My friend Brandon has a traumatic brain injury. He received it when he was involved in a car accident a few years ago, and ever since he's been dependent other people for his basic human needs. One day, we were having a party at the house of one of our church members, and Brandon was there with us. It was a nice day, so we all decided to jump in the pool. Brandon doesn't get a chance to swim much, as it requires a ton of assistance, and there's not a pool at the nursing home he lives in. In order to get Brandon into the pool, several people have to help out. One person has to be on each arm, and one person has to be in front, spotting him. This day at the pool, someone engineered a floating device out of the styrofoam tubes and placed it around his waist. It was a beautiful thing to see everyone get involved and get Brandon into the pool. As he got in and floated around, I sensed I was taking a part in something much bigger than a swim. Although there was no way of telling, it seemed that we were taking part in restoring some part of Brandon's life, something we couldn't see. Pools have a way of doing that. Pools have typically been associated with healing.
According to John, there was a pool in Jerusalem. There were five alcoves (inner rooms arranged on the outskirts of the main pool), and in these alcoves were hundreds of sick people. Blind and crippled folks would sit near these healing waters in the hopes of being restored to health. One of the beliefs around the time was that the god Ascelpion - who was believed to use water to heal the sick - would send angels down to stir the waters of the pool. It was believed that when the waters "troubled," they would heal whoever sat in them at the time.
In our time, pools are used in athletics to loosen tense muscles and to restore circulation to injured areas of the body. They shorten recovery time, and many rehabilitation facilities use swimming pools. In this story, there is a man who has been paralyzed for thirty eight years. He's been sitting by this pool hoping to get well, and every time the water gets stirred, he can't get there in time. Someone else always gets in first.
Jesus shows up one day and finds the man sitting there. He asks him, "Do you want to get well?"
The man answers, "Yes, but every time I want to get in, I can't get there in time. I have nobody to help me get in and by the time I get there it's too late."
Jesus says, "Get up, take your bedroll, and start walking."
He does just that. We're told that he gets up, picks up his stuff, and walks away. No sooner does he leave than the Jews around the pool stop him and tell him he can't be carrying his bedroll on the Sabbath. They tell him he's breaking the rules. Never mind that the guy is walking for the first time in 38 years.
There's many different ways we could go with this passage, but I wanted to focus on the pool. The pool, which was intended for healing, just wasn't working. It wasn't working for many people, but we're only given the one account of the paralyzed man. No matter how much the man believed that the waters would heal him, he didn't have the ability to get to the waters. Jesus, who a couple passages ago told a certain Samaritan woman that he had water that wouldn't run out, has shown up at a pool.
The man can't reach the water, and the water comes to him. The man is hopeless and hope comes to him in the form of Jesus.
Sometimes, there just isn't anything I can do. It's usually when I exhaust all of my solutions. I'll try something new, or different. I'll try thinking differently. I'll exert my will every way that I can, and I'll do it until I realize that it just isn't working. I just can't reach the water. Alcoholism is my handicap. It keeps me from getting to the pool, so the water has to come to me. Pornography is another one. There's just no amount of power I can exert in this area that will get me to the healing water. The water has to come to me. There are things in my life that I'm powerless over, and unless I've tried figuring it out long enough, I won't admit that I'm powerless over anything. I have to hit rock bottom, or at least some sort of physical, spiritual, or emotional pain. But, just as with the paralyzed man, Living Water finds us when we arrive at that place in our lives when we just . . . can't . . . reach . . . the water.
In what areas do we need to realize that we just can't reach the water?
How can we go about realizing this?
May the Healing Waters come to us today as we reflect on the ways we are powerless and stuck.
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