Daily Lesson for January 9, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John chapter 5 verses 

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.  In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed 4for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water: whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

It is one of the most powerful and penetrating statements in all of the Bible; and it comes as a question:

"Do you want to be healed?"

For 38 years the man had been lying there amongst the other invalids and lame in Jerusalem, all said to be waiting on the waters to be stirred up so that they might be healed. And for the better part of four decades this one man had found no way into the healing pool.

And then Jesus came and had the audacity to ask, "Do you want to be healed?"

I'm sure someone in the crowd of onlookers was offended. I myself might have been offended myself.  "The gall -- how dare he be so insensitive? Can't he see this man is paralyzed?  Can't he see that he needs help?"  Yes, but Jesus sees more. He sees the man is paralyzed and he sees that he needs help.  But more deeply he sees that the paralyzed man needs help helping himself.  "Get up," he says, "take your mat . . . And walk."

There are still so many in our world today lying beside the pool at Bethesda.  They are there waiting on the angel to stir up the waters and for somebody to place them into the pool.  But some have been waiting too long. Some say they will just be there forever -- waiting on a miracle.

But perhaps the miracle they need most is neither an angel to stir the pool, nor a care provider to lower them down into it, but instead someone with the audacity -- the boldly-truthful and surprisingly-loving audacity -- to ask point blankly, "Do you want to be healed?"  In other words, what they most need is for someone to see them as more than a helpless invalid, but rather someone capable of getting up off their mat -- even after 38 years. 

A thought occurs. Perhaps when we imagine what happened we imagine what mostly happens on Facebook - people angrily yelling at another group of people to get off their arse.  "Do you even want to be made well!!!!?". But perhaps it was not like that at all. Perhaps there was such a generosity in Jesus' eyes and spirit that the hard-edged, gall of his word came like a necessary and even desired medicine - bitter tasting, but yet tolerable and able to be swallowed. "Do you want to be made well . . . Rise, walk."  What if what Jesus said came as the Bible says he himself came: "full of grace and truth".