Lent = Healing and Being Healed

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
"Do you want to be well?"
The sick man answered him,
"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me."
Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk."
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.

Once again, I am showing my age.  When I was a youth in beautiful Brighton Park on the Southwest Side of Chicago, you were hard pressed to find any stores open on Sunday. The National Tea grocery store was open so you could buy some things but the liquor was not for sale on Sunday and because the butchers, who had a very strong union back then, neither were the meats that they packaged.  Most stores were closed back in the early 1960's on Sunday. Taverns were not permitted to open until noon on Sunday.  People, by law, were kind of forced to keep the sabbath.   

Back in the time of Jesus, the Bethesda pool was a place that every so often, not on a regular schedule, an angel was said to appear and "stir up the waters" and the first one in the pool would be cured of whatever was wrong with him.  The man in our story had two strikes against him.  First, it appears he could not walk.  And secondly, he did not have a friend ready and willing to pick him and toss him into the pool when the angel stirred up the waters.  Those with more able bodies would surely get into the pool before him.  For him, however, there was the slimmest of chances that he could be first so he went every day and took up his place.  One day, Jesus appeared at the pool and took pity on the cripple.  Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be cured.  I could imagine what I, being a wiseass, and not a too bright one at that, would have said. "No I just come here every day to sit here and visit with my friends."  The man, showing more brains than I have, simply told his story.  He told Jesus, that he wanted to be cured but he had a problem because he could never be the first into the pool.  Jesus solved the problem and cured the man and told him to take up his mat and go home.   

Now, this took place on the sabbath.  The Jews were very strict about following the sabbath.  The man was accosted as he moved towards his home and was told he could not carry his mat on the sabbath.  Well, since he was at the pool already, he must have carried it there on the sabbath.  But he told the Pharisees that were on his case that the man who cured him told him to get up and walk.  They asked who told him to do this.  The man was not sure and Jesus had wandered off, out of sight.  Later the man caught sight of Jesus and went to the Pharisees and pointed Him out.  From that moment on they began to plot against Jesus. 

Once again, we see Jesus doing something charitable and curing a person.  He brought hope where there was no hope.  The man who was cured had no chance of being the first in the pool. There were others, stronger than he, who would push him out of the way in their attempt to get into the water and be cured.  Jesus took the initiative and cured the man.  He could have told the cripple to come back the next day after the sabbath was over, and he would cure him. But, Jesus knew that the sabbath was made for man and not the other way around. He technically worked on the sabbath and cured the cripple. 

A work of charity has no day or time when it is not appropriate.  Jesus saw a need and he filled it.  Why did Jesus cure this man?  There were probably dozens of people at the pool, why didn't he just wave his arm and cure everyone at one fell swoop?  It was well within his power to do.  Instead, he took care of one man who had no one else who cared.  

For us too, we need to watch for opportunities to help.  We need to take the risk that others may scorn or laugh at us for tilting at windmills.  But if we love Christ, we love all of His people and are called to serve.