Lent 15

I almost renumbered Lent so that we could skip '15'. I just don't like 5s. Ask my midwife: she says I laboured for an extra 2 hours, just so my son wouldn't be born on the 15th. I'm pretty sure this is my dad's fault.

Despite not loving a 15, I do love the story in John this morning. I've read it earlier this year with my homegroup friends, and I wish I had just recorded our entire conversation and could post it here, because it was really, really good.

This probably won't be really, really good. Let's aim for passable, shall we?

So the first third of Lent was a journey of sin-discovery. Of being reminded that probably I'm not always awesome, of being reminded that I have built an idol more than once in this life, and worshipped it instead of the God I love.

This morning, John tells the story of a guy who has spent years and years wanting to be healed of his disability, hanging out next to a pool of water that promised said healing if he could just get in it at the right moment.  Jesus hears about him and his long wait and says to the guy, "Do you want to get well?" To which the guy replies with his reasons for not being able to get well - "No one will help me! I can't do it! People always get there first!"

Jesus, perhaps a bit irked, if not amused or compassionate or something more Jesus-y just looks at him and says, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."  And that's that.

It is a good moment to be reminded that at some point I am asked, "Do you even want to get well?" Because of course, mostly I do. Except for the part where I'm not sure. That guy had been lounging next to a pool for years. Presumably he had figured out how to get enough food to survive. He probably had a crew of other folk he hung out with, complaining about all the other broken keeners who were always so quick, jumping into those stirred up waters. Maybe they played cards on Tuesdays, or had drinking games on Friday nights.

Letting what we know die, even when what we know sucks, is surprisingly difficult to do. 

Down in verse 14, Jesus finds the guy later and says to him something like, Glad to see you doing so well. You better stop sinning though, or something worse may happen to you.

John's Jesus is such a jackass.

Anyway, I kind of wonder about the next third of Lent, and about having to really decide to get up and walk. To let the sin die, to give up the idols, and live in the Life that is coming at Easter.

That's what I'm wondering about.

John 5:1-18

New International Version (NIV)

The Healing at the Pool

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda^[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ^{[4] [b] 5} One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “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 down ahead of me.”
⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, ¹⁰ and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
¹¹ But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
¹² So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
¹³ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
¹⁴ Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

The Authority of the Son

¹⁶ So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. ¹⁷ In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” ¹⁸ For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.