Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk”
John 5: 8
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids – blind, lame and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 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?” 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’. Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk”. At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
John 5: 2-9
Image: Trevor Nickolls, Drawing from the Bethesda Series (Pool), 1987
Remember as you read this story, this is not simply a story of a past event: it is a story that speaks to us of a present reality. The Jesus who asked the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years, asks us the very same question. As Jesus approaches us, we need to remember that Jesus is not asking us to give a doctrinally correct answer: his question always point to his fundamental question that he wants us to ask ourselves; “Am I true?”
So stay with this question of Jesus: “Do you want to be healed?”
Ask yourself why is it that I stay where I am, stuck, unhealthy?
What pay-offs are there for me in this?
Can I identify the health which is calling me?
Can I see its attractiveness?
And can I see why I so often choose to stay back – refusing the health that is offered me?
What grace could I pray for?
Courage? Awareness? Stronger attraction to and desire for healing?
O my God, I want you, but I want you so little; indeed can I only really say I want to want you?
Michael Ramsey
Image: Hiroshi Senju (Japanese, 1958–), “Waterfall,” 2016.
Teach us love, compassion and honour
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.
Ojibway people of Canada
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Richard Niebuhr
The image at the top of this post is Pool at Bethesda (2000) by Dinah Roe Kendall. In keeping with the reading from the Gospel of John the other images have been chosen to reflect different responses to the healing nature of water.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
