Jesus
asks the man, “do you want to be made well” (5:6)? The man does not actually
answer that question. Instead, he offers excuses as to why he has not
previously been healed even though he lays beside a miraculous healing pool all
day every day. His excuse is that no one else will put him in the pool when its
healing powers are activated. Clearly his (unspecified) illness is not his
fault. Of course, Jesus had never suggested that it was. Jesus just asked if he
wanted to be healed of it. Apparently the answer is, not really. Unasked, Jesus
heals the man, who takes up his mat and walks away.
In
the next scene, we learn that this was on a Sabbath. Some religious leaders tell
the man that it is not lawful for him to carry his mat on the Sabbath. Once
again, his immediate reaction is to insist that it is not his fault: “The man
who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk’” (5:11). They want to
know who made him well, but he doesn’t know.
In
the third scene, Jesus meets the man again. The man says nothing to Jesus, but “went
away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well” (5:15).
What
a jerk! As I now interpret this set of exchanges, we are supposed to see him as
too attached to his ailment to want healing, too committed to his own
disempowerment to accept responsibility, and too afraid of the people around
him to embrace the new life he has been given or to show gratitude to the one
who gave it.
But
I suspect that we all have a little of this man in us. I know that I hold on to
some of my own wounds rather than seeking genuine healing. I sometimes blame
others for my own failures. I sometimes retreat from God’s invitation to new
life because I am more comfortable with what is more familiar. Ironically, I
like John’s story much better now that I like the healed man much less. Now it
gives me a picture of how I must sometimes look and thus an incentive to do
better!
Fr.
Harvey
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