Rules and regulations.  These are words we all hate to hear!  But, the fact is, we have to have rules.  There has to be a checks and balances to everything.  But you can bet that one day, hundreds of years from now, they will look at some of our current laws and they will snicker and say, “What were they thinking?”

Did you know that in Natchez, Mississippi, it is against the law for an elephant to drink beer?  How about in Muncie, Indiana, you can not bring fishing tackle in a cemetery?  In Hollywood California, there is a law that says you can’t herd more than 2000 sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time.  And, in Kansas City, Missouri, there is a law that says children can not buy cap pistols.  However, they are allowed to buy shotguns!

Our scripture today begins in the fifth chapter of John.  John was actually the last of the four Gospels to be written.  John begins his Gospel by establishing the identity of Jesus.  The Gospel begins with the words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  Then, in verse 14, John writes, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Then, John spends 4 chapters showing the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah that they had been waiting for.  John was showing that signs and miracles were bringing some people to the faith.  When Jesus turned the water into wine, a few realized what had happened, but only the disciples are said to have “believed.”  When Jesus went to Jerusalem and cleansed the temple, He also performed a number of signs, which caused many to believe.  Nicodemus was at least impressed by the signs Jesus performed.  The Samaritans did not require a sign, but many believed in Jesus when they heard His words. 

So, at the beginning of John, he is establishing the identity of Jesus.  Then, he spends 4 chapters highlighting the signs and miracles of Jesus.  But now, suddenly in Chapter 5, John is writing about something new.  Now we see that Jesus’ miracles are bringing the hatred of the religious authorities or the Pharisees and with this intense hatred comes intense persecution. 

I invite you to open your Bibles and read along with me as we will be going through today’s scripture verse by verse.  Our scripture is found in John, chapter 5, verses 1-17 – page 96 in your pew Bible.

The first verse of today’s scripture is, “After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”  We don’t really know which festival this is, but we’re pretty sure that it is not the Passover, which John usually refers to by name.   Since John does not name the festival, he probably felt it wasn’t important to the story.

Next, we read, “Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew ‘Bethesda’, which has five porticoes.”  This sheep gate was an actual gate in the wall of Jerusalem near the temple.  They would bring the sheep that were going to be sacrificed through this gate and take them to the temple. 

For many years, the site of this pool was lost, but about 25 years ago, it was discovered and excavated.  The pool is located to the north part of the Temple Mount.  People who were ill would gather in these 5 porticoes, or porches, hoping for a healing miracle.  The word “Bethesda” actually means the house of Mercy. 

Look at the scripture and you will notice that verse 4 is missing.  Sometimes this verse is included in a footnote telling you that in Bible times these people were sitting by the pool because from time to time it would rise rapidly and then sink again – they believed that this was caused by an angel who would visit the pool and stir it up. The first person who got into the water when it was rising, or being visited by an angel, would be healed. 

I have no doubt that there were people who were healed at this pool.  Even today, healings take place in special areas where people go, believing they can be healed.  Probably, most of these healings can be explained psychologically.  When people believe they are going to be healed, and they are in a place where healings supposedly occur, and they do the expected thing, many of them are healed.  So, the pool at Bethesda had established a reputation as a place where people could be healed.

Next, our scripture tells us, “In these (talking about the porticoes or porches) lay many invalids – blind, lame, and paralyzed.”  Remember that in Bible Times these people were considered “sinners.”  Other people would have nothing to do with them.  For the first-century Jewish world, purity was the most important way to be holy and to live a religious life.  The sinners, or you could call them the outcasts, were the people who were not able to follow these laws of purity.  Jesus mixed comfortably with the physically and mentally ill, the people who were considered the sinners of society.  He showed them compassion.  He touched them, visited them, ate with them, and made them feel loved and important.  Jesus challenged the politics of purity and advocated a system based on compassion and inclusion. 

I think today’s scripture specifically lists the blind, lame and the paralyzed because these would be the least able to help themselves get into the water and they would lay the longest waiting on the porches.

We continue with our reading, “One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”  So now we are zeroing in on the main character of our story.  This man lying by the pool has been ill for 38 years.  He had actually been ill longer than the average life span of that time. Think about what the condition of this man would have been like after 38 years of this illness.  He is weak, feeble and unable to stand. 

The next verse reads, “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?” What a weird question to ask a man who has been ill for 38 years!  But, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. 

The man answers Jesus, “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 always steps down ahead of me.”  Think about it - Even those people who had spent time on the porches with him, those that had been healed themselves, did not lend him a hand to help him get into the pool.  He has no friends.  He has no family.  There is no one to help him.  It could be that he was lying by the side of the pool not just for healing, but also to beg.

It is interesting to see what Jesus had to say to this man who had lost all hope.  He didn’t say, “Oh, come on, I’ll help you get into the pool the next time the water is rising” or “Hang on, keep coming here.  Perhaps some day you’ll make it in time” or even, “Let’s at least make you comfortable – we’ll get you a new mattress to lie on, put some flowers around you, and make sure you get fed.”  He didn’t say any of these because these are what we, just regular men and women, say and do.  But Jesus does not say any of these things. 

Listen carefully to what he tells the man.  First, he asks an impossible thing and then he removes all possibility of a relapse or of him getting sick again.  His next words to the man are, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  There was not going to be any getting better little by little.  At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. 

Notice that the first thing Jesus tells the man to do is something impossible, what he had been trying for 38 years to do.  The man had to decide to transfer his own efforts to Jesus.  Somewhere along the line, the man had to decide that if this man is going to help me, then I have got to decide to do what he tells me to do.  Jesus tells us to believe, to do and to act.  He tells the man, “Stand up!”  The minute the man did what the Lord told him to do, the power was there and he was healed. 

Next, Jesus told the man to pick up his mat.  In Bible times, that would have actually been his bed.  They all slept on mats or pallets.  So, Jesus told him to stand and to pick up his bed.  He was making sure that it was understood that there would be no relapse.  The man could have told himself, “I’m healed, but I had better leave my bed here; I may need it tomorrow.”  But Jesus was telling him, “take up your bed, you won’t be needing it here anymore.”  The man was completely healed.

Our scripture reads, “At once the man was made well, and took up his mat and began to walk.”  This is where I want to add to the story.  Every time I read this scripture, I get mad at this man.  Here he had been ill for 38 years and Jesus had made him completely well!  What does the man do?  He picks up his mat and just walks away!  I want to yell at this man, “What are you thinking? This is not something that happens everyday!  You should get up and dance!  This is definitely a time to celebrate!  Do you realize what Jesus just did for you?  And you just nonchalantly pick up your mat and you just walk off?  If nothing else, at least turn around and say thank you!

That’s when I realize I’m missing part of the story.  Jesus didn’t heal this man because he felt he had to.  He wasn’t healing this man because he wanted to be paid or to be told how great he was.  He healed the man because he felt it was the right thing to do.  This is Jesus meeting a social need just because it is a need, without any other purpose in mind.

There was no joyous response from the man, no shouting and praising God from the crowd.  The man who was healed doesn’t say anything.  The whole episode ends abruptly with: “Now that day was a Sabbath.”

Verse 10 reads, “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.”  Here this poor man has been healed, is walking for the first time in many years and all the Pharisees can do is tell him he shouldn’t be carrying his mat! 

To be fair, The Law of Moses taught that the Sabbath must be different from other days.  On it, neither people nor animals could work. 

Over the years, the Jewish leaders had collected thousands of rules and regulations about the Sabbath.  By the time of Jesus, the rabbis had carefully studied the Law about no work on the Sabbath and they had spelled out thirty-nine different ways by which the Sabbath could not be violated by certain types of work.  They even argued over whether a person could wear artificial teeth or a wooden leg on the Sabbath. 

In all probability, life-saving healing would have been ok on the Sabbath, but the Pharisees were probably thinking that the healing of a disease that had lasted thirty-eight years could surely wait until sundown. 

According to them, on the Sabbath day, carrying furniture (like the man’s mat) was forbidden.  But Jesus did not break the Law: he violated the Pharisee traditions which had grown up around the Law.  The religious leaders were only concerned about the letter of the law; they were totally unconcerned about the mercy of God.  This is where John starts to trace the beginning of the movement that would end in the death of Jesus, the beginning of the official rejection of the Messiah. 

So, after the Jews told the man that it was not against the law for him to be carrying his mat, he told them, “The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.”  This man didn’t even know who Jesus was.  But, he did know he was in trouble.  The Law said that anyone caught bearing a burden on the Sabbath was to be stoned.  This punishment was not often carried out, but still the man was in real trouble. 

Next, the Jews 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 into the crowd that was there.  Later on, 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. 

The scripture tells us, “Jesus found him.”  The man had gone to the temple because the Law required that one who had been healed had to make a thanksgiving offering.  Think of how long this man had lain in the shadow of the temple.  Now he was able to go in and be a part of the temple worshippers. 

Also, note that the minute the man was in trouble, this man whom Jesus has touched, blessed and healed, Jesus is there for him.  Jesus tells the man that he has been made well or whole.  He calls attention to the fact that not only had he been physically healed, he had been spiritually healed.  He was a completely healed and whole man.

        I am always a little startled when I read that Jesus told the man to sin no more.  But, the Mediterranean societies at that time looked at “sin” as a tearing down of interpersonal relationships.  Many biblical scholars feel that we are to assume that the sin of the paralyzed man was actually whatever is was that destroyed the man’s relationship with the group.  Since we know that this man didn’t have any friends to put him in the pool, we can understand what Jesus was saying.  As a friendless outcast, the man was indeed a “sinner,” an outsider unattached to a group.  Given the man’s age and the short life spans in Bible times, should the man repeat and do whatever ruined his relationship with the group, he would risk the worst of all fates:  he would have no one to bury him and no one remember him.

Starting at verse 16, we read, “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 am also working.”  You see, God rested on the seventh day of creation and set it apart as something special.  But Jesus said that even God “breaks” his own Sabbath by continuing to work.  Even though he completed the Creation, he continues to maintain and to provide for his creatures. 

John’s Jesus applies this conclusion in a new way:  because Jesus is the One from above who does the works of God, he too works on the Sabbath.  For this reason, the Jewish authorities were trying even harder to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath by healing the man, but Jesus was also calling God his own Father, and when he says this, he is making himself equal with God.

In this story, John refers to the man as, “the man who had been healed,” while the Pharisees can only see him as the man carrying his mat on the Sabbath.  The true miracle that happened got by these religious leaders.  Often, we too are caught unaware.  We can miss miracles because we get caught up in the present circumstances, the boundaries that are there because we put them there.

What Jesus said is true for us today.  God is working right here, right now.  He is working in this church, in our community, our nation, in international events.  He is working in the very circumstance you find yourself today.  You need to take the time to find out where God is moving in your life and then work with him.  Be his instrument.

Don’t you find it interesting that the pool in today’s scripture is right in the shadow of the temple, right in the shadow of the church?  How many people are hurting and leave the temple, leave the church to try their luck with the pool?  In John’s story, the temple, or the institution of the church, wanted nothing to do with what they considered the castoffs of society.  So, the people went to the pool.  So did Jesus.  And that is where Jesus healed.  Down by the poolside. 

I hope that we can have the wisdom and the courage to be ministers of God’s amazing grace when it is neither expected nor deserved.  I hope that we can cut through red tape, rules and regulations, and find ways to reach out to those who are hurting in society.  Those down by the poolside.  So they, too, can “Get up and dance.”    

In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN