"Do You Want To Be Healed?"
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Jesus refused to lose focus. His heart must have been breaking over Judas. Most would have responded with hate, but he commanded love.
John 5:1-9
May 25, 2025
Dr. Todd R. Wright
As we join the story, the scene of the Holy City crowded with folks in town for a festival is juxtaposed with the view of five porticos around a nearby pool teaming with sick folks.
The two do not fit together easily.
Imagine leaving Easter services to drop by the local ER. One place is in party mode, filled with pretty clothes, color, light, and music. The other location features red-tipped canes, walkers, and wheelchairs operated by people who cannot hide their desperate need for healing.[2] One is full of the raw energy of people with more to do than time to do it; the other is full of people waiting for something to happen. One is brimming with joyful celebration, the other with mundane repetition.
John tells us that when Jesus went up to Jerusalem, he chose to be with those who needed a physician rather than those there for the festival. To the pool of cast-offs rather than the Temple.
There, he strikes up a conversation with a man who has been ill for 38 years!
Can you imagine?
38 years means he has been waiting there since before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, or was dedicated in the Temple, or stayed behind to debate with the sages at age 12!
To give you a sense of the magnitude of the gap, 38 years ago, in 1987 …
Aretha Franklin was the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame;
President Reagan signed a secret order permitting the covert sale of arms to Iran;
Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite was taken hostage in Beirut by an Islamic militia group;
No-smoking rules took effect in US federal buildings;
A bomb blamed on the Unabomber exploded by a computer store in Salt Lake City;
U2 released the album "The Joshua Tree" which would win a Grammy for Best Album;
Televangelist Jim Bakker resigned amid rape accusations by his secretary;
The FDA approved the sale of AZT, the first drug used to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS;
The soap opera “Bold and Beautiful” premiered;
Gary Hart quit the presidential race due to an affair with Donna Rice;
"Les Misérables" received 8 Tony awards, including Best Musical; and
Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down" the Berlin wall.[3]
I could go on, but you get the point – 38 years is a long time!
And yet this man keeps coming; keeps waiting; keeps hoping.
You can identify with that waiting, can’t you?
Some of you have waited for medical results.
Some of you are waiting for an apology.
Some of you still wait for opportunity to knock.
He kept coming back to the sheep gate, to the pool, to sit in the shade. He had his spot. He nodded at his neighbors. Where else would he be?
You keep coming back …
to your job – for years after it stopped being exciting;
to your marriage – long after the fire has cooled;
to your house – once a dream home, now a slow race between the mortgage and the jobs jar;
to your church – both because it has sheltered you
and because you yearn to feel God’s presence there / somewhere / anywhere.
Is it habit or hope that keeps a person coming back?
When Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?” the man doesn’t know how to answer.
Of course he does. That’s why he has pinned his hopes on this rumor/legend/tradition of water stirred by an angel. That’s why he is here, not begging on some street corner or praying at the Temple. That’s why he persists when others have given up; when even his family doubts.
But the question catches him off guard “Do you want to be made well?”
It seems to imply that he doesn’t want it badly enough;
or perhaps, that he is only there because others bring him;
that he is not doing enough, even though his elbows are raw from dragging his body forward;
or, perhaps, that he has settled into this life and cannot imagine anything else;
that, he doesn’t have enough willpower, like an alcoholic who keeps drinking.
or, perhaps, that his faith is weak.
Do you think that is what Jesus is implying? That he is blaming the victim?
I don’t.
I think he is asking permission. I think he is offering healing. I think he is offering himself.
Just like he offered living water to the woman at the well.
Some listen to this passage and wonder why Jesus healed this man, right then, on the Sabbath! He has been waiting for 38 years – surely Jesus could have waited until sundown, so as not to break the laws and stir up the opposition.
I think there are at least three reasons:
The healing was timely. “Why wait?” asks John Calvin. It was a festival time, they were in Jerusalem, it was a holy day – what better time to “declare God’s glory among the nations, and tell of God’s wondrous deeds … so that the miracle might be extensively know?”[4]
It was revelatory. Sabbath law is clear – human labor must cease on the Sabbath. But the rabbis had recognized that some of God’s work continues on the Sabbath. They taught that God uses three keys on the Sabbath: the key to birth, the key to rainfall, and the key to resurrection from the dead.[5] Leslie Newbigin explains, “It seems to have been accepted by the rabbis that God’s Sabbath rest did not mean that [God] had ceased to give life – for babies are still born on the Sabbath and rain falls … God is always – even on the Sabbath – the giver of life.”[6]
So this story tells us more than what Jesus can do; it shows us who he is! He is the Son of God! Thus, if God continues to give life on the Sabbath, so does Jesus!
Finally, it is anticipatory. When Jesus heals this man, it is not because he had earned it. In fact, he does not even ask to be healed. And no one makes any mention of his faith. Jesus initiates the whole thing. The healing is a function of who Jesus is and why he came – to heal a broken world.
That is his mission and he will follow it to the end. This gives us a sneak peak!
So what difference does this story make in our lives as we near the end of the Easter season?
Well, if you are waiting …
for your situation to change, for your pleas to be heard, for God to do something;
if you feel stuck and keep coming back to what is familiar, whether out of habit or hope;
then maybe John includes this story for you –
to give you hope,
to show you the Savior,
to lift your eyes to the ultimate gift of healing, body and soul! Amen
[1] “Angel of the Waters” by Emma Stebbins, in Central Park, NY City, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.
[2] This image of the two scenes is from “Poolside Healing” by Mary Hinkle Shore, the Christian Century, 5/1/07
[4] From his Commentary on the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ According to John, page 190
[5] From Raymond Brown’s The Gospel According to John, I-XLL, page 217
[6] From his book The Light Has Come, page 64
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