I wish I’d posted earlier about the week’s lectionary reading. Waiting till Friday morning doesn’t leave much time for discussion, but please jump in with your thoughts. Rather than preaching at NIC this week, I’ll be speaking at an English speaking church and a Greek speaking church in Limassol. After that I’ll be leaving immediately for the Anglican Church in North Cyprus (Famagusta) to speak in their evening service. The gospel lesson is the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:1-9.
The Orthodox Church dedicates one Sunday a year to the memory of this man, which I find fascinating because we know almost nothing about him: his name, why he is crippled, his family, or what he did after he was healed. But maybe that’s why they honor him. Because we know so little about the man, the focus is on Christ and what He did. Ideally, that’s the way it should be with every miraculous healing – that people talk about the work of Christ more than the person healed.
One thing that struck me about this particular miracle is the completeness of the healing. It appears that the man was broken in at least three ways.
- Emotional brokenness: When Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed the man doesn’t give a straight answer. Instead, he focused on how others let him down. ‘There’s no one to lower me into the water’ is his reply. I don’t want to read too much into it, but possibly his bitterness towards others made it hard for him to see that the One who could truly help him was right in front of him. In spite of the failure of others, Jesus did not fail him.
- Physical brokenness: Jesus commanded him to pick up his mat and walk – a strange command to give a crippled man! Not all at the pool were healed that day, but this man responded in faith to Christ’s command and received physical healing. In James 5:13-15 we are commanded to pray for the sick. It is our responsibility to obey. As we do this, the Church receives ‘tastes’ of the coming kingdom when God miraculously heals some of their physical infirmities. But there’s an even more important lesson, I think. This man could not obey Christ’s command apart from the miraculous, supernatural healing of Christ. Jesus commands us to do something, but we cannot do it without his work of healing, grace, forgiveness, and empowering in our lives. We are completely dependent on him for our own obedience.
- Spiritual brokenness: The man went from the pool to the Temple. The first time Jesus found him he was focused on himself and his desperate situation. The second time he found him he was focused on God in worship. Jesus had restored the man spiritually. The first step of faith the man took was to pick up his mat and walk. The second step of faith was to use his wholeness to glorify God and flee from sin. ‘Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’
All of the healing is the work of Christ, though he requires obedient faith on our part. In keeping with the previous post on transformation and imputation, the man could not obey unless Christ healed him, yet Jesus did not heal him apart from his obedience. Discipleship is the work of God and the work of faithful obedience together resulting in emotional, physical, and spiritual healing.
14 responses so far ↓
John Morad // May 11, 2007 at 12:20 pm |
Ok, Jesus did heal that man, but I always think about that!
Imagine your self praying for healing for many years, you’re waiting, praying, waiting, praying…
Then God will heal you one day, after years of prayers!
Do you think you’re really healed!!
By time you loose hope, even your desire for healing will go away, If I’m sick for 20 years and God did heal me. Do you think it will take away that 20 years of suffering!!!
From my point of view, I want to hear explanation from God, why He didn’t heal me for these many years?? Where He was?? What’s new in my life so He finally did heal me!!
For me it’s not much about healing, as more about understanding…Why I had to suffer first??? And Why He didn’t heal first??
Glad to hear you’re comming to Limassol
God bless,
Jon Swanson // May 11, 2007 at 2:45 pm |
Question. When did the healing happen? When he picked up the mat? or was that a response to the healing? In a couple translations (the first two I am looking at), he is cured, he picks up his mat and he walks. In the man being lowered by his friends, it is their faith that Jesus points to. In the case of Peter’s mother-in-law, faith isn’t mentioned–Jesus just heals her. In the blind man with the mud and washing, he has to go wash. There is such a range of ways that Jesus heals that it makes it impossible for me to say, “here’s the recipe, the amount of faith required, whose faith is required.”
I’m finding that I’m too tired in this moment to say more. Everything out of my fingers is putting the burden on the sick person, and that isn’t where it should be, necessarily.
I think I’ll go on a hospital visit and see if that helps.
Matthew // May 12, 2007 at 7:06 am |
A quick thought that just came to me.
The final, ultimate healing removes the sting of the years of suffering. I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know when you get it. I don’t know how you get it. I don’t know why God gives it. I don’t know why He allows the suffering. But at some point, somehow, He is able to remove the sting of 20 years of pain. Somehow. Don’t ask me why or how or anything like that. This isn’t a theological statement or a pat answer. I don’t know the whys or the hows or the who’s. Just that it can happen, but for whatever reasons no one this side of eternity knows, it doesn’t happen to everyone.
I guess this isn’t really a very comforting thought, then. But there it is. It may be wrong. I may be a heretic. I’ll get over it.
rickdugan // May 12, 2007 at 9:35 am |
There is no system or formula for healing any more than there is a system or formula for friendship or marriage. Most of what the Bible teaches concerning healing comes in the form of stories.
There are a couple of thoughts that come to mind.
First, we are only told one story – the story of the man who was healed. Yet we know that there were dozens if not hundreds of other stories of people who were not immidiately healed. We don’t understand why, just that it happens.
Second, this man had to wait 38 years for his healing and yet Jesus created controversy by healing him on the Sabbath. God waited 38 years, but He couldn’t wait one more day! The religious structure of the day would have kept the man sick. This miracle was not only for the man, but for the Jews as well.
Third, there’s an interesting conversation in the film ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ where Uncle Frank talks about Marcel Proust. He says, ‘French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he’s also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, those were the best years of his life, because they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, a total waste. Didn’t learn a thing.’ There’s a sense in which our suffering makes us who we are. Now, that can become a trap where we feel at home no where but in our misery. These kinds of people may subconsciously feel that without their problems they would cease to exist. Their suffering defines them. On the other hand, when Christ redeems our suffering these problems become amazing points of contact with God and possibly the world. Paul could see the power of God perfected in his weakness.
This is easier to apply in ‘mild’ cases of suffering such as unemployment or loneliness (’mild’ is a relative term here). But what about the suffering that comes from violent rape or child abuse? I don’t know. All this suffering in some sense makes us who we are, but it’s defining power over us can be redemptive and a testimony to the power of God or it can become an alienating prison. The difference is probably faith (trust, dependency, relationship) in God.
Anna // May 12, 2007 at 2:04 pm |
I know that God chooses to heal or not to heal in order to glorify Himself – incomprehensible to those of us in the middle of it.
I know that suffering is a privelege and is “acheiving for us an eternal weight of glory” – I recently read that the glory in heaven is in proportion to the suffering on earth.
Suffering makes the presence of God more real -and more necessary (My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?)to us – in Romans 5, the ultimate result of Godly suffering is hope that does not disappoint because God has poured His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us. There’s also the character piece that I don’t take lightly.
Jon Swanson // May 12, 2007 at 2:04 pm |
There is, in ‘How Firm a Foundation’, the line ‘and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.’ Our deepest distress will be set apart to us by God. Because it’s when we most knew His power? Probably.
I most am confident of God’s existence because of what He did with me when He didn’t heal our daughter…this side of death.
But as I’m thinking, I realize that we probably, I probably am too teomporal and too physical when thinking about healing, because the only actual real physical healing comes at what we call death. In a sense, when jesus Healed this man He was prolonging the inevitable.
None of that probably helps. But our job, as I understand it Rick, is to do our best to confuse you and then you sort through what our thoughts trigger and with the Spirit’s help anoint people with the Word.
John Morad // May 12, 2007 at 4:24 pm |
>>Suffering makes the presence of God more real -and more necessary.
Do you mean the more I get comfortable in my life, the more I don’t need God!!!!
Matthew // May 12, 2007 at 8:17 pm |
If you read Greek tragedy, you’ll discover the theme that suffering gives birth to wisdom. Worth thinking about. And I think Dostoevsky says that it is through suffering that we become conscious.
If we get comfortable in our lives, it is not that we cease to need God. It is that we forget the fact that everything–every single breath, every smile or laugh–is dependent upon God. In suffering, our frailty is outlined to us in sharp relief–thus, we realise that we need God desperately. This desperate need of God is the constant state of our souls, we are just rarely aware of it.
Anna // May 13, 2007 at 4:16 am |
Very well said Matthew. That’s exactly what I meant.
Amy // May 14, 2007 at 11:02 pm |
I have often wondered why some of the most joyful people I know are ones who have lived with what look to me like some of life’s greatest hardships. What you’re saying here may be one of the keys to that–in frailty there is so little strength to cling to the things we grip so tightly in our comfortable, healthy states that we see everything as a gift.
Anna // May 15, 2007 at 3:25 am |
I’ve been thinking that the greater miracle is the God given joy/peace/perseverence of the person whom He chooses not to heal.
rickdugan // May 16, 2007 at 12:46 pm |
When the injury is caused by another the path to healing begins with forgiveness. To quote Volf again: ‘Revenge multiplies evil. Retributive justice contains evil – and threatens the world with destruction. Forgiveness overcomes evil with good.’
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