March 12th Lenten Reflection

John 5:1–18

There was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.

Reflection by Tom Lewis

Jerusalem was not without diversity in Jesus’ day. In fact, the pool by the Sheep Gate was a pagan temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing, and the serpent entwined around the staff outside the office of our medical doctors. The pool was just down the hill from the Temple, and was excavated by archaeologists under the Church of Saint Anne, built over the remains in the 5th century. Those who desired healing went into the water when the wind blew and “troubled” the surface. First one in wins! In addition, there were religio-political groups like the Pharisees, Sadducees, Esenes, and Zealots, along with Christians. In other words, it was pretty much like today. Diversity living in community, sometimes with conflict. Jesus heals the man who was blind, lame, and paralized on the Sabbath, but doesn’t seem to cause conflict with those who follow Aesculapius, but with his own Judean people. The Sabbath, which is the foretaste of the return to paradise—the Garden—is the perfect time to heal, when all will be healed and whole. Jesus sign is a sign of wholeness, and our task is to build that wholeness in witness to God’s promise to us to return to the Garden and peace and paradise. It seems like we should be doing the same thing with our neighbors, near and far, so that we can be a witness to the promise of our eternal joy. As recipients of the promise of Paradise, we becomed the healers and witnesses to this important sign.