Underneath the Pool of Bethesda is a stream which feeds it, and every now and again this stream would bubble up and cause a disturbance in the water. The people, however, believed that this disturbance was caused by an angel who was stirring up the waters, and that the first person to enter the pool after it was stirred up would be healed of whatever ailed him or her.
Thus we can better understand the invalid, when he says to Jesus, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”
I used to always wonder at that passage. The man can obviously get into the pool by himself, it would just take him awhile because of his disability, but its the belief that he must be the first one to enter it after the waters have been disturbed, that causes him to stay there year after year, hoping for a cure.
So Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be healed?”
Of course, my first reaction to this question is, “No, I don’t want to be healed, I’m drawing disability from the government!” But that was the other invalid that Jesus tried to heal. The Bible left him out.
This man had been an invalid for 38 years, says the Gospel of John. The fact that it points that out suggests that he was well known, and perhaps that was why Jesus went to him and theres no mention of him healing anyone else at the Pool. It also points out that this man had been an invalid longer than most people in that age were alive at all!
The average lifespan in the time of the Roman Empire, for a man, was about 26 years. For a person with a disability it was probably a great deal shorter than that.
Now, I’ve known a lot of disabled people in my life. I used to do some work with disabled kids in school, at camp, I had a good friend with a severe disability, that sort of thing. And one important thing that I’ve learned about other-abled people (and I use that term specifically, as I’ll explain) is that they can either be handicapped, or disabled.
A handicap is something that you overcome. It’s an obstacle, its something in our way. We all have a handicap of some sort. Maybe its a physical limitation, maybe its psychological, maybe its cultural, or a social stygma. The point is, a handicap is just a handicap. We can overcome it. We can work around it. Life moves forward if we accept it and learn to live with it. We can even learn to use it and gain strength from it.
A disability is entirely the opposite. Dis-abled means ‘not able.’ Of course, that’s not how society typically uses these terms, but for purposes of my illustration, this serves to emphasize my point. A disabled person cannot function, or doesn’t function, because of the limitations that he or she has. A disabled person does not see beyond his or her limitations, they only see what they cannot do.
Therefore, of the many other-abled people that I’ve known, I’ve learned that there are those whose attitudes and acceptance of themselves as individuals who must struggle through this life just like anyone else. Their limitations - physical, mental, whatever - they are merely handicaps. Life moves on, they learn to see beyond their limitations, and so those limitations aren’t really limitations at all, not in the broader sense of the term, because the only limitations that we have are the ones that we impose on ourselves.
But then there are those who are truly disabled. Perhaps they don’t even have a physical impairment. Perhaps they are only crippled by their fear of taking risks. We can be paralyzed by our fears alone, and that is a disability in and of itself.
Those who are disabled are often bitter, resentful of whatever hand life has dealt them. They don’t accept themselves as who they are, and so they never rise above it. But those who are merely handicapped, I can usually see a joy in their lives that nothing can conquer. There’s a strength that goes beyond what I can truly comprehend, and a witness that I wish everyone could learn from. They own themselves.
The invalid at the Pool of Bethesda, he was disabled, not handicapped. He had been impaired for 38 years, 10 years longer than the average lifespan of a healthy male of his generation! And there’s no mention that he was born that way, so it’s very likely that something crippled him after birth, something caused him to lose proper function of his legs.
But that was not the cause of his disability. We create our own disabilities. This man could not see beyond his situation. In v. 6, Jesus “knew that he had been lying there a long time.” His goal in life was to be cured of his ailment, because of course, life cannot go on if we aren’t physically “normal.”
In the meantime, life passed him by.
Later, after the healing had taken place, Jesus encounters the man once again and says to him, “See you are well! See that you sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” This is a bit troubling, and has troubled Christians for a long time. There was a belief in Judaism that our physical ailments were caused by our sins. Sometimes it just so happens that this is true, like drunk driving that causes an injury from a car wreck, or something. But there is no indication of that in this passage, only the suggestion that something happened to this man at some point in his life which caused his condition.
It’s not the point. There’s a thing behind the thing here. This man’s sin was, as I see it, his disability. Not his physical disability, but the disability that he imposed upon himself. The limitations that he could not see beyond, the life that he did not have - not because it was denied him, but because he refused to accept who he was and live his life.
His sin...was giving up. His sin was putting his faith and his trust in some superstition that was fed to him about this pool of water, when the source of his healing, and ours, is much greater. Healing is on the inside, healing is living our lives to the fullest despite having - what some would call - a disability. What is it that cripples you? What do you fear? What is it that we wish we could rise above, but continues to get us down. While everyone around us goes down into the waters and takes control of their lives, we remain crippled.
Jesus can heal that.
Amen.
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