John 5:1-15 "Beneath the Surface"

Welcome to Bethesda, a collection of the forgotten and the destitute. Surrounding this beautiful pool is a group of the sickest people around. They are gathered for one reason- to wait for the bubbles. According to superstition, an angel would come and stir up the waters. When you see the bubbles, you get into the pool. If you are the first into the pool, your wounds are healed and you are free from the despair of the pool. Everyone else waits another year until the next bubbles begin to form. In modern translations, this interpretation of Bethesda is missing, but you can imagine the desire and longing from the people at the pool to be healed. Hanging out there would be like hanging out in an ICU unit. But Jesus didn't come to hang out in the comfortable and scenic places, so Jesus walked right in an healed a man who may have been there and missed the opportunity 38 times. His family and friends have mostly given up hope, which is why he has no one to help him. But Jesus does.

But something else is going on beneath the surface, and I don't just mean under the surface of the magical waters of Bethesda. Jesus slips away from the man to avoid attracting attention, but finds him later on at the Temple and utters the mysterious threat that if the man keeps sinning, worse will happen to him. This seems odd, for Jesus rarely attributes injury, illness or malady to a sinful condition.

Maybe the man was caught up in some bad stuff that resulted in his injury. Perhaps it was a drunken bender in which he thought he could fly off a roof. Perhaps it was a fight that went wrong. Then Jesus' warning would simply be that behavior has consequences.

Maybe this is a rare New Testament example of a plague caused by disobedience. These kinds of plagues happen more frequently in the Old Testament, but it's possible that this is a New Testament version. Jesus would be calling this man out on his disobedience and calling him to repentence. However, Jesus never mentions forgiveness in the healing formula. He just tells the man to get up and walk.

Perhaps carrying his mat on the Sabbath was really a sin, and Jesus is telling him to completely leave the mat behind and forget it. After all, the mat would be a symbol of his previous life. Again, this would be a strange departure for Jesus because He told the man to keep the mat.

Perhaps the sin was telling the Jewish leaders about the healing. After all, Jesus does come under persecution for His actions. Then again, Jesus never really feared persecution and never told the man to keep His name a secret.

I don't know. John never tells us what the sin was, and it's probably none of our business. What it reminds me of today is that Jesus heals and Jesus saves, and Jesus makes a specific claim on our lives that calls us to a new life.