SERMON—”When healing doesn’t happen”
Have you ever been disappointed with God?
It’s likely the man who was crippled for 38 years was disappointed with God.
Today, John’s Gospel takes us to the Pool of Bethesda to meet this man as he lay on his mat by the pool. It was believed that an angel stirred up these waters and the first person to get into the pool when this happened would be healed from whatever ailment they had.
And so many others are there too: a crowd of the weak, infirm, sick, needy and distressed, blind, crippled, and lame, lying under the covered colonnades—the roofed walkways providing shelter from the elements. Perhaps they are there because the doctors couldn’t cure them, or perhaps because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor. The picture presented to us is the world’s worst hospital waiting room, overcrowded with patients desperately clinging to the hope of being healed by this supposedly healing water. The name of the pool is ‘Bethesda’ which in Hebrew means: “House of mercy.” But it is more like a house of misery…a house of disappointment.
When Jesus saw the invalid lying there, and knowing that he had been there for a long time, he came to him and asked him: “Do you want to get well?”
Why does Jesus ask this? Of course that’s what the man wants—isn’t it? Why else is he there? Does Jesus ask to give the man an opportunity to respond in faith? The man’s only answer is to repeat his helpless situation: “Sir, I do not have anyone to help me into the pool when the water has been stirred—while I am trying another one goes down before me.” So, the man has faith—but his answer shows where it is placed. The man seems to think his only hope is in the waters of the pool—certainly not Jesus. He doesn’t even recognise who Jesus is.
Yet still Jesus does for the man what the water can’t. He says: “Take up your mat and walk.” Jesus’ powerful word causes the man to do just that! The cripple for 38 years gets up and walks around! He is healed! Jesus does this even though the man doesn’t ask him to do it, and even though there’s not so much as a thank you from his lips. It appears that he is like the nine out of ten lepers who, having gone away healed, do not come back to express their gratitude to Jesus (Luke 17:11-19). Perhaps he thinks he deserves this, seeing as he’s done his time, lying around there for thirty-eight years.
Why then did Jesus heal this man? As we gather as the modern-day congregation at the Pool at Bethesda, is this passage of wonderful, miraculous healing difficult to hear? For we who live in broken and breaking down bodies, struggle to see, can’t stand or move without mobility aids, have chronic health conditions, battle cancer and its therapies, brain injury, or mental health challenges, crippled by anxiety, fear or depression, guilt and shame, sensory spectrum disorders, or whose bodies simply are wearing out as the days and weeks keep rolling by…why doesn’t Jesus heal us, or our loved ones, when, unlike this man, we do show faith in Jesus and ask him for it? Why doesn’t Jesus heal us who would say ‘thank you’ for it; who would show more courtesy and respect and faith than this crippled man?
And so as we sit, and lie, and wait…do we feel disappointed with God?
It’s not wrong to express our disappointment to God. In fact, it is better to do this than not do it and sit in anger and despair. God gives us the very words to express our disappointments to him. The Psalms are the God-given words for us to express our lament, worry, questions, longings, frustrations, and disappointments—words that Jesus himself prayed…words like: “Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Ever since Adam and Eve brought the spiritual sickness of sin into the world, plunging God’s good and beautiful creation into corruption and brokenness, sickness and death, the whole of creation groans in bondage to decay. “You will not surely die!” the devil hissed his temptation to Adam and Eve. What a lie! As we pray in the funeral rite:
We are all born weak and helpless. All lead the same short, troubled life. We grow and wither as quickly as flowers; we disappear like shadows. In the midst of life we are in death. To whom can we go for help, but to you Lord God, though you are rightly displeased because of our sins? And yet, Lord God Almighty, most holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us from the bitterness of eternal death.
To whom can we go for help, but to you Lord God? That’s the whole point of today’s text. Who can we go to for help? Today’s text shows that God hasn’t forsaken us, for no other reason than his grace and love to the world in Christ. Today’s text shows us that God came to earth in the Person of Christ to be present in all the broken places of the world and people’s lives. In today’s text we see our own brokenness at the pool of Bethesda. Here we are given a glimpse of our spiritual condition before God, in one of the clearest presentations of the broken human condition through those gathered.
The man’s chronic paralysis before Jesus is a picture of the spiritual paralysis that grips and constrains all of humanity; that in our natural condition we are spiritually incapacitated, preventing us to come to God or even know him. The man could not get up or walk; he could not come to Jesus, but it was Jesus who came to him. The man doesn’t even know Jesus, but Jesus knows him and knows that he has been there a long time. The man doesn’t call out to Jesus, but it is Jesus who first speaks to him: “Do you want to be healed?”
The day on which this took place was on the Sabbath. That’s no trifling detail, and neither is it a coincidence. The religious leaders of the day taught strict observance to the law as the basis for one’s righteousness, and made 610 of their own human rules which they thought would help them not break God’s law. But they became proud and self-righteous, imagining that God was more pleased with them because of their efforts. They saw themselves as the moral gatekeepers of the community—whoever kept their rules was in…and whoever didn’t was out. They asserted that because they were good they were blessed—and anyone with a chronic health condition must be a sinner. As the healed man walked about, carrying his mat, they were infuriated that he was first of all healed, and then, having been healed, that he was flouting God’s law like this…for his carrying his mat was considered a work. He was breaking the Sabbath! They were blind to their own sickness of sin. They were blind to the gift of righteousness through faith in Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath, and that one’s righteousness is found in him alone.
Some Christians believe we will be healed if we just pray more, or worship more fervently, or strive harder in obedience and good works. But all our strivings at earning righteousness and holiness will never cause God to show us any more favour than he already has—and still does—in Christ. Whether we are physically well or ill, no matter what we experience or suffer from—we are all born sinful and unclean and cannot free ourselves. The paralysed man had kept the Sabbath for the past 38 years…but he was still trapped in a body in bondage to decay. Keeping rules and commandments hadn’t help him.
Perhaps that’s why John mentions that there are five colonnades. Why is that even necessary? Why not just say that Jesus was at the pool at Bethesda? Could the five be symbolic, reminding the Jewish religious leaders of the five books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. These books, known as the ‘Pentateuch’, were regarded by the Jews as the most precious scriptures. They contained all of God’s commandments, rules for living in the land, instructions for the priesthood and Tabernacle furnishings, instructions for ritual purity, sacrifices and religious festivals. The religious leaders revered all this instruction, all the laws, all the rules. But knowing what God wants us to do cannot actually help us to do it. We can understand what righteousness and holiness look like…but we can’t make ourselves righteous and holy.
But at the House of Mercy, here is the One who can do what the law can’t, and what we can’t. John says in his opening chapter: “For from the fullness of God in Christ we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:16-18).
Jesus’ work of the miraculous healing at the pool shows that he has come to reverse decay; to triumph over death…and as a completely undeserved gift to all people. We can’t answer why God doesn’t heal us or our loved ones when we ask for it. But we can say that God is not absent from us in Christ Jesus. Our brokenness is not a sign of God’s absence. But God stepped into our brokenness in the Person of Christ, to redeem us from it. Jesus is our Saviour. He is the place of God’s mercy. All through the Gospels Jesus shows up in the most broken places in life, before he himself knows brokenness when his broken body is lifted up at Golgotha. This is where God shows his faithfulness to you before we could express our faith in him. It is there that Jesus was paralysed as he hung, pinned to the Cross. It is there that Jesus felt searing pain, taking upon himself the pain and suffering of the whole world. It is there that Jesus embraced the brokenness of all creation with arms outstretched, bearing it upon himself. It is there that Jesus traded places with us and has healed our relationship between us and God, restoring divine favour to us.
Jesus has come to bring divine favour to you. We have something better than a special pool to come to. By his command, in water and the word, he baptised you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to bring this saving help to you personally and bring you into God’s Kingdom, even if you have not been healed physically, even if you struggle and suffer, that your struggles and sufferings will not be the end of your story. How can you for sure that God’s favour is for you, personally? Jesus does not say take up your mat and walk. He says: “Take and eat, this is my body given for you, take and drink, this is my blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” This is your forgiveness, your strength, your medicine for body and soul, daily dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ, until the day he returns, coming with the clouds, and we are made completely new in the twinkling of the eye (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Even now, Jesus says to you: “Behold, I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:4-5). Until he comes again, Jesus will not forsake you. He will comfort, guide, and sustain you. He will be your shepherd and carry you forever. He will lead you through the valley of the shadow of death (this dark and dying world itself) through to the world to come—where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. And so in the words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 7: “Who can rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Amen!
