Sixth Sunday in Easter
Eyes to See — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Acts 16:9-15/CEB)
Gospel Reading (John 5:1-9/CEB)
The theologian Karl Barth once gave this bit of advice to preachers: “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” Well, I can tell you that’s been a fun thing to do lately.
It seems as though we wake up every morning these days to another headline about something terrible happening in our state, in country or in our world that we wouldn’t have even thought possible not too long ago. Indeed, the assault on what was once considered to be decent or right is so relentless that I can’t help but wonder whether it’s part of a intentional strategy to lower the bar with respect to what we consider to be decent or right.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time in human history that this has happened. In her reporting on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, the philosopher Hannah Arendt described what happens when ordinary people become complicit in terrible and inhumane acts by simply conforming to degraded societal expectations and accepting such acts as normal as the “banality of evil.”
Last week a story came across my screen that made me believe that we really haven’t learned much from our mistakes and that the banality of evil is still very real. Apparently, a producer of reality television shows (including such cultural high points “Duck Dynasty” and “Dating Naked”) has pitched an idea to the Department of Homeland Security for a kind of game show in which immigrants would actually compete against one another for the prize of U.S. citizenship.
Though DHS leadership claims to have neither approved nor rejected the proposal (one that previous administrations dismissed outright), the producer claims that they appear to be “seriously considering” doing the show. How much of this is true? In fairness, amidst these days of persistent disinformation it’s really hard to tell. And yet, the fact that it’s totally plausible ain’t exactly a ringing endorsement for the time, place and culture in which we currently live.
But, like I said, this isn’t the first time in history that this kind of thing has happened. And we need look no further than today’s reading from John’s Gospel to see that.
As the story gets underway, Jesus has recently performed two of his seven signs (or miracles) — turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana and curing a nobleman’s son in Capernaum; today we hear about the third sign: the healing of a sick man near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem.
At this location was a pool, known as Beth-zatha or Bethesda (meaning “place of flowing water” or “house of mercy”). Next to this pool crowded many of the city’s most vulnerable people, all of whom were in search of a cure for what ailed them. And why did they congregate there, you might ask?
Well, our modern Bibles omit verse four (which scholars determined wasn’t part of the original text), but the King James Version includes it, which is kinda helpful because it explains the significance of Bethesda; it reads: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”
Said differently, legend had it that an angel would appear from time to time at Bethesda to stir up the water. And whenever this happened, the person who stepped into the pool first was cured of what ailed them. Given this setup, can you imagine what that horrible scene might have looked like? Desperate people clamoring and climbing over each other to be the one who makes it that time. Then again, maybe we don’t really have to imagine it — just turn on the news and watch what’s going on at our southern border these days; I bet it looked kinda like that.
Did all of this really happen? Well, I guess that depends on how you look at it. In an area just north of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, 19th century archaeologists discovered the remains of a large pool and a series of smaller pools that were used for therapeutic purposes in ancient times through at least the time of the Roman occupation; and they know this because they also found a shrine there dedicated to the Roman god of healing. So the kind of place that’s mentioned in John’s Gospel did exist and served the purpose described there. As to the appearance of the angel and the single miraculous cure resulting from it, you’ll have to make up your mind about that for yourself. But I kinda doubt that God hands out miracles like it’s the Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right.
The point is that the people of Jerusalem who sought to be rid of their infirmities believed it, and so they sat there day after day waiting for the angel to arrive bearing the hope of deliverance (albeit for just one of them). When you have no other hope, you often cling to whatever scrap of it you can find.
But this man who Jesus encounters at Bethesda in today’s story doesn’t necessarily seem to be doing that. John says that he’s been ill for thirty eight years, and tells us that, “When Jesus saw him lying there [he] knew that he had been there for a long time.” Jesus then asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”, which seems like a odd question; I mean, why would a sick person not want to be made well?
The man’s response here is pretty pathetic; he says to Jesus, “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.” On the surface, it might sound like he’s making excuses. Jesus then tells him to stand up, take his mat and walk — which he does because Jesus has made him well.
Among Jesus’s healing miracles, this one’s kind of an outlier. In the others, someone seeks out Jesus hoping to be cured, while in this one Jesus seeks out someone looking to cure them. In the others, the miraculous cure is somehow linked to belief in Jesus — you know, that whole “your faith has made you well” idea; but there’s no mention of that here. Heck, this guy doesn’t even seem grateful; I say this because of what happens next.
Today’s story ends abruptly by telling us that this encounter between Jesus and the sick man at Bethesda took place on the sabbath. And why does this matter? Well, the religious authorities believe that, according to their interpretation of Jewish law, people shouldn’t be healed on the sabbath, so they interrogate the newly-healed man to find out what happened and assign blame for it. And what does the man do? He points the finger right at Jesus. As a result of all this, the authorities intensify their effort to kill Jesus.
Part of the reason that John tells this story is to let the reader know that Jesus is bound by whole different set of rules (God’s rules), under which people don’t have to beg or compete for or otherwise earn healing – in God’s reign, it is (and should be) available to everyone, always (not just six days a week). And these are important things for us to know about Jesus and about God.
And so, in light of all that, I can’t help but wonder whether Jesus, when he poses his initial question to the sick man about wanting to be made well, really means, “Do you hope to be made well?” If this is the case, then the man’s response —“I have no one to help me and someone else always gets to the healing waters before I do” — sounds more like despair than an excuse. In other words, it’s as if he’s saying, “I have little hope that I will be made well.” And that kinda makes sense; he has, after all, been sitting there at Bethesda waiting for a cure for a long time.
I worry about the way this all reads because people often get hung up on what the man says and does (or doesn’t say and do) here and immediately afterwards, and draw negative inferences about him from this: “Well, he doesn’t even care enough about himself to try” or “All he does is complain and feel sorry for himself” or “Maybe he should pull himself up by his own bootstraps” or “He doesn’t even have faith” or “He turned Jesus over to the authorities to save his own skin” or “He didn’t even bother to say “thank you” (hmmm, where have we heard that before?). And all these statements are just ways of talking around what they’re ultimately saying here, which is this: “He doesn’t deserve to healed.”
Thankfully, though, God’s grace, God’s love, God’s comfort, God’s healing, God’s respect, God’s affirmation of our dignity, are available to this man and to us, to saint and to sinner, simply because we are. This is essential for us to understand.
But I wonder whether the tendency to read this story and focus only on Jesus, the sick man, and Jesus’s interaction with sick man, is humankind’s way of avoiding another critical aspect of it: our complicity in it.
I mean, did no one, over the span of thirty eight years, even think about stopping to give this guy a hand?
Did anyone ever question whether this first century version of The Hunger Games was what God had in mind when God called us to look after those in need and to care for the least of these?
Did the people actually think that angel-blessed miracle water was a substitute for community responsibility?
Did they really believe, having studied for thousands of years what God had said, that the sabbath ever took priority over the well-being of others?
Did the good, upstanding folks of Jerusalem just walk by Bethesda every day averting their eyes from all the desperate people who were sitting there, or did they do their damndest to avoid walking by there at all?
Did they think to themselves, “I wonder what those people did to deserve this?”
Did they justify it somehow by saying, “Most of them probably aren’t even from Jerusalem anyway. Maybe they should go back where they came from.”
Did they simply throw up their hands in resignation and declare, “I can’t do anything to fix this. That’s just the way it is.”
Did the complete insanity and inhumanity of what was accepted as normal in that society ever cross their minds?
All I can say is may we never get to the point where it doesn’t cross ours.