Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 12, 2024

John 5, 1-15

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.

One of the most fascinating features in St. John’s Gospel is his attention to detail, which assures us of the fact that his account is first-hand and closely observed.  It also tells us how soon after the Lord’s Resurrection he wrote his Gospel — considerably before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70.  We note in the opening sentences of today’s Gospel Reading: “There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”  So a certain feast occurred after Jesus healed the royal official’s servant, as the Evangelist had just recounted in 4, 43-54.  But, “there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda.”  That is, in the present tense, which in Greek is continual: the pool continues to exist at the time John wrote his Gospel, which would not be true if he wrote it after the year 70.

John also tells us of a man “who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”  This is a very specific number that has no special meaning.  If John writes that he had been ill for thirty-eight years, it is because he was, and John learned it from the man himself, probably at a later time because the information does not arise during the man’s encounter with the Lord Jesus.

“Do you want to be well?”  Now, this is a highly unusual question and the Lord does not ask this of anyone else in the Gospels.  He does on one or two occasions ask a sick person who approached him what he wants of him, but this is a different question.  Because John counts this as one of the “signs” Jesus performed, we can understand this question as pointing to the meaning of the sign.  The Mighty God comes amongst the sick, perhaps to the one who has been sick the longest of anyone there, and asks him if he wants to get well.  The man is lying in the proximity of a fountain supposed to have healing powers so one can presume that he does want to get well.  But the Lord asks him anyway.  We should note what the man says: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.”  He does not say, Yes, I want to be cured.  He gives an excuse for why he has not been cured.  Nevertheless, the Lord heals him: “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”  The Lord does not say, You are cured.  He says, Rise, take up your mat and walk, as if to involve the man in his own cure.  Before Jesus comes to him, the man made no real effort on his own to get well, recognizing his own helplessness.  When Jesus comes, he commands the man to make an effort and provides him the grace by which he can.  And the man does.  He feels strength return to his back and to his legs and he raises himself up from the mat on which he lay for thirty-eight years.  He must have felt dazed by the act of standing up and by the fact of the miracle.  And then he walked, walking away from Jesus.  

We see here the state of the human race at that time.  It lay in sin for a long time within sight of salvation but without anyone to bring them to it.  The Lord God, in his mercy came to it and asked if it wanted to be saved.  Fallen humanity admits its helplessness to save itself, and Jesus gives it the ability — the grace — to rise from its sin, and it does.  The Lord provides the grace and humanity accepts it.  And redeemed humanity now goes about carrying its mat as a sign of its redemption.  This mat is the Cross of Christ, for the Lord redeemed humanity not from its outside but from within when he joined himself to it through his Incarnation and died for our sins.

This sign is meaningful for each of us as well, for sin lays us low so that we cannot “walk”, we cannot live virtuous lives.  We have to recognize this truth and go to confession so that our sin may be absolved.  This is the meaning of “Rise and walk” for us.  We obey the command to carry our mat through our imitation of the Lord Jesus.  And rather than walk aimlessly, we  adhere closely to the path of Jesus so that he does not “slip away” from us.