Category: News

¹Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ⁵ One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  ⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” ⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

A football player was sitting in the examination room of the best orthopedic surgeon in the country after suffering his third major injury in three years.  The doctor asked him how committed he was to do what needed to be done for him to return to the football field, because he was going to need several months of rehabilitation after another major surgery.  Facing another long, painful, and grueling time of healing, he instead chose to retire rather than having to undergo the difficult time.  He had neither the will, nor the mental strength to bear another lengthy and difficult journey to healing.  He admitted to himself that he could not experience and persevere through another traumatic healing process and chose to reject the surgery and consequent therapy and retire from playing football. 

Like the doctor, Jesus asked the lame man lying next to the Pool of Bethsaida, do you want to be made well?  We are told the man was lame for 38 years, which is a very long and challenging time to be unable to walk, lacking the strength to do the most basic of movements.  But the question cuts to the quick, and cuts deeply into the man’s soul, do you really want to be made well?  He acknowledges the enormity of his suffering, but would he accept the opportunity to be rid of his weakness? 

What answer would you give to the same question?  Do you really want to be made well?  Perhaps we are not lame, or blind, or deaf, although we could be.  But we certainly are dealing with afflictions none the less.  Do you really want to be free from the alcohol or drugs?  Do you really want to be free from the mental illness you suffer under?  Do you really want to be free from your uncurable degenerative diseases?  Do you really want to be free from the Covid or Cancer?  Do you really want forgiveness for your guilt, do you really want courage for your fears and anxieties, do you really want peace for your anger?  Do you really want to be made well?

The man doesn’t answer the question, he instead complains why he is still lame, because he couldn’t get into the pool quick enough.  Legend around the pool of Bethsaida states that Angels periodically descend to the pool and stir the waters.  The first person into the pool after the stirring, is healed.  The man says to Jesus, I cannot get into the pool first to be healed and so I am stuck here.  Perhaps that is the reason so many of us are content and comfortable to be broken, injured and sick even though Jesus offers life and health.  Do you want to be made well?  No, we would rather be comfortable in the way we already are.  When facing the long and painful road to health, we choose the easy and comfortable status quo of our broken lives.  Instead of being motivated to pursue health and wholeness, we quit into the despair of the idea that is just the way things are and I need to accept that. 

But Jesus does not leave the lame man, nor us, in that broken routine of false security and false reassurance.  Jesus’ question and Jesus’ command gives freedom not only from the issues which threaten and spoil life and well-being, Jesus also gives freedom from the broken Spirit with no desire to ever become more whole.  Jesus gives strength of body and mind and soul to those dealing with broken bodies, broken minds, and broken Spirits.  Jesus give power into a powerless situation, to cure, to heal and to restore.  Life into situations of death is Jesus’ gift.

But Jesus not only commands freedom from injury and illness, but His command also demands obedience.  Stand up, take your mat, and walk.  This is the one thing the man knew he couldn’t do and yet he is commanded to do so.  What will happen, do I take the risk and fail, and nothing happens?  Jesus gives freedom to the man and to us, but he also demands obedience, he demands responsibility.  Jesus gives the power and life to us, but we have a responsibility to obey.  If we want freedom from drugs and alcohol, we need to be responsible and change our lifestyle and accept therapy and accountability for our illness.  If we want freedom from diabetes or heart disease, we need to be responsible and change our lifestyle with diet and exercise.  If we want freedom from guilt, we need to take responsibility and make restitution and be forgiven.  If we want freedom from fears, we must take responsibility and face the things that terrify us.  If we want freedom from anger, we must take responsibility and manage and heal the traumas that make us angry.  Jesus does give us freedom but also the responsibility to do the co-work of healing under the power and nurture of Grace. 

My friends, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus is the Lord and Giver of Life, which can give strength to lame, but also to us.  But just as we are given strength and freedom to live the resurrected life, we also bear the responsibility to co-participate in the healing process.  Will we retire into the ease and comfort of a broken life we are familiar with, or will we be motivated to enter the complete life which Jesus gives and calls us to share in.  God does give healing in Christ, but we must take responsibility for our healing and work with Christ in obedience.  Everything depends on your answer to the question, do you want to be made well?  In Christ be free, but also be responsible to do what it takes to be well. 

⁵In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: ⁶that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.  Ephesians 3:5-6

I am not much of a follower of the British Royal Family.  I do not hang on every word or report that the media provides about who is upset with each other and who said what.  But I am fascinated by the supposed order of succession.  I am intrigued by who is next in line after the queen and then who is next in line after them.  Who is the queen’s heir and the next heir apparent?  Why does it fall through this line and not another?  What happens when one of the heirs rescinds their place and does not want to be heir at all? 

With all this talk and discussion about Britain’s heirs. perhaps then we can understand the meaning of the Epiphany of the Lord a little bit more, when the great revelation of God is that Gentiles have become fellow heirs of Israel.  Israel was God’s chosen people, a people he nurtured, protected, and established as a nation with a space and time in human history.  But the great secret which was hidden in former generations and now revealed by the Spirit is that Gentiles are now also fellow heirs of Israel.  Instead of Israel being the heir alone of God’s Kingdom, now Gentiles are included also.  Instead of the place of Israel falling to a single people much like the British Monarchy, Gentiles are now fellow heirs of Israel.

But an important point needs to be made, Gentile have become members of the same body, we have not excluded or replaced Israel all together.  We are together, we have not succeeded Israel and taken their place.  The text says members of the same body together, not alone in a new body.  Israel and Gentiles together is what the great plan and revelation of God discloses by the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  We have no room to conquer, destroy, or persecute those members of the same body.  To do so to the Jewish people would be akin to destroying ourselves.  To damage the Jews would be to destroy ourselves.  To eradicate the Hebrew people, is to work against the God’s work and therefore, the essence of sin and demonic in nature. 

But to be members of the same body is also to share in the promises God made to Israel.  The promises which the psalmist reminds us of in psalm 72.  That God will judge us with righteousness and the poor with justice.  That the mountains yield prosperity for the people in righteousness.  That God will defend the cause of the poor of the people, and give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.  Righteousness will flourish and peace will prosper.  While these were some of the promises, now that the Spirit adopts us as co-heirs, the promises also fall like rain upon us, whom God has chosen.  To live under God’s grace in freedom and responsibility: rightly and in perfect communion.

But the realm of these promises and the location of this fellowship and the place of our inheritance lies not in the world, or in ourselves, but rests solely in Christ Jesus.  The perfect foundation that cannot be eradicated by sin and death.  The perfect realm where no error or weakness can tarnish.  The unrivalled kingdom where no cosmic power, no demonic influence, no human scheme can erode or threaten to undo the work of God.  In Christ Jesus, God has secured his work and his promises against all enemies, chaos and nothingness that seek to destroy God’s creation.  And we can rest secure, not in the ease of our circumstances, the prosperity of our resources, the health of our communities, nor the absence of conflict, but we rest secure solely that we rest in Christ Jesus and therefore under Christ’s protection and rule.

But the means of that protection, lies through the work of the Gospel.  The gospel bears the responsibility to carry the human into the realm of Christ.  The gospel carries the power to transfer a person, even a Gentile person into the kingdom and oversight of Christ.  The gospel carries the burden to find and relocate a community of people from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light.  And for this responsibility, and in this power and under this burden, the gospel summons people to participate.  People like Paul, but more poignantly a community like us. 

Will we answer the gospel’s call?  Will we bear the responsibility to share this news?  Will we be instruments of this power?  Will we bear our burden of the gospel to make disciples and heirs of God?  May this Epiphany we bear our co-responsibilities with the gospel, may we be co-channels of God’s power, may we carry the co-burdens of the gospel.  May we be the children God has created and redeemed us to be fellow heirs, members of the same body, sharers in the promise, in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, and I would add to God’s glory, Amen.