The Sixth Sunday of Easter - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr

 

John 5:1-9

Karen had been carrying bitterness and grief with her for over 20 years. Her husband had left her for someone else. Karen was left to raise the children. She was left to work two jobs to make ends meet. She went on with her life, but it wasn’t without pain. She held on to that pain. It became part of her identity.

She went to a retreat at her church. During the retreat, the speaker asked, “What would it look like for you to be made well?” Karen took that question to heart and thought hard about what she could do to be made well. She went home and wrote a letter of forgiveness to her ex-husband. She didn’t write it to send to him. She wrote it as a symbol of release. It was hard and painful to write the letter. When she was finished, Karen said it was the first time in 20 years that she felt she could breathe freely. For 20 years, she believed that she couldn’t move forward. She was waiting for someone to “fix” her, for someone to come along and remove the hurt. Then, someone asked, “What would it look like for you to be made well?”

The man sitting at the pool in Bethzatha lived in his own pain. For 38 years, he sat by the pool, unable to walk, waiting to be healed. Interestingly, modern translations of the Bible omit verse 4 from chapter 5 of John’s Gospel. It’s in verse 4 that we get an explanation of the pool this man is sitting by. The King James translation says, "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had” (John 5:4, KJV). The pool was a subterranean stream, and every once in a while, it would bubble up and disturb the water. It was believed that an angel caused the disturbance and that the first person to get into the pool after the stirring of the water would be healed from any illness they may be suffering from. It was more of a superstition; it was the only thing the people thought they had that they could believe in.

We don’t know the name of the man who sat by the pool. Because of his disability, it was nearly impossible and doubtful that he would ever be the first to get into the pool after it had been stirred up. Yet, he kept coming back day after day.

Jesus comes along and in the midst of who knows how many ailing people, he chooses this man to talk to, a man who doesn’t even know who Jesus is. While Jesus could lecture him on how ridiculous it is for him to believe in the superstition that the stirred-up water could heal, he doesn’t. Instead, he asks, “Do you want to be made well?” The man at the pool didn’t answer Jesus’ question. Instead, he had excuses as to why he was sitting there and not being healed. He comes to the pool to be healed, but whenever the water is stirred up, someone else steps ahead of him. 

“Do you want to be made well?” sounds like a foolish question to ask a man who has lived as an invalid for 38 years, but was it? This was the life the man knew. What would it look like for him to be made well? If he were healed, he would lose all his present securities. He would have to be responsible for himself. He would have to find a job in a world he didn’t know. For him to be healed, he would enter into an entirely new life—a life of new possibilities and a life of a certain amount of risk.

When Jesus asked, “Do you want to be healed?” the question shifted the focus inward to the ailing man. Was the man willing to let Jesus do the deeper work? It wasn’t just about the man’s external circumstances. Jesus was asking the man if he wanted to be renewed. He didn’t just ask if he wanted to be relieved of his ailment. Jesus offered him a complete change in his identity and his life.

All of us are living with pain, whether it be physical, spiritual, emotional, or a brokenness of hurt, guilt, or shame. “What would it look like for you to be made well?” “Do you want to be made well?” Are you willing for your life to be different? Have you adjusted to life as it is, or do you want something more?

To answer “yes” to these questions requires facing what’s broken in us. In Karen’s story, she lived in bitterness, which shaped how she viewed the world. We often do the same thing. We may say that we want peace, but we cling to resentment. We say we want joy but won’t let go of guilt. We say we want to be close to God, but we avoid the silence to hear God speaking.

In our Women’s Bible Study, we are studying The Lord’s Prayer, line by line. Last Tuesday, we studied the line, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” God’s will for us is not to offer quick fixes to our problems. God’s will for us is for us to be deeply transformed. It’s more than just praying for God to fix our situation. It’s trusting God to restore our soul by allowing God access to the parts we often hide – our fears, our shame, our failures, our unforgiveness. This is where true healing begins – where we are made well.

Just like the man at the pool or Karen writing the letter, the choice to be made often begins when we decide to let go of what’s holding us captive and allow Jesus to do the uncomfortable work inside us. Jesus could have said to the man, “You’re healed.” Instead, he said, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” It required faith and action from the man. Jesus renewed the man’s mind and heart. Healing isn’t just about behavior. It’s about believing that we are forgiven, loved, and chosen.

That’s why the question, “Do you want to be made well?” matters so much. When our answer is “yes,” the healer who touches lepers, washes feet, and cries with mourners, gently and patiently walks with us through every step of the process. Amen.