Stand Up and Walk (John 5:1-9)

I remember the first time I heard this story, about the man who couldn’t get into the pool in order to be healed.  Bible stories always raised lots of questions in my mind, and the one question this story raised in my mind was:  Did the pool really heal people, or was it all just a bunch of superstitious mumbo-jumbo? 

I don’t remember how old I was, but even at a young age it seemed silly to me that anyone would believe that some flowing water could actually bring about miraculous healing.  It was just water! 

I had a similar amount of skepticism when I saw a Navajo dreamcatcher.  You know what a dreamcatcher is:  a round hoop with string woven inside it, in sort of a spider-web shape, sometimes with beads or feathers attached.  The idea is that you hang one above your bed, and it keeps the nightmares away.  More specifically, the nightmares get caught in the dreamcatcher’s web, while the good dreams pass through the holes and enter into your subconscious mind.

But as I got older, I learned that there is more truth involved in such things than a child-like understanding could grasp.  When I spent two weeks in a little town on the Navajo reservation in the summer of 1996, I learned a little more about Navajo spirituality.  The real power of the dreamcatcher, I learned, comes in the prayers that are said silently while the dreamcatcher is being made.  As the string is wound and twisted around, silent prayers are said for the one who the dreamcatcher will be given to, prayers for peaceful sleep.  The dreamcatcher, then, becomes a physical representation of those prayers.  It’s as if the form of the prayer is converted from thoughts and words into string and leather strips, the same way dollars and cents can be converted into gold or silver.  My eyes were opened to the possibility that prayer can take many forms, and is not limited to just words and thoughts.

I’m not sure exactly what the people thought about how the water healed people, or why it was first come, first served, that only the first person in gets the miraculous healing.  But experience has shown me not to be so quick to dismiss religious practices and beliefs that I don’t understand.  There may be more there than I realize.

Anyway.  There was a man there at the pool who had been there 38 years. 

38 years.

That’s a long time, especially when you consider the life-expectancy in the first century.  The average lifespan in the first century was 28, although that takes into account the fact that a large number of children died before their fifth birthday.  For someone who made it through childhood, he or she could expect to live to be about 50 or 60, and a fortunate few would live to be even older.

But still.  To have spent 38 years waiting for healing, to come to the pool and watch as someone else always makes it into the water ahead of you:  that’s a really long time.

I think, after 38 years, most people would have given up hope.  Most would have stopped trying.  After 38 years, most would have all but stopped noticing the stirring of the water altogether. 

And perhaps that was the case for this particular man. 

Now, what if, after 38 years, this sick man’s body eventually healed itself, but he was too discouraged to even notice?  After all, he had lost hope.  He had given up.  He had stopped trying.  What’s the use?

What if whatever had made him ill and unable to walk had healed itself?  How would he know?  He had stopped trying to walk.  He had accepted what he believed to be an irreversible truth, that he would never walk again.  What if his legs, his body, were actually capable of walking, but he didn’t have the hope to try?

I ask this because it’s not really all that clear to me that Jesus healed this man.  Like so many stories in scripture, there is a little ambiguity here.  I know that the scripture says that the man was made well after Jesus spoke, but what was it that really healed this man?

When Jesus saw the man, the first thing he said was: “Do you want to be made well?”  It sounds like a rhetorical question to me, one to which the answer is obvious.  It creates in me an expectation of an enthusiastic response, something like:  “Yes, Lord!”  or, perhaps a little more sarcastically, “Why the heck do you think I’ve been laying here by this pool for the past 38 years? Of course I want to be made well!”

But, strangely enough, that is not how the man responded.  He didn’t say yes; he didn’t really answer the question at all. 

Instead, he just whined and gave excuses.

I mentioned in a staff meeting recently that I was beginning to notice that the way I interpret some scriptures these days is influenced by the fact that I am the parent of a teenager.  So, yes, I’m used to questions being answered by whining and excuses.

And usually, the whining and excuses come not because the person doing the whining is incapable of a particular action, but because the person doesn’t want to do a particular action.

“Do you want to be made well?”

“Oh, but I have no one to help me when the water is stirred up, and I can’t get there in time, and someone else always beats me to the water, wah wah wah.”

As I said, there’s a lot going on here that isn’t written, which creates ambiguity and leaves room for multiple interpretations about what’s really going on in this interaction.  You may see things differently, and that’s okay. 

But as I see it, Jesus recognized that this man is just full of excuses.  What this man wanted was something easy:  he wanted Jesus to lift him into the water, get him there first before anyone else.  He wanted healing to come to him, without any effort on his part. 

He didn’t want to stand up and walk.  He didn’t want to do any work to bring about his own healing.  He wanted someone else to do the work for him.  He wanted healing, without the work.

•He wanted a healthy body without doing any exercise.  •He wanted a clean house without doing any chores.  •He wanted straight As without doing any homework.  •He wanted the perfect job without having to start at the bottom and work his way up.  •He wanted the perfect church without having to commit any time to attend board meetings or help run the youth program.  •He wanted the perfect community without getting involved in any community meetings or activities to improve the neighborhood.

•He wanted to break free of addiction without doing the 12 steps.  •He wanted to raise good kids without getting involved in the PTA or youth organizations.  •He wanted to eat good food without taking the time to cook it. 

He wanted to be made whole without putting any effort into fitting the pieces together.

A lot of recovery and therapy groups have made use of a prayer that first appeared in a sermon by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in 1943.  Today it’s known as the Serenity Prayer, and the most popular version of it goes like this:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I’m not sure the man lying by the pool knew the difference between the things he could change, and the things he could not change.  And I’m not suggesting it’s always easy for anyone to know the difference. I can’t even tell – in reading the story – if the man did, in fact, have the ability to change or not, if achieving wellness was within his ability or not, and after 38 years, I doubt he could know the difference, either.

But he did whine and give excuses to Jesus, hoping that Jesus would see to it that he was able to make it to the pool before anyone else, and receive the miraculous healing he was hoping for.

However, that’s not what Jesus did.

Jesus said to him, “Stand up!  Take up your mat, and walk.”

Again, it’s hard to tell what’s going on here, what tone of voice Jesus used, and what he was really saying.  Don’t you think there just might be a chance that the way Jesus said it was more like:  “Come on, man! Stop fooling yourself.  Stand up and walk!”

And if so, what was the man’s immediate reaction?  What went through his head when he heard Jesus’s words, in that moment before he actually dared to test out his legs, to see if they would really support him and allow him to walk?

I think one possibility is that he was afraid; afraid of the change that was about to take place in his life. 

For 38 years, his life had been all about lying by the pool.  To get up and walk would be to start a new life.  Given that he was at a fairly advanced age by first century standards, how difficult it would be to start a new life, to begin from scratch, to change.

After 38 years, lying by the pool had become his “normal.”  Certainly it would be a lot easier to continue lying there than to begin a new life about which he knew nothing at all.  What did he know about living a “normal” life?  Learning how to walk would be just the beginning of all he would have to learn.  There was so much he didn’t know.

It’s possible that starting this new life was something he could change, but he lacked the courage.

Do you want to be made well?  The question Jesus asked the man is asked of us as well.  Do you want to be made well?

Because there are times when wholeness is within our grasp, within our ability; making the change for wholeness is something we are capable of. 

Not all the time; but more often than we like to admit.

If you could change one thing about your life, what would you change? 

What would you change?

If you could change one thing that would make you well, one change that would bring healing and wholeness to your body and soul, peace and joy to your life, what would it be?

Is that a change that you are capable of making?  More often than we like to admit, the answer to that question is yes.  There are some things that we cannot change, but there are so many more things that we can change.

Maybe not by ourselves; maybe we need to find help; maybe we need to find some support.  Maybe we need to find a circle of people to help.  Maybe we need to seek God’s help in changing.

But we have to be willing to make the change.  We have to be willing to stand up and walk.  We need to stop looking for a solution that requires no effort on our part.  We need to stop waiting for someone to come along, lift us up and throw us into the pool.  We need to stop waiting for someone else to do the work that we ourselves are capable of doing.

“Do you want to be made well?”

Maybe it’s not a rhetorical question.

Do you want to be made well?

Then stand up … and walk.