know how many people might have been healed in the pool at that time, but we can imagine that the man had become very discouraged. Jesus knew just by looking at him that he’d been there a long time–perhaps because Jesus knew everything about the man, and perhaps because the man had the look of a person who had lost almost all hope. When he asked the man if he wanted to be well, the man didn’t say yes or no. Instead, he responded with what every person at the pool thought: “I can only be healed if I’m the first one into the pool.” And, as a person who required the assistance of others to make it into the pool at all, he did not think it was possible for him to be first. He did not imagine healing was possible because the only healing he thought was available was healing within the only system he knew – a broken and unpredictable system that only helped a very few people, and never him.

Did he want to be healed? For the most part, I think he had lost almost all hope that healing was possible for him. And yet, he was still at the pool, even after 38 years. He had mostly given up, but if he had given up all the way, he wouldn’t have been there at all. The man at the pool of Beth-Zatha held out a tiny sliver of hope for healing, but he couldn’t imagine healing was possible in any other way than being the first one into the pool.

This man’s imagination for healing was limited by what he knew, but I also think he was afraid of what healing would mean for him. This man’s entire life, his whole identity was built around his situation. We know he had been at the pool for 38 years, but how many years before that did he live with his parents, or live on the street? In the time of Jesus, the average life expectancy was only 30-40 years old. This average is so low, in part, because many children never survived into adulthood, and young men were often killed in battle. If a person survived into adulthood, managed not to suffer from any diseases or go to war, he or she might expect to live to about 60 years old. But, that’s a lot of ifs. This man had spent what should have been the prime of his life at a pool longing for healing. He didn’t know anything else. All of his routines revolved around life at the pool. If he had any friends, they were probably all people just like him: people who wanted a better life for themselves but couldn’t see it ever happening for them. 

For this man, being healed would change absolutely everything about his life. And, while that would have been a good thing, it also would have been a very scary thing. As Harry Levinson, sometimes called the “psychologist of the workplace” put it, “All change is loss, and all loss requires mourning.” If the man didn’t have to wait at the pool, where would he go? If he had friends and family, how would they receive him now that his life had changed? How would he support himself? As he got older, who would take care of him? If he had never married and had children, his future as he got older would have been an open question. When Jesus asked, “Do you want to be made well?” he was really asking this man, “Are you ready for a whole new life?” The man responded to Jesus by talking about the only life he knew. He couldn’t imagine healing was possible anywhere except the pool, and he couldn’t imagine what life would be like if he started over brand new.

James Earl Jones, the man whose booming voice portrayed Darth Vader, Mufasa from the Lion King, Terrence Man in Field of Dreams, and so many other memorable roles, considered himself mostly mute prior to high school. When he did speak, he struggled hard with a stutter, and his fear of stuttering in front of others led him not to speak at all unless he absolutely had to. As he got older, he discovered literature and poetry, and began to write poetry himself. He told a story about a time when fresh grapefruits were shipped from Florida to Michigan. He rarely had the opportunity to experience grapefruit, and when he tasted one, he said, “The taste of it knocked me out, the pure, juicy luxury of grapefruit in winter. I decided to write a poem about it, patterned after the poem I knew best — Longfellow’s ‘Song of Hiawatha.’” His English teacher was so impressed with the poem that he asked James to read it out loud to the class. 

Jones said this about this experience: “I was shaking as I stood up, cursing myself. I strained to get the words out, pushing from the bottom of my soul. I opened my mouth — and to my astonishment, the words flowed out smoothly, every one of them. There was no stutter. All of us were amazed, not so much by the poem as by the performance…” This moment was a turning point for young James as he harnessed the power of his voice. The decision to read the poem even though he was deeply afraid, changed his life. Imagine if he had declined the teacher’s suggestion to read the poem out loud. Who would have blamed him? And yet, in taking the risk, he discovered a part of himself he didn’t even know existed. His life was transformed, and he made so many people’s lives better as a result. 

Do we want to be made well? When we are stuck in our anger, or trapped in an unhealthy pattern, or doing the same old thing that caused the same old problem last time, do we want to be made well? Do we want to take the risk of letting go of what’s holding us back so that we can explore a future that – though it is unknown to us – is known to God who wants to prosper us, not harm us, as it says in Jeremiah 29. 

Way back in Genesis 3, when everything went wrong and people followed their own inclinations rather than God’s, so many things were broken. God wants to heal us, to restore us, and to give us abundant life. One day, we will experience the tree of life in the new creation, the tree with leaves for the healing of the nations, but healing is possible even now as we await that day. May God give us the courage to respond to Jesus’s question “Do you want to be made well?” with “Yes, Lord. I may not know how to do it or what it will look like, but I trust you.” Amen.