"Do You Want It?"

John 5:1-9

In the Jerusalem Temple was a healing pool called Bethzada, a double pool with five porticoes whose ruins remain today. Invalids waited for the water to stir so they could rush down and compete to be first in for a healing; the rest would remain ill. The story makes me wonder if the blind, lame, and paralyzed found their way to some home at night, or whether they just congregated at the pool 24/7. I can picture a small garrulous community there, telling jokes, passing gossip and complaining about all and everything.

One first-century Sabbath, when Jesus visited the Temple for a festival, he spotted a certain invalid in the crowd and healed him. Why pick him out of all the others? I don't know, but he asked the sick man, "Do you want to made well?" The question brings to mind Jesus' question to blind Bartimaeus [Mk 10:46-52 (cf. Mt 30:22, Lk 18: 35-43)]: "What do you want me to do for you?"

"Do you want it?" We could ask ourselves this--or perhaps hear the Lord asking us--about things we pine for but hope will just happen to us. Do we want to stand on our own? And do we want the aftermath of getting what we're focusing on? Did the sick man really want to give up the leisurely days lying by the pool, chatting up his fellow invalids, no doubt getting free food from the Temple who provide charity for the poor?

The man's answer doesn't make him a good candidate for healing. He whines in helplessness: Oh, he has no one to put him in the pool; oh, other people crowd ahead of him. Jesus' curt response: "Get up, take your mat, and walk." From my experience as a pastoral counselor, I can imagine a smidgen of impatience in Jesus' healing words. Stand on your own two feet! Carry your own mat!

To his credit, the man did get up immediately. To his discredit, when Sabbath enforcers interrogated him, he informed on Jesus as the one who healed him.

The story is complicated and bears more study: especially that Jesus, who had gotten away in the crowd, found the man later and warned him not to sin again (Jn 5:14-15). It was after that the man turned him in. So rather than an amazement of glory and faith after this sign, we find poltroonery (sp?). Which begs the question: what will we do after we get what we want?