This question, spoken by Jesus in John 5:6 to a long-disabled man, has always been something I somewhat glanced by. As in, read but never thought about it much. Jesus is walking with his disciples by a ‘healing pool’. John, the beloved of Jesus, writes that around this pool were gathered the sick of the sick…the lame, the blind, the paralyzed. They’d found hope in this water; when it moved, they believed the first one in the water would be healed. There had to be a level of truth to it; this particular man had been paralyzed for 38 years and had been laying beside it for an unknown amount of time, unable to get in. He was likely the personification of the Proverbs “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…” (Prov 13:12).
John writes that “When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time” he spoke to him, asking “Do you want to get well?” It seems like an absurd question; if this man didn’t want to get well, I highly doubt he would choose to be there. But what does the man say? “Sir…I have no one to help me…” This sounds like a legitimate reason why he’s still there. The response is that Jesus then heals him. Sounds like a simple story, it sounds nice.
I’d had a rough couple of weeks. I had been falsely accused, and it burned deep. People who I thought highly of had been involved, leading me to question loyalty. I wanted to confront, to fight back, but even I knew it was a ‘has been’ point and to bring it up again would not be of any benefit. Other than to my honor I continued to think. It kept going around in my head. There’s nothing to say, it won’t help….I can’t believe they thought that, they must not really care about me…I don’t need them…There’s nothing to say, it’s not really a big deal…how can they not think this was a big deal, it completely undermines what I’m doing… I would try to go to sleep with these thoughts, and couldn’t fall asleep…I’d be at work, and a thought would break through “at least they like me, unlike THEM…” It’s hard to be unsupported, it made me sad, mad, and every feeling in-between.
On my way driving to work one day, the same train of thought started up again….and then out of nowhere I heard a whisper “Do you want to be healed?” Shockingly my first thought was “No.” No. I wanted to feel the hurt, I’d been hurt and I wanted to be the hurt person. I wanted others to know I’d been hurt. I was the victim here.
Have you ever watched the movie Seabiscuit? Great movie, I cry every time. But I love the relationship between the owner Charles Howard and jockey “Red” Pollard. Seabiscuit had lost a significant race because “Red” had not held Seabiscuit back as the trainer and owner had previously discussed, and the reason “Red” gave was another horse and rider had “wronged me!!!!!” Howard’s response was patience, to retrain both the “wronged” horse and young man to not respond hastily when they felt they’d been put down, told were losers, or cheated.
What does this have to do with my being asked if I wanted to be healed, the disciple John and Jesus? Right after I heard that whisper “Do you want to be healed?” I had responded with “No” which was followed by the same words as “Red”, “I was wronged!!!!!!” Then I thought of the paralytic and his response. Maybe Jesus asked the question because in the man’s disability was his identity; he’d been wronged, he’d caught an illness, he’d been injured, he’d been born like this, his parents had sinned, he’d sinned….we don’t know, but now he was paralyzed. He was known as the paralytic. His response was “I don’t have anyone to help me into the water.” I’d identified myself as the victim….so had the paralytic.
And Jesus had still offered healing…out of the victim state. The man picked up his mat and walked. The end. I saw my hurt had begun to hurt me because I had wanted it to, I wanted to be able to present that hurt to someone and say “see…see, this is why I’m hurt and I am who I am” but I was the only one truly hurting. And God offered me healing, too. I was given the opportunity to grasp the hand of the Living Water and be healed.
What hurt have you clung to? How were you wronged? Have you let it define you? Now, do you want to be made well? The hard step that only you can do is this; You must let go of that identity, before you can become well. You have to take up the mat of that previous identity and “walk.” It would be silly to go back to being the paralyzed, hurt, victim that you were before you were healed. But by doing so you finally, after weeks, months, even 38 years, become well.
Is it time to be made well?
