DAY 245 - What’s the Use?

John 5:1-9  (NIV)  ¹ Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ⁵ One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  ⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”  ⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

  

The healing of the lame man by the pool of Bethesda is a miracle by Jesus. What is the message of this miracle? Most of us have lived our lives in times of medical hope in new treatments, procedures, and of some new discovery on the horizon. This was not the case for the people languishing around the pool of Bethesda. In the eyes of society and in their own eyes, they were a lost cause.

In this world it is easy to give up and to give in. Jesus said to the man do you want to get well meaning are you willing to be well. That question challenges some of our basic beliefs that blind us and bind us to feel helpless. Behind our behaviors, whether health food nuts or junk food junkies, joggers or homebodies, are basic beliefs that shape and determine our life. Do you want to get well is a direct affront to these background beliefs that are so crucial to our make up, but here is our hope - Jesus’ words cut through the lame excuses, demolish the doomed mindset, stir an unknown power within, and the warmth of life begins to return to the soul.

Power for change is fairly rare. Only one person by the pool of Bethesda found and felt that power for life and hope. With the power of Christ we are not to succumb to the threats or be pressured back into futility, blind to the truth we see in Jesus. The truth is, most of us already have more of the power of Christ within us than we ever spend. We are misers of miracles, penny-pinching guardians of grace.  But, remember, this miraculous healing was a sign, and the sign says this power is real and is available.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 2, 1986

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell