Wednesday, March 20, 2024 – Lent Six: Jesus asks! Tough Questions for a Lenten Faith

Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?” “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.” (John 5: 1 -7, New Living Translation)

                Yikes! What a puzzling, terrifying and challenging question for Jesus to ask someone who had been suffering for 38 years. “Would you like to get well?” Jesus is usually so quick to heal, so generous with his love and mercy, so unjudgmental as to those whom he shows compassion, so limitless to give his time and energy.  I don’t know why Jesus chose this man out of the many who were there that day, all looking for healing, relief, remedy. Maybe he knew of the 38 years and that the man was overdue for some good news. But what a question to put to a long-suffering person!

                Let’s be clear about something. To some, the question may suggest that the man was at fault for his predicament or that he had some sort of choice in the matter. But I would argue that his suffering was very real. He was not faking it. It was not some figment of his imagination. He wasn’t trying to get sympathy or charity. He wasn’t some hypochondriac. His sickness, whatever it was, had kept him down on his mat for 38 years. There was nothing very “well” about this man, at all.

                If it was any of us, suffering many years of chronic pain or debilitating diseases or severe mental health issues or life-altering illnesses or tragic accidents leaving us deeply scarred or handicapped, we might take offence, understandably so, if we were asked such a question.  It just seems so unfeeling, so unjust, so callous, so cold…

                Jesus would have known all this and yet he still asks, “Would you like to get well?”

                Perhaps, it would do well to phrase the question somewhat differently. Can you imagine a life without all that pain? Or has it been so long that you are stuck in the suffering? Have you given up hope? Are you lost in the chaos of pain and suffering? Are you defeated, so overwhelmed that life has become one damnable thing after another? Debie Thomas wrote: “He sees a man whose hope has dwindled.  A man whose imagination has atrophied to such a point that he can’t even articulate what he wants for his body, his soul, or his future.” (Journey with Jesus)

                For a while, I facilitated a support group for those living with ALS and their primary care givers. Please note how I worded that, “living with ALS,” not dying from ALS or suffering from ALS. But living. Yes, there were plenty of tears and questions and no cures. But there was a vitality, a stubborn, pain-resistant joy that also brought much laughter, love and community. If you had asked any of them whether they would like to get well, of course, they would have answered yes, but they didn’t just give up; they lived as fully, and often defiantly, as they could. They taught me so much.

                Jesus is asking the man whether he could see beyond the limits of his infirmity. Did he have the grit to hope?  Did he have the spirit to endure? Did he have the ability to let go and let God?

                Debie Thomas wrote that the question is about the man’s “heart, his identity, and his desires: ‘What do you want?’” She then asks: “Has Jesus ever asked you this question?  Do you want to be made well from all that stymies, hobbles, paralyzes, and diminishes you?  Do you want to stand up?  Do you want to walk?  Do you want to move?”

                “And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.”  (Romans 8: 23, NLT)

                No one is saying that such a faith in great adversity is easy. No one is saying that such a hope against hope is a rosy panacea. No one is saying that such Good News immediately fixes our problems and sufferings. But, when we finish this story, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”, we are given a whole, grace-filled, new perspective on what it means to live and have our being and take a different direction from where we have been.

                “Sing for joy, O heavens! Rejoice, O earth! Burst into song, O mountains! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on them in their suffering.”  (Isaiah 49:12, NLT)

Dale