A description of the spot makes it sound like something that should be on a postcard: a pool with five covered walkways in Jerusalem called Bethesda, which means mercy. Mercy was the last thing you could expect to find in this anti-resort visited by multitudes of blind, crippled, paralyzed people who spent their days waiting for an unpredictable angel to stir the waters. The first one in, they said, would be instantly healed. And so the blind waited, even though they wouldn't be able to see the water bubbling. The crippled and paralyzed waited too--even though they wouldn't be physically able to move into the pool--at least not quickly--when the water stirred. And so instead of peace, relaxation, and happiness, those waiting by this pool were filled with desperation, anxiety, and sadness.
And if you were in Jerusalem to celebrate the feast, is this where you would go? To this pool of despair surrounded by the hopeless? It would be a little like going to New York City to watch the Thanksgiving parade and instead, going to a homeless shelter or a hospice. And yet Jesus, in Jerusalem for the feast, did just that: he went to the pool called Bethesda, which means mercy. And out of the multitudes of the sick, Jesus saw one nameless man who had been ill for thirty-eight years--longer than most people in those days lived.
There was nothing particularly attention-grabbing about this man lying on his bed by the pool in a place called Mercy. Jesus just "knew" that he had been there a long time. And so out of all the masses of sick people, Jesus looked upon this invalid and asked him a very strange question: "Do you want to be healed?" Who wouldn't want to be healed after thirty-eight years of lying on a mat? So then the man, of course, responded, "Of course." Except that stories in the gospel of John never go the way we would expect them to, and that's not what the man said. So the man answered just as strangely as Jesus asked: "There isn't anyone to put me in the water when it stirs, and by the time I get to it myself, someone else gets there first." He almost sounds a little defensive, doesn't he, as if Jesus is accusing him of something instead of asking him a simple question. When we are confronted with sinless perfection, it's sinfully natural to become defensive, to blame someone else for our own failures and flaws.
And so the man who expected his salvation to come from an angel stirring the pool of water found it coming from this stranger who told him to take up his bed and walk. Wouldn't you expect him to say, "Why didn't I think of that? Don't you think I would if I could?" But he didn't. He did what everyone Jesus calls does, must do. He took up his bed and walked. And later, when he meets Jesus in the temple, he comes to understand that physical healing, a wonderful thing, is actually a small thing when we understand that what we really need from Jesus is spiritual healing so that we can go and sin no more.
How like those invalids by the pool are we all--blind to our sin, unable to walk in God's paths, paralyzed and unable to do anything pleasing to him. We lie by the pool, helpless to do anything to bring about our own cure, trusting in anything we can to bring us salvation, anything except the one who truly can save. But he comes to us--hopeless, desperate, full of self-pity, with nothing that would draw anyone to us--knows, chooses us, calls us, and transports us from the pool of despair to Mercy, asking us if we want to be well. He knows that we are helpless even to answer, so he tells us to get up, take up our bed, and walk. And sin no more.
