John 5:1-9

May 9, 2010 

“BUBBLING WATERS & THE GIVER OF LIFE”

          It was during one of the festivals of Judaism, either Passover, Pentecost, or Tabernacles.  Jerusalem would have been packed with pilgrims, with participants, all there for the spiritual and social festivities.  Jesus chose to go to a place, to a pool visited by a wide variety of folks with physical issues or deformities.  There were crutches, canes, and bandages everywhere. Jesus chose to go there; that is a key.

            This particular pool was known to stir on occasion, to bubble, and the thought was that the bubbling was due to angel’s wings stirring up the waters.  Those with disabilities waited for the bubbling to occur, and then each tried to jump in or be placed in the bubbling waters first.  The first to enter the water, it was believed, would be healed.  People surrounded this pool, most of whom were lying on mats, many of whom were begging, all of whom were hoping for healing.  Jesus chose to go there; that is a key.

            Jesus focused on one man, and Jesus went to the man and began a conversation.  The man had been sick for 38 years, and we gather that he could not walk.  Thirty-eight years, a lifetime in those days.

            Jesus asked the man a question, a straight-forward question, a question some might assume rude.  “Do you want to be made well?”  What kind of question is that?  The man had been lying by the pool for thirty-eight years; of course he wanted healing!  How many times had the man wished, pleaded, prayed “please, please take this from me! Please, please give me my legs back, my health back, my dignity back!  Please.”

            Have you heard about some prisoners who had been behind bars for decades?  They lived in a kind of hell, to be sure, with each minute of their day being planned for them.  Someone else decided when they would shower.  Someone else dictated when they would eat, what they would eat.  Someone else decided what their labor would be while imprisoned.  They went to their prison job, went back to their cells, and waited for the cell to be opened again for dinner.  It was even decided for them when to go to bed.  That was life for decades.  For some, after living that existence for a good share of their lives, freedom, that which had been intensely desired every single day during incarceration, became too difficult to manage.  Now the ex-prisoner had to find a place to live, and a job, and he/she now had bills to pay.  Groceries had to be purchased and food had to be cooked.  Some couldn’t do it; for some the pressure became too great.  Some found ways, committed new crimes, in order to re-enter the prison system, because that is what they knew, that was what was familiar.  While others were successful, some could not bear to face either life … prison or freedom … thereby choosing to end their existence upon this earth.  If Jesus’ question had been posed to them while in prison … “do you want to be made well, to be freed”…the answer would have been “of course!”  The changes, the new challenges of healing, of wholeness, of freedom may not be as easy as we assume.

            “Do you want to be made well?”  The man had long-since given up hope.  His response came as lament.  “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 

            There is a twist to this story, one that is not evident until the very last verse of the text.  It is so significant to read, “Now that day was a sabbath.”

            Do you remember the laws that go all the way back to Moses?  No work on the Sabbath.  No healing on the Sabbath.  Against the Jewish law, a violation of the covenant with God, a breakdown within the community of faith.  We read those words, “Now that day was a Sabbath,” and we want to shout, “No, Jesus, don’t do it!  Not today!  You’ll get into trouble for this!”  Then our eyes bounce up a verse to hear Jesus say, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 

            Sure enough, the verses immediately following our text record how the healed man was stopped and questioned by authorities.  Why?  He was carrying his mat, his bed.  That is considered work.  “You say you were healed?  Who was the man who did this, who did this on this day?”  Yep, one thing led to another and we read that this event was the catalyst in John’s Gospel for the authorities to begin plotting Jesus’ death.

            Some scholars wonder out loud why Jesus couldn’t have waited one more day.  Couldn’t he have just said, “I’ll meet you back here tomorrow, same time same place.  I’ll help you then.”  Some would say, after 38 years, what is one more day?  Others would say, after 38 years, why not today?  I think Jesus would say…”Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Later in this story, beyond the text before us today, Jesus says this to the Jewish leaders: “My Father is still working, and I am also working.”

            What are the things this text might say to us on this day?  Jesus purposely went to the places where he knew he would encounter people who were broken, people who were hurting and waiting.  Elsewhere Jesus would say that he came to serve those who knew they needed a physician, not those who already deemed themselves whole and self-sufficient.  Jesus would look out over a large crowd on another occasion and teach…”God bless those who mourn; God bless those who have broken spirits; God bless those who feel persecuted.”  And here, on this particular day, Jesus chose to live what he taught.  Maybe even more than healing, Jesus chose to offer wholeness to a man who didn’t even know Jesus’ name, who had not asked to be healed, who had not expressed faith at all.  Jesus chose this one man among so many, and Jesus chose to heal him, regardless of the consequences.  Jesus healed with a word; Jesus didn’t wait for the waters to bubble; Jesus didn’t pick the man up in order to be first in line at the pool.  No, Jesus said “stand up.”  “Stand up,” “get up,” is the root word for resurrection.  Jesus brought wholeness to the man; Jesus is the bearer of a resurrection of sorts, a new life.  All of that became more important than the day of the week when it happened.  God was still working; Jesus, therefore, still needed to do God’s work.  On this occasion as on all occasions, Jesus lived what he preached; Jesus preached a merciful kingdom based on the transformative power of God’s love.  And that even trumped the Sabbath laws that Moses taught through Scripture.

            There is one more key to this text, and to locate it we first have to go back about 50 verses in John’s Gospel.  In John’s fourth chapter we see Jesus showing up at a place where he encountered another person who was broken.  Jesus went to a well where he engaged in conversation with a Samaritan woman.  Jesus broke laws that day, too.  He spoke to a woman in public; he spoke to a Samaritan, a non-Jew.  But Jesus’ intent that day was the same as on this day.  He set out to give a child of God new life; he set out to free a child of God from the chains that imprisoned her.  And in the midst of that discussion Jesus said these words that remind us of today’s Gospel text.  He told the woman, “those who drink of the water I will give will never be thirsty.  The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).  Jesus’ water also is stirred, also bubbles.  The water Jesus gives is new life, a resurrection of sorts.  The water Jesus gives heals us today and makes us whole forever.  “The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”  The man in our text, the man who had been broken for 38 years because he couldn’t get into the bubbling water, received Jesus’ water that bubbles into eternity.

            You and I have also received that water.  It is called…baptism.  Amen