Jesus at Bethesda
5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” 7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” 8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
We don’t know what this man’s illness was. But he had a problem that we can easily notice. Looking only to the lucky water (or however he viewed the pool of Bethesda) for healing, he didn’t notice that the Healer of mankind was the one talking to him.
My youngest son is four, and sometimes there are still times when he is so upset about something that he won’t listen to the answer to his trouble from his mom or me. He’s too involved in his own needs or fears that even though we have a comforting or satisfying answer, he won’t listen long enough to hear it. Is that just something for a little boy to grow out of, or do we all have that problem sometimes? Do we spend so much time talking about our troubles that we don’t stop to listen to God’s message of forgiveness? Do we spend so much time looking somewhere else for answers that we don’t notice God’s word right there at our elbow?
Jesus didn’t spend any time at all debating with this man about whether or not the water of the pool would heal him, or whether an angel would ever descend to stir things up a little, or how to get someone to help him down into the pool. Jesus went right to the solution: Get up and walk! The man was healed instantly.
But Jesus also told the man to pick up his mat. We would like that to be the end of this story, but it’s not. Before the verse is even over, John hints about trouble to come, and it’s brought on by Jesus’ order to pick up his mat.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” (NIV)
Was Jesus wrong to tell the man to carry his mat? The Jews were objecting because of their interpretation of the Third Commandment. Despite the corrections of their attitude in Hosea 6:6 (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings”) and Isaiah 1:11-17, they were seeing obedience to God only in the letter of the Law, but they were forgetting the intent of the Law.
Jesus did not make a mistake. In fact, he deliberately took this opportunity to heal this man, to show him both his sins and his Savior (this hasn’t happened yet in our text), and to begin to display his identity openly to the Jews. They were about to challenge God’s interpretation of his own Law, and they were about to begin plotting together to kill God, and to carry their sin out to that extreme. As the angel Gabriel said to Daniel, it was time “for your people and your holy city to finish transgression” (Daniel 9:24); and soon “the Anointed One (“Anointed One” is Hebrew for “Christ”) will be cut off” (Daniel 9:26).
Like Abraham building and arranging the altar on which he was preparing to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:9), Jesus was arranging the circumstances for his own sacrifice. The Jews needed to know that he was the Son of God before they put him to death, and he was getting ready to tell them.
Something Extra:
Eccliesiastes 1:8-11
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered by those who follow. (NIV)
Solomon’s goal with these words is partly to describe his own weariness with the world. In his position, the most powerful man in Israel and perhaps in his day one of the most powerful men in the world, there was nothing denied to him. Solomon had everything he wanted. But nothing was new. Nothing surprised him. Nothing made him feel right inside, of all the things and experiences and ideas in the world. None of it filled the hole in his soul.
And so the other part of his goal with these words is to show us the same thing. Solomon is performing a task for us very much like something my brother used to do for me. When Dan and I were young, we would sometimes take walks along the creek that ran through our town. And when we would step on the frozen water in the winter, Dan would turn back to me and say, “Step here, it’s too thin there,” and things like that. He had been there already. He knew what dangers were ahead for me, and he told me about them. Solomon, who had everything, is turning back to us to say, “Step this way; don’t step over there—it’s too dangerous.” Solomon is guiding us to see that there is only one thing we should spend our time pursuing.
Even a name or a memorial for ourselves is something we shouldn’t bother with; if one of us will have a memorial one day, it should be raised by the people who follow him; not by the man himself. And if he isn’t remembered, what difference does it make? What matters isn’t that people later in time remember us, but that God knows us in eternity.
Solomon wants us to be worn out and exhausted by his words. He wants us to give up on trying to seek pleasure for ourselves in the world. And so Solomon can seem to be writing a very modern, very Western, and even a very American book. He wants us to turn our backs on comforts and pleasures and the joys of having enough, because secretly behind the joy of having enough is always the longing to have just a little bit more. But there is emptiness in “more.” Solomon is preaching the Law to us. Give up on your “enough” and your “more,” and seek God, the one and only Shepherd.
When we are content with God, and when we have joy in our relationship with God, we will be truly blessed. The greatest blessing of all is not something we need to strive for or earn or discover at all. It’s the forgiveness we already have in Jesus Christ. And that’s something that we will never run out of; something we can never hear too often.
We are at peace with God.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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