JESUS AND THE RULES OF THE POOL
You know the rules! The rules of the swimming pool. Most of them are common sense: no diving in the shallow end; no pushing; no cannon balls (splashing); no peeing in the pool. There is one rule that tickles me: no breath holding – so, if you go under, make sure you swallow as much water as possible.
We break most of these rules at my brother’s pool. He built a platform three feet above the surface to jump from; before that we catapulted ourselves from a trampoline. But one rule he insists on: no one with a diaper is allowed to swim in his pool. I make sure not to wear one then.
In John 5, Jesus visits the local Jerusalem pool, but not to swim. Depending on your perspective, Jesus may have gone to the pool to break the rules. Was Jesus trying to upset the status quo or just being rebellious? Or both? I wouldn’t say that Jesus was a rule-breaker; I would say his intention was to recover the heart of the rule that had become status quo.
In this story, we will observe that Jesus stirs the waters to reveal a new understanding of the rules of faith. Even in the question he poses to the invalided man at the pool, “Do you want to get well?” he’s not being ridiculous, he’s making you think. That’s what Jesus does, he makes you think and rethink.
1. Is it REALLY a Dumb Question? (5:1-6)
They say there are no dumb questions. I wonder though. You’re sitting on a plane flying to Calgary and the person sitting next to you asks, “Are you going to Calgary?” No, I’m jumping out over Regina since they don’t have airports in Saskatchewan.
Your furniture is being loaded from the house into a moving van and your neighbor asks, “Are you moving?” No, I read an article that says it’s good to air out your furniture with a brisk drive through the country.
Do you want to get well? You go to the doctor because you have a nasty cough and chest congestion. He swabs your throat and says you have strep throat. Do you want to get well? No thanks, doctor, I just wanted to know what it was – thanks for the diagnosis. Yes, I want to be made well.
We find Jesus in Jerusalem celebrating a Jewish festival at the temple. He walks a few blocks over to the famous pool of Bethesda or Bethzatha, near the Sheep Gate. This is not Cancun. There are people with chronic illnesses and infirmities here. Under five covered colonnades, the people sit and wait near the pool. What are they doing?
You will notice part of verse 3 and all of 4 are missing in your Bibles. This is a textual issue. We don’t have the original copies of any books in the Bible, but we have hundreds of copies of copies from the first centuries. The earliest copies don’t have these words, but by AD 400, they all do. Why? These words were not likely in John’s original book because the first readers knew about the pool and its legend. As the copies of John were shared around the known world, people didn’t know about the pool. Somebody probably added a footnote explaining the local legend and it became part of the text.
Here’s what was added: “Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed – and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had,” (3b-4). The thought was angel residue was left behind and it cured the sick. Scholars believe that an underground spring that fed the pool would bubble up at times and disturb the water.
Amid the throngs of people waiting there, Jesus comes to one man – just one. A man who had been infirm for 38 years. We don’t know the illness or why he couldn’t get to the water in time. In his mind, this is his last and only hope. He’s got to get into the water at just the right time. But someone always beats him to the pool. Can you imagine 38 years of frustration?
And Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?” Did the man understand the question as, “Why aren’t you healed yet?”? Which would explain the answer, “It’s not because I don’t want to, I can’t.” His last hope is hopeless. He’s done all he can. He needs help.
When you are stuck and there’s no movement in your life, you feel like you are not getting anywhere, do you think “I’m stuck in a rut”? You continue to do the same things hoping for a different result. You listen to the same voices, repeat old patterns, but nothing changes. You may think, “As soon as this or that happens, life will get better…” As soon as I pay off my debts. As soon as I get well. As soon as I get married…I will be happy. My problems will go away.
Jesus is asking this man, “Do you have any hope? Do you still dream?” Or are you hoping in something that will never happen? You’re just existing. The people at the pool have put their hope in bubbles, and next to the pool stands the one who can heal. Do you want to be healed, for real?
2. It’s NOT about the Healing (5:7-9)
Have you struggled for a long time against a hopeless situation? Have you given up on God? Is there a pain inside of you sucking out the light? Are you just existing? Jesus asks you these questions this morning. He’s asking, “Do you want to get well?”
Why did Jesus pick out this one man out of a crowd of sick people? He could have spent his day healing people, but he picks one man. We don’t know why. If we dig into the text a little deeper, we will find it’s not about the healing.
Without much fanfare or teaching, Jesus simply says to the man, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk,” (8). The man is cured, he picks up his mat and walks. Amazing. There are three aspects to this miracle: a) Get up! William Barclay says it was as if Jesus said to him, “Man, bend your will to it and you and I will do this thing together.” Jesus always asks the person to do something, to join in and cooperate; b) “pick up your bed” – The man might have said, “I’m healed, but I better leave my bed here and save my spot.” Jesus says, “You don’t live here anymore.” Don’t leave any possibility of going back to the old life. Take up your bed – get rid of it – don’t leave it there. Leave the past behind, it doesn’t own you; c) Walk – Do not expect to be carried. You are no longer an invalid. Some want to remain invalided; it’s easier being cared for. But this man wanted to be healed.
Jesus shifted the focus of his hope. The man was looking at the pool. It didn’t work. He was just staring at it till Jesus came and stood beside him. The man didn’t do anything, believe anything – he didn’t even know who Jesus was. All he said was that he was struggling. And Jesus healed him.
But why pick up the bed? There’s another hidden gem in this simple act. Jesus was making a point. You see, it was the Sabbath (9). He was, in my own interpretation, picking a fight. It was a battle over perspective, a battle over rules and reality, a battle about Sabbath. Remember the movie Braveheart? One man asks William Wallace, “Where do you think you’re going?” He responds, “I’m going to pick a fight.”
3. Shifting your Focus onto Jesus (5:10-15)
The man picks up his mat and walks. “The day on which this took place was the Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat,” (9b-10).
Isn’t it odd and really quite sad that the Jewish leaders didn’t ask about the healing? They were more focused on the rule of law. Behind this “transgression of the law” was the commandment from God (see Ex. 20:8-10a). There is no doubt that if you love and obey God, it is in your best interest to keep the Sabbath and not work. What the rabbis struggled to define is: What is work? They discerned there were 39 categories that are forbidden for Sabbath (see chart).
Bread Making Process
Plowing
Sowing
Reaping
Gathering
Threshing
Winnowing
Sorting
Grinding
Sifting
Amalgamation
Baking/
Cooking
Making Clothes
Shearing
Scouring
Combing
Dyeing
Spinning
Warping
Constructing Loops
Weaving
Unraveling
Tying
Untying
Sewing
Tearing
Writing
Trapping
Slaughtering
Flaying
Tanning
Smoothing
Scoring
Measured Cutting
Writing
Erasing
Building a House
Building
Demolishing
Extinguishing
Kindling
Hammer blows
The last one: “carrying.”
The Jewish leaders didn’t ask, “Who healed you?” but “Who told you to pick up your mat and walk?” Wrong focus. The Jewish leaders wanted to be precise in keeping the letter of the law, but they missed out on experiencing the God who gave the law and why he gave it. The sick people at the pool were focused on the water rather than on the God who heals. The Church may focus on being religious in its programs and Christians on their strict adherence rather than knowing the Christ who saves them.
Jesus didn’t go to the pool to heal people. He could have. But he heals one guy and starts a firestorm that will get him killed. He used this one healing to point to our true need – spiritual healing. The Jews began persecuting him and challenging his Sabbath faux pas and Jesus responds, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working,” (17).
God’s intention for the Sabbath was not to create a burden on people. When God instituted the seventh day as a REST, he knew that we needed a day of restoration, a day to recover our balance and harmony, a day to heal. I have been studying Exodus as a personal study for weeks now and Sabbath came up in a beautiful “coincidence.”
God created in six days and rested on the seventh. Does God rest? Are babies never born on Sunday? Is no one healed on the weekend? Do crops stop growing? Do birds cease their nest-building? Does God not sustain creation on the seventh day? I’m still breathing, how about you? God is working. Jesus is working. They never stop. And God would never forbid us to show mercy on the day of rest, to help a neighbor lift a couch on Sunday, to make bread to share with the sorrowing.
It's the focus. Are you focused on Jesus? Is he your hope? Are you at the end of your rope? Are you staring at the pool and waiting for the water to bubble up? Are you putting your hope in something that will not deliver the lasting happiness you imagine it will? Are you waiting to be restored but looking at these temporal things to cure you?
Do you want to get well?
Several years ago, I preached on this passage in Kleefeld. After the service, I was informed that a woman in our congregation wanted to see me privately to discuss the message. Knowing her to be in chronic pain and constant misery, I mused that she wanted to talk about healing prayer. She had fallen on ice several years prior and had never recovered. It exacted a toll on her mentally as well as physically.
To my surprise, she wanted to ream me out. She accused me of applying this sermon to her specific case (which I did not) and, like the man in the story, she wanted to be well but could not. I had outed her. I had shamed her. I had stolen her hope.
I was shattered. I was dealing with my own stuff at the time and could not handle these confrontations very well. But I know I had done one thing: I preached about Jesus. If the story of Jesus convicted her, she responded with unbelief rather than with hope – the hope that scripture intended.
Jesus was redirecting our focus onto himself. God gave us his word to shift our eyes from rules, quick cures, solutions, and gimmicks to the person of Jesus. He wants to give us holy lives – lives that are distinct from what the world knows of hope in false things.
Jesus wants to rekindle our hope. Isn’t it a beautiful thing that Jesus seeks us out and wants to change our lives? To restore our spiritual wellness? Do you want to get well?
AMEN
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