I'm Feelin' A Healin'!

At our last ECM meeting, our peer minister, sophomore Annie Reimsnider, offered a dang good reflection based on John 5:1-18. In case you missed it, here it is:

"Do you want to be healed?" It's a strange question that Jesus poses, but perhaps not as strange as the answer he receives from a man born blind.

Instead of a resounding "YES--pretty please with sugar on top--heal me NOW!" comes a quite confusing statement: "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 ahead of me."

"Do you want to be healed?" "Well, I have no one to help me. Someone always jumps in front when I'm almost there." Not exactly the expected response, but perhaps--just perhaps--a meaningful one... one that shows the true feelings of the outcast.

As much as this blind man might want to be healed, he sees little chance and begins to offer excuses on why he can't be and why his life is so overwhelming that he doesn't deserve to be healed.

Everyone has reached a point in their lives when they have felt like they have hit rock bottom, and whether they have or not, it begins to eat away at their confidence. This man has been sick for over 38 years ... 38 years of trying to get into that pool. Had I been in his position, I definitely would have made excuses, too.

In situations today, we don't necessarily fail to get into that pool, but we tend to wallow in our self-pity. We tend to want so badly to stretch that hand out and say, "Help me," but either because we feel we are unworthy or too far gone to be helped, we keep our hands in our pockets and lie in the beds we've made. We forget that our God is lying next to us wanting us to ask and in some situations giving us no choice but to accept his intervention.

So Jesus heals the man in this story (and us as well) and leaves, but comes back later to say, "Hey, if you don't want to be there again, don't sin anymore." Or to us, "Hey, you over there, be good ... stay true ... stay with me, and you won't feel that helplessness anymore.

In this story, Jesus' intervention happens to occur on a Saturday, the Sabbath, a time for rest and reflection. No work--including healing or mat moving--is to be done this day. So when people get mad at Jesus for "working" on the Sabbath, Jesus' answer is simple: "My Father is working today. So must I."

Jesus is more grace centered than law centered. He would rather heal someone and watch them believe than let them suffer just because of a silly law. The Sabbath is to honor his Father. What better way than than to heal and bring one more into the flock of believers?

But Jesus saying that he is the Son of God would cause more of a commotion than the act of healing itself. It is the ammunition, the fuel to the fire of persecution. Even now while doing the work of his Father, he is on a long road to the cross. This is the core of Lent--the persecution and death of Jesus. It's beginning, becoming real; his sacrifice of blood is just around the corner.

Let us join in the walk with him. And let us understand that he is with us all the time and that the cross was just another step to assure us that we are his ... no matter what.