Miracle at the Pool
W. Carl Ketcherside
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I do not imply that we are expected to perform dynamic works which cut across the whole realm of nature. The "greater works" which are laid upon us are not in the domain of the material, for in this area no one can exceed his feat of raising the dead. So magnificent was it that his own resurrection was given as proof of his divinity. Our greater works lie in the area of human nature and its transformation, and we are to walk among men as those who were dead but are alive again. If you have no consciousness of walking in newness of life it is because you never really died.
At the same time I have no intellectual problems with the miracles of Jesus. I would have problems with Jesus if it were not for his miracles. What he did to attest his deity is exactly what I would expect of one who claimed to face a skeptical world as the Son of God. Those poor souls who are always talking about the problems raised by miracles put their mental finger on the wrong sore spot. Their problem is with God, not with his alleged acts. When they get their directional finders tuned in the right direction they will cease to be troubled by distorted images of infinity.
It will help us to remember that it was as natural for Jesus to do mighty works as it would appear supernatural to us. But the reason for doing certain acts may make them all the more appealing. For instance, there was the case of healing which took place in one of the colonnades at the Sheep-Pool in Jerusalem. I am intrigued by it because here there came together all of the forces of life -- religious ritualism, human misery, superstition, compassion and legalism. The fascinating account of it will be found in John 5.
Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. We do not know which one, and it is not important. Certainly he was at the temple where rigid ceremonial formulae were carried out in meticulous detail by the professional priesthood. There would be the robed choir, the burning of incense, the formal priestly prayers and all of the liturgical elements which made the occasion impressive with external pomp and glory.
From all of this Jesus turned away, escaping to go to the Sheep-Pool. It is most likely that the pool was near the Sheep-Gate in the northern suburb, part of the tangle of shops, bazaars, and workmen's stalls, where the mob pushed
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When Jesus visited it he was in the midst of squalid misery. A great crowd of sick people, blind, lame and paralyzed, filled the porches. A superstitious tradition held that at intervals an angel came down unseen and caused the water to bubble up, and whoever was fortunate enough to first fling himself into the pool when the agitation began would be healed. There is, in the hearts of the grievously smitten, an inclination to try anything that even remotely holds forth hope. So the multitude remained there in their tragic condition.
While the agitation of the water was obviously from physical causes, we need not question that psychosomatics were healed, and every such case of relief for an overwrought imagination brought hope to the others. It is significant that Jesus left the glitter and unreality which characterized the temple a few blocks south and turned toward the suffering and ignorant multitude, where groans and wails rent the air in piteous appeals for help. He came to share the lot of the helpless.
It was the sabbath day. At the temple visitors and rabbis from all over the world of the Mediterranean, would be talking about how the sabbath must be kept to please God. It had already been decided that one could not wipe away the blood or pus exuding from a wound, for that would be work. Nor could he stop the flow of liquid from a cask by picking up a little piece of wax to plug up the hole. He might not gargle a liquid for the sore throat unless he swallowed it. And on and on, multiplying the technicalities, while a short distance away people were contorted in pain and suffering untold agony of the flesh.
Jesus saw a man who had been a cripple for thirty-eight years, and watching him as he lay on his pallet, he asked him, "Do you want to recover?" This was not a silly question. Not at all! Many who have suffered from a lengthy illness really glory in it. Unable to secure attention in any other way, and suffering from an inferiority complex, sickness becomes the means of gratifying ego. People come to see you, to sympathize with you, to make over you! And you can always escape some of the responsibilities of life.
I am thinking of two women as I write. A number of years ago, one of these discovered that through fancied illness she could bind her family to her as slaves. She began to project the most frightening diseases in her troubled mental state and warped convictions. Not only has she withdrawn a life from service that could have been useful but she has made life miserable for others about her. Sickness is her weapon, her shield and buckler!
The other thrills at being asked how she is feeling. It provides a glorious opportunity to run down the catalogue of aches and pains, reciting them off to each enquirer like items on a grocery list. When I saw what her trouble was I decided upon a different approach. I walk up to her smilingly, and say, "My, I hope you are feeling half as well as you look!" I am not sure she really likes me any longer. Professional invalids are like other professionals. They resent it when they are not given an opportunity to exhibit in the field in which they excel through long practice. I ought to be ashamed, I know, but nothing is funnier than two hypochondriacs meeting in the aisle of a super-market and starting to play cards, using their ailments in an attempt to trump each other. Come right down to it, there are a lot of people who do not want to recover. They would have to "complain of feeling better."
The cripple answered Jesus like many cripples react. He ignored the question and began an explanation of why he remained in his present condition. He was very polite and almost coldly formal with this enquiring stranger. "Sir," he replied, "I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is disturbed, but while I am moving, someone else is in
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Jesus said, "Rise to your feet, take up your bed, and walk!" The man looked at Jesus and Jesus was looking at him and through him. Without the least bit of hesitancy the man got to his feet, rolled up his pallet, put it on his shoulder and started for home. But he had hardly gotten started when he ran into some folk "coming home from church," as we so quaintly say. They were incensed at such brazen disrespect for a holy day.
"Hey there, you! Who do you think you are? This is the Sabbath. You are not allowed to lug a bed on the Sabbath." The former cripple, now walking sprightly along, and anxious to get home and surprise the folks, stopped. He said, "The man who cured me told me to take up my bed and walk, so I took it up and I am walking." A crowd began to gather. And a number of them asked at once, "Who told you to take up your bed and walk?" They did not ask who had healed him after thirty-eight years of crippling patalysis. That was secondary. The big interest was the identity of any person with the audacity to tell a man to carry his bed home on the Sabbath. What would the world come to if former cripples did such things?
The man did not know who cured him. Later on Jesus saw him in the temple and slipped up to his side and spoke to him. The man then went and informed the Jews who had healed him. John tells us that, "it was works of this kind done on the Sabbath that stirred the Jews to persecute Jesus." They resolved to kill him because he not only broke the sabbath, "but, by calling God his own Father, he claimed equality with God."
Did Jesus break the law of God? Did he teach men to do so? It will probably help us to understand why he did not if we remember the very basis upon which God provided law for man. The Pharisees forgot this and were led to the worship of law rather than to the worship of God. Law had two purposes. First, it was to serve the needs of mankind and provide for human wellbeing. Second, it was to bring men to Christ. It was to act as a guardian until faith arrived and a custodian was no longer required.
Jesus said, "Man was not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for man." God was not interested in days but in men. Man was not intended to be a slave of the sabbath regulation but the sabbath was intended to provide rest and relaxation for man. When Jesus faced the conflict between a crippled man and a code of laws, the human need took precedence. It was the superior value. In healing the lame man Jesus provided for him rest, comfort and freedom from suffering which had been denied him for thirty-eight years. And this is what the sabbath was all about.
But those who were specialists in lawkeeping as a way of life obscured the human need. Relief of suffering was not nearly so important as obeying a command. The chief aim of men should be to discuss, debate, argue and reason about how the law could be made more binding. The details must be supplied. There must be rules and regulations to protect the law which is to fence in the people. There is no end to this kind of authoritarianism, once it is started. The powers that be (rabbis, popes, elders and ministers) rule upon each new item and factor, and the rule of man must be acknowledged as the rule of God. Soon the web is so great that man becomes helpless in its strands and meshes. Then he either drops out, or drops in and tunes out, in order to survive and keep a little of his sanity.
The contrast between Jesus and the temple priests was amazing. Jesus sought how to help a man recover and live. They sought how they might kill Jesus and stop him from living. Never let us forget that legalism and casuistry are members of the same family. The last is the offspring of the first The legalist can always interpret the law so as to get away with murder. Life is cheap to a legalist. Human values are far down the scale. Men exist only to keep the
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Religion is life! It is not a code unloaded from above, but a life shared from above. It is a life of service. There is no other way to serve God than by serving men made in God's image. If you overlook this fact, you will end up degrading yourself and those who are helpless, by helping them for religion's sake. Your alms will become "sucker bait." Your charity will be a part of your sectarian propaganda. Your good deeds will become commodities for swapping and trading for names on the church record. This makes needy men mere things, pawns in a power struggle, persons who are helped on a commercial basis and not out of sheer compassion.
The tragedy of this is that it makes hypocrites out of us. We claim a concern for suffering humanity, but after helping them awhile, if they do not respond and attend our meetings and become "identified" with our roster, we cut them off, and consider that the help extended did not pay off. The problem is that we are still in the temple and not in the market-place or the gates.
We do not help people simply so they can live, but so we can live. By giving a poor unfortunate despondent cripple a happy sabbath, Jesus gave himself one. He proved that he was the Son of God by working like the Father worked. And that is the only way we can show that we are the sons of God. Let men gather to argue, fight and debate over the trivia, but let us look for the Sheep-Pools of the inner city. Let us do it, for God's sake! As James puts it, "The religion that is unstained and untarnished in God's sight is to go and relieve the needs of widows and fatherless children and to keep from becoming contaminated in daily contact with the world."