Do you want to be made well?
Today’s Gospel reading emphasizes the way Jesus engaged with those who are seeking healing. Jesus never assumes; rather, he offers us an opportunity to participate fully in God’s healing actions. How are we called to pay attention to the Spirit’s work in our lives, and what do we need to name in order to share more fully in God’s compassionate embrace?
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Transcript
Just a few thoughts on the gospel for this Sunday morning. I love this story. There’s a couple of things just to highlight about it. I think that might be helpful to us, but first a bit of background context. Because the text itself is not clear what actually was going on, what the backstory is if you were about that temple site.
So, this temple, as we often see when we look at it and dig back in through time, that temple had been a focus point of healing for a very long time. It was actually a temple built earlier for the Greek god Asclepius, who is the god of healing. So for a long time, people had gone there for healing and the way that the temple worked, there was a pool there and when Asclepius would stir the waters and be present in that space, the waters would bubble up or ripple. And the thing was, the first person to make it to the waters would be healed. So, that’s a bit of the back story.
What had happened since then when the Jews came in in their particular time with their framework, as is so often the case, you take a more ancient spiritual sight and you retranslate it into your own context. And the Jews did this as well. The story that the Jews would have was that an angel would descend once per day and would touch the surface of the water with the angel’s finger. And the water would be stirred, would bubble, would ripple. And then people would make their way toward the water with prayers for healing.
It’s a curious thing with this text from John because we actually have other versions of John. It didn’t make it into the final one. But there are actually other versions of John where there are marginalia, if you will, written there next to the Greek translation, that actually lay that out, that tell that backstory about why were they there? What was the context in which they found themselves? But that did make it into the final one. So the one that we have really in some sense doesn’t make sense why people were there and what was going on with the water. Why were they all waiting for the water to be stirred? But that’s the backstory. Because once they paid attention and noticed the water being stirred, the first person to the water would be healed.
Now if that had been me, and I knew that that was the case, I would have lived right on the edge of that pool. I would have laid where all I had to do when anyone said, “oh, look at the water” was to slightly flip myself to the right or left and fall in the water. I don’t know the backstory of this man. I don’t know. I’m fascinated by it. I don’t know where he was in the temple complex that he had been there for thirty-eight years. I don’t know that part of it. But that helps us kind of situate ourselves, as it were, to say this is what was going on. It was a cultural, religious practice in that pool at that time with people coming for healing. Coming to seek hope for the struggles that they faced.
Now a couple of things stood out to me in this cycle after looking at the past few weeks. And one of them is this. There’s always a curious thing when it comes to Jesus and healing stories if you notice them. Jesus does not assume what the person who is seeking healing wants. Have you ever noticed that? He never assumes. He never walks in and says, “I know exactly what you need. Here is the healing that needs to take place.” If you think back to other stories with the man who was blind, Jesus walks up, they all know that the man is blind, Jesus walks up to him and says what? “What would you like to happen to here?” And the man who is blind has ownership, is actively engaged with Jesus in seeking his own healing. That’s a crucial thing for us to notice when it comes to how we understand prayer and our practice of faith.
Jesus gives us space to name what we need to name from the struggles that we face in our lives and Jesus meets us where we are and honors our own autonomy as it were. That’s a powerful piece for us to hold when we ask ourselves what’s going on within our lives and just what is happening when we say that we’re praying. Just what is going on? So Jesus goes up to this man in today’s text and asks him, “would you like to be made well?” And my snarky side can imagine the man saying, “no, I’ve just had nothing better to do for thirty-eight years than lie here next to this pool.” But Jesus honors him. Jesus honors him and gives him a chance to be affirmed with the circumstances that he is facing. And I think that’s key. I think that’s key and it’s a deeply pastoral piece for us to look at to say, this is what’s going on in our lives. It’s different for each and every one of us. This is what we’re struggling with and God gives us space to name what we need to name as we seek healing and wholeness in our own lives. That’s a nugget that we can take forward as we face the days that we face.
The other thing that stands out to me is a curious piece. When Jesus asks the man, “do you want to be made well?” notice what the man says. He responds, in some sense, with an excuse of why that hasn’t taken place yet. He says, “well, every time I’ve tried to get to the water, someone has beaten me to it.” So Jesus gives him a second chance, holds that space for him to name what needs to be named. And notice what Jesus does not say: “awwwwww.” What Jesus says is, “get up, take your mat, and walk.” And the story says that immediately the man was healed.
Here’s what I get from that. Sometimes the healing is standing right in front of us and we just haven’t noticed it. Sometimes we’ve been seeking for a very long time for health and wholeness looking in any number of different places in our lives and the whole time, healing has been standing right in front of us and we’ve never noticed it. For whatever reason, we haven’t paid attention to it until one moment. Till that one moment arrives and we see and our eyes are opened and we become aware that the source of our healing has been in front of us, has been within us the whole time. And then we can act on that. Then we can step into that and participate with God in the healing of our own lives.
I wrote a poem this past week about what it means to pay attention as we face the days that we face and we continue to ask ourselves, what are we paying attention to? What are we aware of? How do we spend our time? We’ve talked about this. What do we do first thing in the morning when we wake up before our feet hit the floor? Do we grab our phones? Or do we hold a space within our hearts to ground ourselves? Knowing that whatever the day unfolds, there’s going to be some hardships along the way. How do we practice our faith? How do we lean into that space to know that as we’ve been saying, our life is our practice. So I wrote this piece after sitting outside and taking time, which I hope each and every one of you do, to take time to sit out and breathe. To ground yourselves and pay attention and become aware of the presence of God in your life. It’s called Too Much to Love.
Now the bee on the milkweed
ambling from one ruby cluster to the next
With the purslane sleeping, waiting to open its blossoms,
mouths to drink the light as the morning sun rises.Now, the crow slowly flying over my garden,
and as I look up, it turns its face directly towards me.
Our eyes connecting in that instance, the black feathered friend of shadows.Now the water on the fallen leaf,
crystals scattered on the ground after the night’s wind and rain.
As the sweet smell of gardenia lays across my shoulders like a blanket made of air.There is power in our attention, a force in our hearts focus where our souls are rooted,
drawing water from the river of life.There is simply too much to love to lose hope and yield to despair.
Amen.