Reflection on Sign Three from John's Gospel

I think this story is one of the more interesting and mysterious in the whole gospel. Jesus is reported to have healed massive amounts of people (Mark writes multiple times of Jesus healing many), but here we have Jesus entering a place packed with sick people and just walking around. The place itself is like a hospital with no doctors ... maybe, like some commentaries suggest, this is some sort of early government welfare program. The government spreads a story about an angel, offering the people the comfort of a false hope (and keeping them off the city streets). However they got there, Jesus walks into their midst. I get the impression that no one recognized him and so he is just looking.

This is what strikes me first. Jesus is there among "a great number of disabled people ... the blind, the lame and the paralyzed" simply looking. Simply taking in this place full of sickness and old stories, maybe even urban legends. And then he sees the man we read about. Something about him makes Jesus curious about him and so he asks someone ... maybe a guard or maybe just one of the sick people. They say something like, "Oh that's Harry. He has been here a long time, 38 years is what I hear."

Thirty-eight years! Really trying to imagine that is difficult. Thirty-eight years of sitting idle in hopes that somehow you will be touched by the angel and be made whole. It reminds me of poor people buying lottery tickets every day. Thirty-eight years of daily playing lucky seven, but never winning. I wonder how old Harry was, did this happen when he was a teenager or when he was in his twenties?

John repeats the length of time he has been in this state and John is careful with his words. Twice we see that it has been a long time ... the repetition helps it to sink in before we see what Jesus says. "Do you want to get well?" This question helps me to get it. The people who come here have given all hope of having the money for a doctor, or having someone who would care for them. This is a hopeless place and so coming here is a good sign that you actually don't want to get well.

Harry replies with an excuse. It is almost impossible for me to not read this as whining. Jesus asked him a question about healing, the man offers no belief this is possible, but complains about not having any friends. His resopnse gives us a further picture of this place and what it does to a man's soul. We hear of sick people fighting to jump into bubbling mineral water which will offer no cure. False hope inciting pathetic violence ... a very sad place.

I actually don't think Jesus took that as a yes. I haven't read the commentaries (Kris did for his sermon), but my gut impression of their dialogue is that at this point Jesus grows impatient with this place and with Harry and so he forcefully says (maybe even shouts) "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."

But what does that mean for me as a Christian? What does that reveal to me about Jesus? First of all his anger (if I am reading it right) is not so much directed at Harry personally, but really at sickness and its affects on humanity, the way it can reduce someone to such a pathetic state, someone that God created in his image, someone who is meant to be great. In this way the sickness is much deeper than physical. The physical sickness has led this man to spiritual sickness ... in this story defined possibly as passivity and hopelessness. Harry pathetically says, "No one will help me" and Jesus respends by commanding him to action. Later in the story Harry says "I didn't decide to carry my mat, somebody told me to" (passive) and finally he decides to obey the conspirators by taking them Jesus' name (passive). I think that is the meaning of the strange word from Jesus "Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." in verse 14. Jesus knew that there was something worse than being cripple.

The anger Jesus shows is the same kind of anger he shows at the funeral of Lazarus. There he is angry with death and its effects on human beings and here he is angry with sickness and its effects. Jesus came to heal, but he also came to repair human dignity. So where are the hopeless places I go and what drives me there. I know in the past I really struggled with the typical existential question of "Who am I?" Evidentially this is what everyone asked nowadays. The hopeless place was a mindset where I said to myself "I don't have anything to offer to God ... God didn't give me anything I am good at ... I must have messed something up because I never hear from God or see God work through me."

Slowly I learned that what I was really doing was pathetically bowing out of my responsibility to be in the image of God. I was inventing inner illnesses (suburbantitis, opportunity paralysis, etc.) But slowly God and my wife and my friends called me to walk after God and with a lot of inner striving I feel like I have responded yes to the first question and am walking along. But there are still times when I start to question everything again. When I want to return to the place of no responsibility (because I am unfit for any of it or not really good enough or whatever), but I think praying responsively (even as a mantra) is probably not a bad idea: "Lord Jesus Christ, YES, I DO WANT TO get well." May this prayer keep me walking.