Do We Want To Be Healed?

Psalm 67

John 5: 1 – 9

May 25, 2025

Our story from the Gospel of John is one that benefits from a bit of time dedicated to setting up the story. If one is standing on the Mount of Olives – as I was just a few days ago - lookingwest over the Kidron Valley to the Old City of Jerusalem, the view of the Temple Mount is really dominated by the golden Dome of the Rock.

The Dome of the Rock is a Muslim place of worship built to commemorate the location from which Muhammed ascended into heaven on his famous night journey and also is celebrated as the place where Abraham took his son Isaac to be sacrificed. This stone, called the foundation stone, is sacred in all of the Abrahamic faiths – that would be Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

The Dome of the Rock stands roughly where the first and second Jewish temples stood. The Temple Mount today contains the Dome and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and is a very large flat area measuring – very loosely - 500 yards long from north to south and 300 yards wide from east to west.

And, again, from the Mount of Olives, the Antonia Fortress was on the northwest corner of the Temple Mount. The Fortress was built by Herod to serve as an army base and barracks to protect the Temple.

Just to the east of the Antonia Fortress, were the pools of our story today. The Pools of Bethesda, or as some translations have it, the pools of Bethzatha, was a significant body of water. Roughly 320 feet long and 200 feet wide, the pool was over 45 feet deep and divided by a dam across the center that allowed water to flow from springs found in the northern pool to the southern pool that probably served as a mikvah – a place of ritual baths for purification in Judaism.

Along the four exterior sides, and across the central dam were portico, or porches, from which the invalids of our story would await their chance. You see, tradition held that at particular times an angel would come to the pool. As the angel touched and stirred the water, it would ripple and move. Those in need of physical healing believed that the first one into the moving waters would be healed by the angel present.

And so, surrounding these pools, are desperate people. People of broken bodies and broken dreams. People who had been cast to the margins of their society because their infirmity was, many believed, a sign of their sinfulness.

Our healed one knew of this despair. He had been an invalid for 38 years, suggesting that perhaps his infirmity is the result of an injury or some disease. We don’t know how long he had been coming to the pools – the text only says that it was a long time. But it was a time of extended disappointment and frustration.

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going, another steps down before me.” Can you imagine what that is like? Seeing your chance, but having your broken body defeat you at every opportunity?

As many of you know, I like to fish. I love to sit out in the midst of God’s Creation and just wait for my rod tip to make that distinctive dip – once….. twice….. signaling that indeed a fish is on the line. You wait, and you watch sure that at any moment that fishing pole is going to start moving, to start dancing, signaling fish on.

You watch so intently, sure that if you take your eye off the pole for even a minute you are going to miss the chance to set that hook. You mind plays trick on you. You glance away for a second and you are sure that the pole dipped while you were looking elsewhere. The wind blows a little and the rod tip jiggles. The waiting, the expectation, the attention to that little rod tip is exhausting and our invalid has been similarly watching the water for a very, very long time.

Back to our story, picture over 1200 feet of invalids peering into the waters on the 4 sides and the center dam of our pool. Dozens, perhaps 100s of despairing men just waiting for the water to be stirred by the wings of angels. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men who are seriously disabled, alone – with no one to help them when their chance comes.

And to one despairing member of this broken group, Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?” Do you want to be healed? Do I want to be healed? No! I just like the waterfront view! It is fun to watch my broken counterparts fight with one another to be first to be in the water. Do I want to be healed? What a question to ask – in this place of all places!

It’s a fair question to ask, actually. The reality is that there are any number of afflictions that assail us that are every bit as disabling as was the affliction of this man who had laid amongst the discarded for so long. Greed, self-centeredness, pride, ego. A lust for power, an overwhelming need to be in control, an egotistical need to be viewed as right all of the time. All of these afflictions can break us, can destroy us, can separate us from the fullness of life for which we were created. I believe self-satisfaction is a disabling affliction for many of us.

But do we want to be healed? Do we even sense a need for healing?

Jesus asks the question: “Do you want to be healed,” and notice how Jesus is answered. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred.” He can’t do it by himself. He needed help. And friends, so do we.

Friends, we surround ourselves with similarly disabled folks and then we wonder why no holds us accountable for our ego, our self-centeredness, our pride. We surround ourselves with men and women eager for power, control, and influence and we wonder why no one calls us on our power moves.

The reality is that we need each other. We need the church. We need a place solely and completely dependent on the power of Jesus Christ to heal our afflictions. And yes, in our current power-hungry world I get that this kind of transparency, this kind of vulnerability, this kind of perceived weakness is counter cultural.

We need each other to put us into contact with the only power that can say to us, “pick up your mat and walk.” Pick up your mat, you are disabled no more. Pick up your mat, and discover the fullness of life for which you were created. Pick up your mat….. and walk….. and see yourself as made whole in Jesus Christ.

We need each other, because the sad reality is that, left to our own devices, we will disable ourselves by our self-serving preoccupation with making sure that we get ours….. first, and always.

I just spent 10 days in a land that is near and dear to my heart. 10 days in a land that has been transformative in my life for almost 25 years now. But it was 10 days spent in a land ofpeople waiting for an angel to stir the water that will heal them of the evil that captures, diminishes, and demeans people of all types.

It was 10 days in a land seeing people caught up in cycles of violence in the misguided belief that if one can simply discover and bring to bear an ultimate weapon that will defeat all adversaries that then, and only then, will their hopelessness and despair be replaced with self-constructed joy and celebration.

Both sides, all sides, seem to believe that left to their own strength, left to their own power that ultimately, they will prevail. And before we get too dismissive of those crazies in the Middle East, is it not the same ultimate belief in power and control, arrogance, and ego that afflicts us here in so many ways?

We need Jesus to point us to a life beyond our own making. We need Jesus to offer to us a healing for the brokenness that afflicts us. Do we want to be healed? We need Jesus, and one another. Amen.