Do You Want to Get Well?

 NB. We're back in business...surgery went well; now rehab.  Praise God!

 John 5: 1-16

 The Healing at the Pool Called Bethesda

5 Some 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. ^{[4]  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.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, ¹⁰ and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

¹¹ But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

¹² So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

¹³ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

¹⁴ Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

The Authority of the Son

 ¹⁶ So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

Writing this morning from Whittier Rehab after knee repair surgery, the question,  "Do you want to get well?" is most pertinent. Who among us likes to be confined to a bed, forced to walk with a walker, subject to needles, blood draws, and poking of all shapes and sizes? Happily, we know that we won't be subject to this for 38 years, but still can have s a sense of his longing to get back to "normal." How happy he must have been when Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk! I know I'll be jumping for joy to walk out of this place, as good as it is, get behind the wheel of a car and get on with life again.  

If this is the case on the physical level, how much ore on the spiritual?  How much healing do we need in our relationship with God, our worship and prayer life, our relationship with others? Lent is here just for that reason. Let us reach out to Jesus, or better, let us allow him to reach out to us, pick us up and get us back on our spiritual feet again.

Bro. Rene

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the healing power of your Son was made manifest through signs and wonders during his earthly ministry. Open our eyes to the ways of grace at work among us in these Lenten days. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

  Rev. Paul Kollman, C.S.C.