Day 10 - Friday, March 3
Title: JESUS HEALS THE PARALYTIC ON THE SABBATH
Scripture: John 5:1–15

Some time later came one of the Jewish feast-days and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. There is in Jerusalem near the sheep-gate a pool surrounded by five arches, which has the Hebrew name of Bethzatha (the Pool of Bethesda). Under these arches a great many sick people were in the habit of lying; some of them were blind, some lame, and some had withered limbs. (They used to wait there for the “moving of the water”, for at certain times an angel used to come down into the pool and disturb the water, and then the first person who stepped into the water after the disturbance would be healed of whatever he was suffering from.) One particular man had been there ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there on his back—knowing that he had been like that for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well again?”

“Sir,” replied the sick man, “I just haven’t got anybody to put me into the pool when the water is all stirred up. While I’m trying to get there somebody else gets down into it first.”

“Get up,” said Jesus, “pick up your bed and walk!”

At once the man recovered, picked up his bed and walked.

This happened on a Sabbath day, which made the Jews keep on telling the man who had been healed, “It’s the Sabbath, you know; it’s not right for you to carry your bed.”

“The man who made me well,” he replied, “was the one who told me, ‘Pick up your bed and walk.’”

Then they asked him, “And who is the man who told you to do that?”

But the one who had been healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away in the dense crowd. Later Jesus found him in the Temple and said to him, “Look: you are a fit man now. Do not sin again or something worse might happen to you!”

Then the man went off and informed the Jews that the one who had made him well was Jesus.

Poetry & Poet: 
“Black Rook in Rainy Weather”
by Sylvia Plath

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, I seek
No more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

JESUS HEALS THE PARALYTIC ON THE SABBATH

I once met a middle-aged man who walked with a walker because the pain in his back doubled him over. When asked how he became injured, the man said, “My friends—I asked them to help me move, and they all abandoned me that day. I had to move my house by myself, and in the process I hurt my back.”

Reading the story of the man at the pool of Bethesda, I think of this man. When asked about his injury, the man with the walker revealed his true pain; when asked about his healing, the man by the poolside revealed his true need. 

“‘Sir,’ replied the sick man, ‘I just haven’t got anybody’” (John 5:7). 

“My friends … they all abandoned me.”

Thirty-eight years of compounding, resounding loneliness. This might hurt more than the condition which left him immobilized. And on this day, of all days—a day of feasting as a community, with the sounds of celebration and smells of a meal-out-reach swirling in the air— Jesus touches the bruised heart with his words. In response, the man’s cry of pain sounds like loneliness. 

Still, the man seems to cling to the hope offered by the pool. After thirty-eight years of waiting, did he ever wonder if miracles still happen? 

Do we?

Or are we, like the one who watches the rook in Plath’s poem, not expecting “a miracle/Or an accident”? So convinced are we that miracles don’t occur that when we encounter one, we won’t even label it a coincidence or mistake. 

How do we explain away others’ reports of miracles? Are they, in our mind’s and in the mind of the man by the pool, simply more able, or more socially connected? Surely, that might be true some of the time, but every time? Or, is it just dumb luck that they get what they need—and just our luck that we don’t? 

Jesus does not let the man sit alone. In restoring his health, the Good Physician restores the man to the capacity for community. In the following scenes, we see the man sought out by others and seeking others out in response—reversing his social isolation. 

Curious about his response, I asked the man, gripping his walker, if he had ever forgiven his friends. 

“Sure,” he hesitated, “Yeah, of course.”

I invited him to say the words out loud in prayer.

“Jesus, I forgive my friends for abandoning me.” Those words awkwardly, but earnestly, stumbled out of his mouth. 

Then, we walked together. I replaced his walker with my arm. We didn’t walk far or fast, but by the end of our walk, he was upright. When he left that day, he wasn’t using the walker any more. 

“Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles…”

Prayer:
Good Physician, you know what we need before we even ask. Triune God, you long to restore us to community. Miracle worker, help us to see the miracles you perform before us every day, and give you praise. And when we feel alone, help us to remember we always have you. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

Chase Andre, M.A.
Instructor in Communication Core and Digital Learning
Department of Communication Studies
Biola University

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