Do you want to be made well...

John 5:1  After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2  Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3  In these lay many invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5  One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6  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?" 7  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." 8  Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." 9  At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. 10  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." 11  But he answered them, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Take up your mat and walk.'" 12  They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take it up and walk'?" 13  Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14  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." 15  The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

This bears all the signs of a well crafted – and often told – story: 

Here we have a sick man who desperately holds onto the forlorn hope of finding healing in the magically stirred water.  We are told that he had been there ‘a long time’. And just when he feels himself giving up hope – Jesus crosses his path with these words “Do you want to be made well?”  What a question! Of course he wants to get well. But this question asks if he wants to be well badly enough to trust Jesus.

Following Jesus is more than a curiosity to occupy a few spare moments - following Jesus is an absolute commitment to trusting his ways.

Ordinary 24 / Pentecost +17

46 Beyond Forgiveness

The Scripture passage for the day is drawn from Reuben Job and Norman Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and other Servants, (Nashville, The Upper Room 1983), 282.
This reflection is from my own devotional exercises for the day.