Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 21, 2023

John 5, 1-16

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.  Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” He answered them, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.”  They asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.

Reading this text, we should note the precision with which John points to the scene of the action.  He gives names of places and specific details about those places.  The text reads almost like a page from a guide to the ancient city of Jerusalem.  We should also note that not only does John want us to know where this event took place, but that it is being reported by an eyewitness.  The dialogue he records is also so natural that reading it is as if hearing it.  The words of the Lord and the lame man stuck in John’s ears, and it is hard to believe that John wrote this up many years after it occurred.  The event is still fresh to him when he recorded it, lending credence to the idea that he wrote his Gospel very soon after the Resurrection of our Lord — certainly within ten years.

The Sheep Gate of which John speaks was constructed as part of the rebuilt Jerusalem by the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Exile, and is referenced in Nehemiah 3, 1.  As the city stood in the days of the Lord, the gate was set in the northeastern section of the city wall, near the Temple.  It had as its particular purpose the entrance to the Temple grounds by sheep brought in from the country to be sold for the sacrifices offered in the Temple.  The Pool of Bethesda was built to wash the sheep in.  Perhaps the Lord Jesus came to this area in order to mediate on how he, the Lamb of God, would be driven into Jerusalem to be interrogated by the Sanhedrin at the beginning of his Passion, not long off.  But he also came to this place in order to meet the lame man.  This man, John tells us, had suffered in this condition for thirty-eight years, longer then Jesus had walked the earth.  He was an older man, then, if we assume that he was afflicted some time after his boyhood.  It is worth thinking about how John knew that the man had suffered for this exact number of years: he could only have known if the man himself had told him.  

“Do you want to be well?”  This may seem an unnecessary question, but it may be that the man showed no zeal for trying to get to the healing waters of the pool when the angel stirred up the water, as some alternate versions lead us to infer.  But the question goes deeper than a mere prod to get the man moving.  The Lord Jesus seeks to cause the man to reflect on what he really wants.  Does he indeed wish to be whole?  Or does he not care any longer, but only spends the day at the pool out of habit.  The Lord’s question may be a prompt for him to think about his moral life, too.  Is he in need of forgiveness?  For, the Lord does not ask him, Do you want to walk again?, but, Do you want to be well?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”  The lame man at least attempts to answer the Lord’s question rather than shake his head bitterly or speak disrespectfully, as sometimes happens when we are sick or injured.  Indeed, his words sound as though the man wishes someone would help him get to the water, just once, ahead of everyone else.  We might compare him to the woman who suffered hemorrhages for twelve years and still dared to hope for a cure after all the doctors and treatments and lost money.  “Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.”  The cure happens at once and without any kind of fuss.  The man felt strength in his legs which he had not known for decades, and he did not hesitate to raise himself up.  After finding himself able to walk, he picked up his mat as the Lord had ordered.  He had lain in this same place for so long.  Now it was as if he had never been there.

“Now that day was a Sabbath.”  John’s comment sticks out for its sharp brevity.  He is preparing us for the trouble the Pharisees will make for the man and for the Lord.  Now, as it happens, nothing in the Law forbids the man from carrying his mat on the Sabbath.  The Pharisees, however, had fashioned for themselves an interpretation of the Law from a few verses of the Scriptures taken out of context and insisted that others follow this as well.  And they made of their interpretation a hill they would die on.  But it was a hill of quicksand.

“The man who made me well told me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’ ”  The Pharisees would have guessed who had performed the miracle.  Only one man performed miracles in those days, the only one who had performed miracles since the time of the early Prophets.  

“Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”  The Lord’s words make us wonder if the man had been engaged in some sort of sin while laying on his mat, or if his lame state had come about through some sin he was committing at the time.  What is clear is that the Lord is not warning him not to talk to the Pharisees.  The man gave honest answers to their questions.  If there was sin here, it was in the heart of the Pharisees who sought to do harm to the Lord.  “The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well.”  Two possible reasons may have lead the man to do this.  First, he wanted to get on the good side of the men who put themselves forward as the teachers of Israel.  He may have seen them before in the years he had lain before the pool and felt comfortable telling them.  Second, he may have simply felt an obligation to fill in the gaps in his previous answers.  We need not impute malice in either case.  However, the Pharisees certainly cultivated malice in their hearts: “The Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a Sabbath.”  We note how John phrases his comment.  Not, Because Jesus broke the Sabbath, but, Because he did this on a Sabbath.  The Lord in fact fulfilled the Law of the Sabbath by resting from his Passion on Holy Saturday and by preaching to the souls in limbo.  

In this Reading we learn to perform virtuous acts and not to allow the opinions of others prevent us from doing so. It is better for us to please God rather than men,