Lent Guide 4

Scripture: John 5:2-17 (NIV)

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”

Reflection: 
Throughout the course of his ministry, Jesus healed many who were sick and hurting. For the infirm, the challenges of daily living were great. Adding insult to injury, in first-century society, their illnesses often made them outcasts. Many today who suffer from chronic disease or disability will confirm that the social isolation their conditions may cause can be harder to bear than physical hardship itself. In the merciful miracles of Jesus, we witness the restoration of both body and soul.

In the fifth chapter of his gospel, St. John (pictured below in the red robe) recounts a time when Jesus healed a paralytic who had been suffering for nearly four decades. They were in Jerusalem for one of the Jewish religious festivals, and an already populous city was overflowing with pilgrims from around the country, including Jesus and his disciples. He led them to a public pool complex, renowned for the healing properties of its waters. Appropriately called Bethesda, meaning house of steadfast-love, it was said that an angel of the Lord sometimes visited, causing the water to have curative power for whatever ailments afflicted bathers.

In a city where visitors often hope for a divine encounter, during a holy week when many sought one, it seems the only person not expecting to encounter God was the very man whom Jesus approached. He did not come to Christ (he couldn’t). No one else helps bring him to Jesus (he’s never even had someone to help him into the pool). He does not demonstrate any faith in Jesus or his power to make him well. Christ comes to him. Christ chooses him. Christ is faithful to him, like a shepherd who leaves the 99 to find one lost lamb. Jesus speaks, and the man is made well. There is nothing for the man to do but to receive the mercy, grace, and steadfast love of God.

Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (1670) – Bartolome Esteban Murill

Although now in the collection of the National Gallery in London, Bartolome Murillo’s rendering of this scene was originally painted for a charity hospital in Seville. Many other artists portraying this miracle choose to paint the results and show the man carrying his palette as he walks away. After all, that is the most dramatic and “painting-worthy” aspect of this encounter. Murillo instead focuses on the moments prior to when the man is talking to Jesus, and as a result, we viewers can enter into the place of the man at Christ’s feet.

It is striking that of all the people in the painting, it is the paralytic man, still lying on the ground and not yet healed, who looks most alive. You can almost hear him telling Jesus his story. Notice the man’s open arms and hands and how he looks as though he is receiving a blessing. This is the posture which both the evangelist and the painter urge us all to adopt. Whether we appear to be in perfect health, live with a disease or disability, or are paralyzed by anxiety and troubled in spirit, we all have sin-sick souls in need of redemption. Just as he once asked this man, Christ today is asking you, “Do you want to get well?”

Regardless of your physical circumstances, every day you wake and draw breath, God is pursuing you and inviting you to walk in the newness of life which you receive through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Today, let us pray to receive God’s steadfast love, let us be encouraged that the Father is always at work, and let us be confident that Jesus is working in our lives and hearts.

Contemplation & Prayer:
Rather than bringing your arms together with your hands clasped in a typical “prayer” posture, let your arms fall to your sides, bending at the elbows, and hold your hands out and open, like the paralytic in the painting, ready to receive what blessings God has to give you today in prayer.

Pray:
God my Father, help me to always fix the eyes of my heart of Jesus, the great physician of my soul. Revive my spirit. Bind up the wounds which life has dealt me and heal my sin-sick soul. By your Holy Spirit, enable me to gratefully receive your blessing and to live in the joy and protection of it. Receive me, in your perfect timing, into your arms and into your Kingdom, I pray.

Amen.

Action & Invitation:
Today or throughout this week…

• Receive Prayer for healing by signing up for a time of prayer with our wonderful prayer ministry teams. Connect with our Physical Healing and Inner-Healing Prayer teams here.
• Give to our church’s Compassion Fund here, which helps those in our community who have tangible physical needs such as food assistance, medical bills, and help keeping a roof over their heads.
• Listen to composer Gregorio Allegri’s “Miserere Mei, Deus” here, which Director of Music Greg Hobbs has chosen as a musical companion piece for John 5:1-17.