Do You Want to Be Healed?
Easter 6
May 25, 2025
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
We should start this morning by noting where we are in John’s Gospel, at the beginning of chapter 5. As many of you will have surmised by now, this comes right after chapter 4, in which only two things happen. Just preceding these events, John recounts a healing in Capernaum, which is up on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee. Just before that is Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in which he talks about giving “living water.”
Jesus is getting around! Samaria is between Galilee to the north and Jerusalem to the south, and it’s about 100 miles from Jerusalem to Capernaum across hilly terrain. Clearly John isn’t telling us everything. But, as he writes at the end of chapter 20, “…these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Remember that is why we are here; “life in his name.”
This encounter combines elements of those prior two: living water and healing.
This pool of Bethzatha, or you may have seen it translated Bethesda. It was actually 2 pools, side-by-side, dug out of the bedrock, and was thought to have healing qualities, but only when it was “stirred up” or bubbling. Jews and Roman pagans alike used it.
So, they have these two pools that occasionally bubble and might be helpful if you get into one or the other at the right time. Now, here comes Jesus, who we know in chapter 4 gives “living water.” What does that mean?
The vision of living water is one way in which Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecies. It links back to Ezekiel 47. Let’s look back at the first nine verses (which you’ll find on page 734 of your pew Bibles.) God is giving Ezekiel a vision.
47 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.
3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again, he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. 5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. 6 And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?”
Then he led me back to the bank of the river. 7 As I went back; I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. 8 And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. 9 And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.
This vision has water flowing from the Temple into the Kidron Valley, which is between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olive and the Garden of Gethsemane. The Kidron Valley runs all the way to the Dead Sea (Arabah), about 20 miles. It’s called the Dead Sea because it is 10 times saltier than the ocean and nothing except some really tough microbes can live in it. If you float in it, it’s like you are sitting in a recliner, and one that takes some effort to get up from. The Kidron Valley is almost always bone dry, with a stream only occasionally after a big rain.
But this isn’t about H2O. The vision of so much water flowing from the Temple so as to make the Dead Sea fresh is a metaphor for the overwhelming, recreative power of God’s grace. The creation is, by analogy, a faint reflection of the life God intends. The recreative power of God is embodied in Jesus, and He has walked up to this occasionally bubbling puddle.
This incident is very different from most of Jesus’s other healings. Most often a person presents himself or herself to Jesus and says something like, “Have mercy on me, Son of David.” Sometimes a person comes to Jesus on behalf of another person, be it an adult or a child, a Jew or a Gentile. Or you may recall the woman with the hemorrhage grabbed the hem of his garment, “sneaking up on Jesus.” There is usually some expression of faith, verbal or effort, even out of desperation.
Here, there is no indication the lame man even knows who Jesus is. He is one among many seeking a cure, maybe, if he can only get to the water at the right time.
Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be healed?”
He replies, here I paraphrase, “Dude! I have been trying to do this for 38 years, with no help! So, yeah, I would kind of like that!”
Jesus doesn’t pour any water on him. He doesn’t touch him. It’s all in his word. The Word through whom all things were created is speaking new life into what has been broken by the sin and accidents of this life. New life is spoken in a very mundane way. No big production, no pomp, no circumstance.
Jesus just tells him to take up his mat and go. Go. Go where? Go to your family. Go to take on the adventure of new life. Go listen to that still small voice. Go where God sends you and do what God tells you to do.
We should ponder that question this morning. Do we want to be healed? It seems silly on the face of it. Of course, we want to be healed when something is wrong, when we and/or the people we love are sick or injured. We want to be healed and made whole when there is a crisis. Perhaps there is a bit of an advantage in the obvious.
But our needs are not always or even often so obvious. When we think everything is all right, when we think things are good enough, we are in great danger of saying, “No. I’m good, thanks.” We don’t usually mean that morally. We mean we are content with the way things are.
Let’s be honest. Relative stability and reasonable comfort feel pretty good when compared to the utter hell so much of the world and so much of this community live in. And I’m not even talking primarily about economics.
It’s the ways people treat each other and the ways we fail each other. It’s the ways people treat God, “I’ll get back to you when I need you.” We don’t listen to him or follow him nearly enough. On that score, who is “good” where they are? I am most certainly not. Are you?
Do you want to be healed? Do you want to yield yourself to going where Jesus sends you and doing what Jesus tells you to do, starting now? I’ve told you before that I went to my friends’ Pentecostal and Baptist churches many times. And every time there was an altar call, I’d go. I’ve been saved once but I’ve run down there many times.
You get an altar call this morning and every Sunday and Wednesday. Do you want to be healed?
Let us pray.
AMEN