“Do you want to be well?”
The sick man answered him,
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.”
The man was unable to answer the question Jesus asked. The way he did attempt to answer seemed to indicate that he didn't believe he deserved to get well. He wasn't strong enough, or fast enough, or worse, loved enough, to make it to the pool when healing was available. Did he want to be well? He may have thought it didn't matter what he desired. And after so long, after thirty-eight years, he come to believe that. Yet that he did not entirely accept it was proven by the fact that he was still sitting by the well. He had come to a state where his beliefs had paralyzed him. He couldn't move on and he couldn't move forward.
Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.
Jesus gave the man a command to take action. He cut to the root of the problems layered on the man by years of suffering and diminishing of self-worth. On his own the man could not rise, could not take action, could not escape the paralysis of pity in which he sat. But he could believe that he could when Jesus commanded him to do so. He could believe that this was somehow different from the other times he had tried and failed, when his own strength had failed him, when he had been alone and without help, and others always made it before him.
After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,
“Look, you are well; do not sin any more,
so that nothing worse may happen to you.”
The man Jesus healed did not yet know who Jesus was. But Jesus knew him, and this mattered more. After a tenuous start, Jesus did not wish to seem him slip back into a life paralyzed by sin, which would be worse than any physical disability. One dose of Jesus was not enough for this man to live as God intended. Nor is it for us.
Rather than a pool in a temple, the utility of which was limited by size and by the need for the waters to be stirred to by effective, we have Jesus who is himself the water of life which is always available. We may be in a similar funk to the sick man, unable to believe that we deserve to be healed, and unable to move forward. But we too can hear Jesus command us to rise. It is the same rising as when we were drawn forth from the waters of baptism. And it will be the same rising to life that awaits the elect on the last day.
Wherever the river flows,
every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live,
and there shall be abundant fish,
for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh.
Once we believe Jesus and get up and about our business we too can become sources of living water for others. The world is a desert in desperate need of us, so let us heed the call.
Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water' (see John 7:38)
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