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Sunday June 15, 2008 "The Miracle at Bethsaida" John 5:1-18 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 6/18/2008 11:11 AM | What do you think the proper response to a miracle ought to be?
Well, I suppose there is no one perfect answer to that question, but in general, I would think that awe would be high up on the list. In my mind, it always seems to me that if I was to witness what I would consider to be an undeniable miracle, that I would be in awe of what God can do. And if it was a miracle that was beneficial to me, that changed my life in a positive way, I would think gratitude would be something that I would experience.
But it is not always the case.
It seems that there is sometimes a great burden to being the recipient of a miracle. Why was I saved? Why was my cancer cured? Why was I provided for in my darkest hour? What meaning do I draw from being the recipient of a miracle? What does it say about God that I was blessed in this way?
I bring this up today because on one level, the story of the Miracle at Bethsaida is a straightforward story of the miraculous power of Jesus. But is just as much about how people respond to that miraculous power.
We need to understand a bit of the context of this story if we are to feel it’s full impact.
Jesus is in Jerusalem for a “festival of the Jews”. We don’t know what festival that is. It could be Purim, or a general harvest festival, or the festival of Succoth. What the festival is is not as important as the idea that it would draw scores and scores of faithful Jewish folks to Jerusalem. The streets would be teeming with people, making their way to the Temple, buying and selling in the narrow streets of the holy city.
Outside the city walls, maybe a 20 minute walk from the Jerusalem temple sit the pools of Bethsaida. They are an amazing system of deep, deep, human built quarry-type pools and stone decks. Today, the pools are dry, but that only serves to impress upon visitors just how huge they really are. They go into the ground 3 or 4 stories deep, with many porticos and bridges that would have served as places to pull oneself out of the pool.
These were special pools. They were not simply swimming or bathing pools, they were pools that were believed to have miraculous restorative powers. A very early manuscript of the Gospel according to John has the following footnote: “from time to time an angel came down into the pool and stirred up the water. The first to plunge in after this disturbance recovered from whatever disease had afflicted them.” (REB)
Imagine the numbers of people who would have been crowded on the stone decks of these pools during a special festival! The place would have been jammed with people in search of a miracle cure.
This is where we meet the man who Jesus encounters. Jesus knew instinctively that this man needed help and asked the man, “Do you want to be made well?”
And with that, the man told Jesus his story. He had been ill for 38 years. We don’t know exactly what his affliction was, but it is likely that he was paralyzed in some fashion, because he was unable to get himself into the pool. And when the water got stirred up, try as he might, he would be pushed out of the way in the crush of people trying to get themselves or their loved ones into the water. He had no one to help him. And so he sat, unable to avail himself of the miracle cure that was close by.
Jesus said simply, “Stand up. Take your mat and walk.”
The man was probably just hoping this man talking to him would help him get in the pool the next time the whirlpool started, but no, Jesus simply said, “There you go. You are cured.”
The man picks up his mat and walks away healed. And immediately, we begin to understand that while this is healing miracle, it is much more than that. As the man walks away, he is met by some of the Temple leadership. They don’t talk to him because they know who he is. They are not stopping him because they want to know how he was healed. They don’t know about the healing or that Jesus was involved. The reason they stop and talk with him is because in picking up his mat and walking away from the pools at Bethsaida to the Jerusalem Temple, he is breaking the Sabbath law!
What? How could that be? The scripture seems to hint that he is heading toward the Temple to worship, to make his sacrifice, to do whatever is to be done during the festival. But he is carrying his mat. It was probably a straw stuffed pad, or light mattress, but for him to throw it over his shoulder and begin his walk, he has broken Sabbath law by WORKING on the Sabbath. If he were to simply walk, well that would be fine. But if he carries anything, his mattress, a bundle of sticks, a vessel full of water, then it becomes work and that is strictly prohibited on the Sabbath.
They began to grill the man. “Don’t you know that this is the Sabbath and you shouldn’t be carrying your mat?”
The man, probably still a bit stunned and flustered, answered them: “Well, that guy told me to!” and when he looked around, Jesus was nowhere to be found.
“What guy?”
“Well, he’s not here right now, but he healed me. He just asked me if I wanted to be healed and then he said, “Get up. You’re healed.” And, well, I’m healed!”
This upset the temple leadership to no end. Suddenly, this man’s transgression of violating the Sabbath laws paled in comparison to the problem they were now confronted with: a man who violated Sabbath laws AND did it by healing the lame! This was a double whammy for religious officials. If a man was out there healing people, on the Sabbath, no less, he could be a big thorn in their side. If people start to have faith in a healer, they may start to lose faith in the religious order in charge. And if he flaunts it by doing on the Sabbath, well that is truly throwing down the gauntlet and challenging those in authority at the temple.
I need to digress just a moment here: the NRSV and many other translations use the term “the Jews” when describing the people who confronted the healed man. Luke Timothy Johnson argues that a better understanding of the term is that these were the Jewish religious authorities, not just some broad group of Jewish people. They would have been understood to be “the enemies of Jesus” and so some translations these days substitute the term “the enemies” for the “the Jews”. They were most decidedly Jewish, but their actions did not represent the whole of the Jewish population. Too often, because of various translations, the gospel of John has been used as a weapon of anti-semitism and I feel obligated to make sure that I don’t unwittingly help perpetuate that bigotry.
These enemies of Jesus left the man alone once they got a clearer picture of what they were dealing with. The man continued on his way to the temple, where he met up with Jesus again. Jesus spoke to him, saying, “See, you are healed. Now go and sin no more, lest something worse happen to you!”
This line always throws me for a loop. There was no indication anywhere that Jesus, or anyone, thought that this man’s condition came from sinful behavior. Is Jesus telling him to be wary of the temple leadership? Is he telling him that he should be thankful? That he should remember that it was truly God’s hand that healed him?
In point of fact, I don’t think it is the most important part of the story, but it seems to me that this would have put this man in a serious quandary. He was in Jerusalem during a religious festival, went to the healing pool and when he was healed, went straight to the temple. It is a safe assumption that he is a faithful Jew. And now, he’s healed, which certainly should have pleased him. But then he is accosted by the temple leadership whose authority a faithful Jew would hardly have questioned. And they are seeking to find out who healed him and why they were doing such a thing on the Sabbath. Where does his loyalty lie? To the authority of the religious leaders, or to the one who made him well?
After talking to Jesus at the temple, the man sought out the temple leadership and pointed Jesus out to them. “There. That is the man who healed me.”
Now it is Jesus’ turn to be grilled.
“Explain yourself!” they angrily demand. “Don’t you know it is the Sabbath?”
Does anyone else see the absurdity of this line of questioning? Are they really upset that Jesus has healed a man on the Sabbath? They aren’t even paying attention to the fact that this man Jesus had the power to heal a man of a 38 year old medical condition! Yeah, yeah, so he healed someone…but he did it on the Sabbath! That’s against the rules!
Jesus responded to them by saying “as long as my Father is working, I am working, too. And suddenly, the temple leadership had even more ammunition: he had equated himself with God! This was blasphemy of the highest order!
Let me ask this question again in a slightly different way: if you had been witness to this scene, don’t you think the fact that a miracle had taken place would have been the first thing you noticed? Would you get hung up on all the protocol or would you be in awe at what had just happened?
Illustrated in this story is a dilemma that has long confronted the institutional church: making sure we don’t ignore the spiritual at the expense of the religious.
When we get so caught up in the things that our religious tradition dictates that we lose sight of the spiritual reality of God’s presence, then we are headed down the wrong path. And it will not be outside enemies that cause us the big concern here. No, the biggest threat is from within: within our churches, within ourselves.
Believe me when I tell you that I clearly understand the ramifications of this threat. I am a representative of the institutional church. I am part of the system that can sometimes lead us to blindly follow rules and regulations and lose sight of why we are here. I am part of the “authority” that helps set the tone for how we order our life together; and sometimes that ordered life is at risk of becoming so bogged down by “we have always done it that way” thinking that we forget our purpose. When religious rules and laws become more important than having a real, personal relationship with God, we will be in danger of losing our way. And one aspect of losing our way is that we can get so set in our ways that we miss the miracles that are happening all around us!
That is one of the reasons why I am so glad to be a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We have no strict hierarchy of authority that dictates what we do, how we worship, what we must believe. We believe that each of us brings an experience of God to our fellowship and through the sharing of ourselves, through the sharing at Christ’s table, through sharing of our doubts and fears, each of us is a help to each other as we seek God’s presence and the accomplishment of God’s will. That means that we must be free to raise questions and to seek answers. If we are stifled by an authority that says, “You can’t do that…you can’t ask that…it’s just the way it is,” we will end up paying more attention to the rules than tending to our relationship with God.
I don’t know about you, but the miracle of birth, the miracle of a young child coming to a relationship with God, the miracle of a person who finds in this congregation a community of faith that helps and sustains them, the miracle that is the second chance we all find in Christ Jesus, all these miracles are more important than any set of religious regulations. When we let ourselves be in relationship with God, exactly how it happens is secondary to the fact that it happens!
I started out by asking how we are to respond when we experience a miraculous act. This story serves to show us that there are at least three different paths:
1. We can take the path chosen by the healed man who willingly accepts the healing of the moment, but, because of confusion or inability, shrinks away from the commitment it takes to continue in a life of wholeness.
2. We can take the path chosen by the temple leadership whose path is bound by rules and regulations so profound and unbendable that they no longer understand what it means to live life.
3. We can take the path of Jesus, which is the path of wholeness and life. It is not an easy path, but it is by far the most satisfying.
Jesus asked the man, “do you want to be well?” The answer to that question is found along one of those three paths. Which one will we choose?
Let us pray: Lord, open our eyes to the miracles that surround us. Open our hearts to the movement of the spirit in our lives. Guide our feet along your path. Make us whole. Make us yours. Amen.
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