Moving Waters or Moving Saints

John 5:1-9 (NASB)

¹After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

²Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. ³In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters; ⁴for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted. ⁵A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said^* to him, “Do you wish to get well?” ⁷The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” ⁸Jesus said^* to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” ⁹Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day.

PREFACE

If you are reading from an NIV Bible, then you will notice that the portion of scripture telling about the angel troubling the water is missing from your text. There is a reason for this. Most early manuscripts do not contain any mention of the angel. They are void of the text found in 5:3b-4 of the KJV. More than likely, the angel story was inserted in an attempt to explain the “stirring of the waters” referred to in 5:7.

I am also aware that the focus of the passage is Jesus’ defense against those who accused him of violating the Law by healing on the Sabbath and by having the healed man carry his bed.

My reason for mentioning these facts is that I don’t want us to get distracted in my attempt to pursue a side issue via this text.

INTRODUCTION

The Place is a pool in Jerusalem called the Sheep Gate or Bethesda.

The People that surrounded this pool were sick, blind, lame, and withered. John tells us that this group was large in number and that they were, as you would expect sick folks to do, laying all around the pool.

The Purpose for their being there was healing. They were waiting for the moving of the waters. Tradition suggests that “an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever was the first to step into the water was made well from whatever disease he was afflicted with.”

It’s amazing how long we will continue to practice something that doesn’t work on the chance that maybe, just maybe we’ll get lucky. This man had been lame for 38 years and our text suggests that a large part of those 38 years was spent playing this “healing lottery.” But no matter how hard he tried, he never seemed to be fast enough.

Although some may view the angel as being compassionate, I do not! Compassion conveys the idea of having the capacity to experience the suffering of another. The angel never enters into the suffering of the multitudes around the pool. His descent is not into suffering, but into the water to stir it up.

Those who are healed are probably those who needed it the least; the healthiest--the one who could move faster than all the others.

The angel’s action enabled him to offer help, but without personal involvement. He was unavailable to the suffering people positioned around the pool. Action, yes! Right action? I doubt it! Action that distances us from those in need can never be right. It cannot be right action because at such a distance the actor can have no clue to what the sufferers are going through.

To suffer with, is not a call to drown one’s self in the sufferings of others. Such an act would be as foolish as jumping into a pool to save a sinking swimmer only to drown one’s self. To suffer with another is to share the circumstances of the other’s life as much as one can. It means that we do our best to understand what the other is experiencing. It doesn’t demand that we “fix” the sufferer, only that we walk with them through whatever lies between them and their wholeness. It is being there, no matter how slow or long the process! It is not rushing the process so we can be done with it. It is not trivializing their pain by offering them trite answers.

Those who dare to companion the person who suffers will come to see there are no arm’s length solutions for suffering, and people who offer such only add to the pain of the sufferer. People who know how to be with others—how to be fully there—can be a source of comfort and even healing for those in the throes of pain.

Clichés and attempts at fixing people with advice only serve to distance us from hurting people and leaves them more isolated. Distancing ourselves from each other’s pain is the hidden agenda behind most of our efforts to “fix” each other with advice.

If you do what I’m telling you to do, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice, or fail to follow it properly, then your continued suffering is clearly your fault. By trying to fix you with advice, rather than suffering with you, I hold myself away from your pain.

The angel in our text never gets involved with the people. He merely troubles the water. He provides an opportunity for one person to earn relief by being the first into the water, but he knows nothing of the frustration that causes for those who lose the race.

If you think I am asking too much of us, let me ask you to examine the contrast between the angel’s actions and Christ’s actions.

Unlike the angel who merely troubled the water…

· Jesus sought the man. He came to where He was and engaged him personally.

· Jesus saw the man.

o He saw his lameness, but He also saw

o his limitations and

o his loneliness and

o how long he had been lame.

o He didn’t see this man as a problem, but as a man with a problem.

· Jesus spoke to the man.

o He asked him a question that gave him a chance to admit his inability and to vent his frustration—“I have no man to put me into the pool…and while I’m coming, another steps down before me.”

o He gave him a command that would change his life—“Get up, pick up your bed and walk.”

Maybe the next time someone refers to you as an angel, you might want to take another look at yourself. Far too many Christian people and Churches are more like the angel than they are like Christ.

They offer suffering people a Mid-Week service or advice or a Sunday evening stirring of the waters. They offer Christmas Musicals and “Revival Meetings” and anointed prayer clothes to those who send in a gift offering of not less than.

What a far cry from the One, who moved with compassion,

· touched the lepers,

· spoke to a sinful Samaritan woman,

· allowed a prostitute to pour expensive perfume on Him as an act of extravagant worship

· wept at the graveside of a man He was about to raise from the dead, not because he was dead but because He felt the pain of those grieved by his death.

The writer of Hebrews accurately describes my Jesus as a High Priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. (See Heb. 5:15.)

He is not aloof.

· He is near to those who are suffering and grieving—Christian and non-Christian.

· He is offering His presence to those on the porches via our lives.

· He is offering one-on-one ministry to the hurting people of our world through us.

God’s call to His Church is not to provide an occasional or weekly troubling of the waters, but to get involved with hurting people.

This not only applies to suffering Christians, but to those without Christ.

Involvement with hurting people means we must be able to see them.

· Their lameness,

· limitations and

· loneliness.

It means that we must speak to them and allow them a chance to vent their anger and frustration concerning their inability and religion’s failure to meet their needs.

It means that we must be ready to speak God’s answer into their life only as He gives it and not to blame them when we fail.

It means that we must go where they are.

It demands that we be patient and longsuffering.

It means that we must love them enough to endure their insults.

It means that we must be ready to be attacked by religious men and women who are more interested in clean ox stalls than they are in reaching the lost.

It means that we shouldn’t be surprised when religious leaders accuse us of lowering the standard to increase our numbers.

It means that we may find ourselves outnumbered by people who do not speak Christianeese and only know that where they were once lame, now they can walk…where they were once blind, now they can see.

It means that we need to be ready to companion those who have come to faith in Christ, but still have unresolved issues from their past way of living.

It means that we need to be ready to rejoice with those who pick up their beds and walk.

The Church has not been called to provide an occasional or weekly troubling of the waters. The members of Christ body have been called to go into the world, seek the lost, see the lost, speak to the lost and companion them to Christ. This cannot be done on weekends in a building that sinners aren’t going to visit. It must be done by going to the porches around us and getting involved with those who cannot help themselves.

Yesterday, the citizens of Louisiana approved the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Yesterday the emphasis was on “man” and “woman,” but an equal emphasis could be placed on the term “one.” It affirms heterosexual marriage, but it also affirms the sanctity of that union. We may rejoice in this democratic victory, but we must recognize that this will be a source of hurt for and enrage many homosexuals in our community. Because of this, we must continue to love and pray for the members of our community who are homosexuals and those who are living in adulterous relationships. There is no victory for them or us apart from the empty tomb and all that it declares! There is a sense in which our victory is not complete until every captive is free and every heart knows the Lover of their soul; heterosexuals and homosexuals, adulterers and thieves, liars and murders. Then and only then will we be able to claim victory over sin and victory for the sinner!

I believe God is calling us, you and me, the Church, to go to those on the porches. He is calling us to have compassion on them and to companion them to Christ. They work with us and live in our neighborhoods. They are our aunts and uncles, our brothers, fathers, moms and cousins. Some are obnoxious and vulgar and rude and angry and mean, but God loves them and Jesus died for them. God’s will is that we reach them and this means that we may be called upon to suffer them and to suffer with them.

It’s so much easier to provide moving waters than it is to be moving saints, but God’s command to us is “Go”!

· Go to them,

· experience their pain,

· weep with them,

· stay with them until they are whole and

· see them through to deliverance.