Everybody likes to hear stories about people like Dustin Carter.
Dustin was born a normal, healthy baby, but when he was 5 years old, he suffered a bacterial blood infection. As a result of this blood infection, most of his limbs had to be amputated.
Like anyone else would feel, Dustin first felt very angry and depressed about his situation. He couldn’t run, jump, dress himself, or even use a fork.
But Dustin was determined that in spite of all the odds, he was once again going to do things for himself. He had to relearn how to do everything without hands or feet, but today, he can climb into his chair, climb onto the kitchen counter, get his own bowls, get in the refrigerator and retrieve whatever he wants.
But what’s most shocking about Dustin is that he wrestles. At 103 pounds, he wrestled for the Hillsboro High School in Ohio, and made it a long way into the Division II wrestling tournament in Columbus, compiling a 41-2 record going into the state meet. He won his first round match, though he lost his next two and didn’t finish in the top 8.
But despite his loss at the tournament, no one questions for a second that Dustin Carter is the very definition of what it means to be a winner.
We all love stories like that, don’t we? Someone who has the odds all stacked against them, but looks adversity square in the eye and refuses to give up.
Everyone loves an underdog with the heart of a champion.
In John 5, we encounter another man who knew what it was to be an underdog.
It says that Jesus went up to Jerusalem because of a Jewish Feast that was going on. Up in the Northeastern part of the city, there’s an entrance to the temple complex called the Sheep Gate. It’s probably no coincidence that here near the Sheep Gate, our Good Shepherd was going to call one of his lost sheep back into the fold.
Near this Sheep Gate, there was a pool called Bethesda. Bethesda means something to the effect of “House of Flowing.” It was a sort of trapezoid-shaped pool with 5 colonnades supporting the roof.
Were you to ever travel to this pool of Bethesda, you would be overwhelmed by the sight and the smell of the place. John says there was a multitude of people laying there.
Blind people; lame people; paralyzed people.
Your translation may or may not have included in it verse 4 of chapter 5. The earliest versions do not contain this brief comments, but it seems that someone along the line wanted the readers to understand why all of these downtrodden people of society would come to the same place.
As the story goes, from time to time, the water would stir around and gurgle. We have good reason to believe there were some underground streams that would move the water around, but the belief was that it was an angel of the Lord, stirring the waters.
Once the waters were stirring, the first one in would supposedly be healed of whatever was ailing them.
So there were untold numbers of these people who would remain there day and night, hoping for the waters to be stirred so that they could rush in and hopefully find healing.
But Jesus didn’t just see a multitude. He saw the individuals who made up that multitude. He saw one man in particular, and it was obvious that he had been there for a very long time.
Though we don’t know how long he had been at this pool specifically, he had been an invalid for 38 years. Think about that.
At this point in my life, I don’t even have a frame of reference for what 38 years is. I stand before you today 28 years old. Were this his 38th year, he would have been disabled a full decade before I even came into the picture.
He would have encountered this condition in 1971.
For those of you who can remember back that far, in 1971:
- This was when Cigarette Advertisements were first banned on Television.
- John Lennon released his “Imagine” album.
- Charles Manson was convicted of murder.
- In Superbowl V: The Baltimore Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in Miami.
- Richard Nixon was still president
- The U.S.S.R. was performing controversial nuclear tests in numerous locations.
In all this amount of time since then, this man would have been an invalid.
I don’t like having a cold for a week. Can you imagine going for 38 years unable to get by, except for the generosity of strangers to sustain you?
There are some uncomfortable realities about dealing with beggars. Some of them have genuinely had bad luck. Some of them have made foolish decisions. Some of them have mental illnesses that are beyond their own control.
Unfortunately, most of the time when we encounter a person who’s asking for help, we experience doubts about how we ought to proceed.
ILLUS: I know that for all of us who work and have occupations, there are probably aspects of our occupation that we think are misunderstood. I don’t know if you ever wonder or even care what it’s like to work full-time at a church building, but something you spend a lot of time with is answering the door for people who are looking for handouts.
When the weather is particularly hot or cold, this increases. Here in Old Hickory, we have a terrific community outreach center, and we have wonderful volunteers who help us make decisions in what kind of aid to give, and how best to go about it. That has been a great blessing to me.
Before I was here, I was the sole employee of a congregation in rural Arkansas, with no such community center. I had to deal with every person who came by. Often I would genuinely fear for my life as I opened the door to talk to them, knowing if they intended to harm me, there would be little I could do about it.
One time in particular, I had two women come to the building. They were fairly dirty, and uncouth, so it was difficult to estimate their ages. One was in a wheelchair while the other walked. Once they were inside, they launched into a solid 30-minute sob story that would have made Job himself feel some empathy. Even though I was confident it was probably exaggerated, and even though I’ve had lots of people tell me boldfaced lies, I felt pity for them.
So as I began talking to them about some possible options for getting them help, they cheered up a little. The woman in the wheelchair spoke up with a smile and said, “You just don’t know how happy we are that you’re helping us. I got a phone book, and put together of all the churches within about a 3 county radius, and we’ve been going to every single church, talking to each of them, looking for people to help us.”
What I thought in my head, and what I almost said out loud was, “You know, you can make a sales pitch that would put most anyone I know to shame. You’re organized enough to find every church within a large radius, and you’re both healthy and competent enough to get there to talk to them. If you would go work for State Farm or Allstate or Geiko, you could probably have a great living! Why are you begging?”
Situations are usually complicated.
I believe this invalid man whom Jesus helped also had a complicated situation.
Do you know what Jesus said to him later after he was healed?
He found him there in the Temple complex and said to him, “(v.14) See, you are well! Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.”
Many scholars believe that at least in this case, Jesus is implying that this man became an invalid because of something he did wrong. Perhaps he committed some lusty sin of the flesh and caught a disease, or maybe he committed a crime and was beaten beyond an easy repair. Clearly, he was having no support from his family, so perhaps he had shamed them.
Maybe this man would be one of those cases where we would think to ourselves, “I don’t really want to help him, but like it says in Hebrews 13, some people have entertained angels without knowing it, and I’d sure hate for this guy to pull off his homeless mask to reveal an angel underneath.”
We must be sensitive to people who are in truly desperate places in life.
When you feel like you’ve got absolutely no hope, but you can find something that offers you even the tiniest glimmer of hope, that feels better than nothing.
We might get frustrated to see an impoverished person wasting larger amounts of money away a couple of dollars at a time on lottery tickets, when we know they’d be much more likely to get struck by lightening.
We get frustrated when already poor people make themselves poorer by sending all that they have into slick televangelists who promise them prosperity of they will just send in their “love seed.”
We are amazed to think that this guy could lay there for years, just trying to be the first one into a bubbling pool of water, as if that could actually do anything to improve his situation.
When all is well for you, it is easy to identify the solutions people seek which are not real solutions, but if you found yourself in a situation where you were truly sick and desperate, you might surprise yourself with some of the things you’d be willing to do.
I’m happy to say that our savior doesn’t only help those who help themselves.
In fact, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And while this man was still a sinner, Christ decided to have mercy and heal him anyway.
If you read carefully, this text says nothing about the man repenting.
It says nothing about him having faith.
When questioned about why he was carrying his mat on the Sabbath, he blamed it on the guy who healed him, and when he figured out who Jesus was, he went and told on Jesus to the Jewish leaders (v.15).
But Jesus had pity on him. Whether his circumstances were out of his control, or whether they were somewhat self-inflicted, Jesus noticed him and cared for him.
But before he healed him, Jesus asked a specific question. Did you notice it?
In verse 6, Jesus approaches this man, who had been laying around for 38 years and he actually asked him, “Do you want to be healed?”
Our gut reaction is to say, “Well, Duh!”
But you know, Jesus’ question is actually a lot more penetrating than we might initially want to give it credit for.
Do you really want to be well?
We all have down times in our life. We all experience losses. We all experience a decline in our health.
I’ve heard it said before: “Everything happens to everybody if you live long enough.”
But when the hard times come, it’s a temptation for us to bed down with these problems. We cease thinking about how to move forward. All we think about is how poor things are now compared to how they used to be.
Perhaps it’s a physical ailment. Perhaps life did something unfair to us.
We are tempted to lay down and become spiritual invalids.
Our heart becomes hardened to anyone’s problems but our own.
We avoid responsibilities, while demanding sympathy.
While our situations might indeed be bad and painful, we’re tempted to bed down and become obsessed with our own victimhood; to shut all else out of our lives but our self-pity.
But Jesus offers us healing, if we want it.
Do you know what healing means?
Being well means that you can’t keep lying on the mat, waiting for a fairy tale solution to swoop down and rescue you from your circumstances.
Being well means that you start walking again.
Being well means going back to work.
Being well means caring for others who are hurting like you’ve hurt.
Being well means taking responsibility for yourself and your actions.
Being well means following the Savior obediently, wherever he leads you.
As we learn from brave young men like Dustin Carter, even though we might want one kind of healing, we might be a lot more capable of serving God than we really want to admit. God’s purpose for your life might be very different than what you’ve envisioned for yourself, but we’ve God to believe that God has given you whatever you need to bloom right where you’re planted.
So wherever you are tonight, and whatever has been paralyzing you, I’m convinced that Jesus Christ can redeem your life and can give you a new purpose.
But as we stand together and sing this song, the question I’ll leave you with is this:
Do you want to get well?
