Sunday 25th May – Poolside Mercy – Pastor Adrian Kitson

25-05-2025, 6c, John5:1-9, pastor adrian kitson, Poolside Mercy

John 5:1-9

John 5:1-9

5:1 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
5:2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes.
5:3 In these lay many invalids–blind, lame, and paralysed.
5:5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”
5:7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”
5:8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
5:9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.

These days, living in Keyneton, in summer we would have to say there is a bit of envy going on around our house. We hear the sounds of people laughing and splashing around in the very flash heated swimming pool our next door neighbour has installed. We wish we had one. But then we think about the cost and the cleaning all year around, and we are glad to settle for our beautiful trees. So all is well.

Things don’t seem well around this pool called Beth-ezda, which means, ‘house of mercy’, in the city of Jerusalem.

‘House of mercy’? Hmmm. Does not sound like it.

Sounds like it was pretty much everyone person for themselves for the many disabled people who spent all their waking hours trying to find a morsel of relief and hope in the healing waters of the bubbling pool.

Even worse at this particular time. John tells us it is festival time in the city. Many say that the population of Jerusalem tripled in size at peak season. Like trying to get some fish and chips at the Victor Harbor or Semaphore jetty in peak summer holidays, it is hard to get to the front of the line!

Jesus and his friends have made the journey from up north in Galilee, via Samaria where they met the woman at the well. Now they are here in the crowded city down by this pool.

Jesus spots this crippled old man. He somehow finds out that this man has been sitting on his mat at the pool side for a very long time!

Lame Love

Pushing and shoving to get in first is how things are at this supposed house of mercy. Only the able and powerful get the benefits of being well healed. Sound familiar?

And then that strange question directed to this long-suffering, healing seeking man.

‘Do you want to be healed?”

He has been trying to get healing in this pool for nearly four decades! Seems like a strange question. Would you ask him if he wanted to be healed?

Jesus asks him this question. What is Jesus aware of? What is not obvious? What is Jesus searching for? What is he seeing and wanting for this man?

Jesus is surely probing the human heart. ‘Do you really want to be healed? Do you really want to be changed, made different, your life radically altered? Because that is what walking will do for you. No more pool. No more daily rhythm you have lived all these years.

John gets us to the heart of it.

Lame Excuses

Seems like this man is not sure he really does want to be healed and go through this change. He does not simply say, “Yes! I want to be healed!”. He says;

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

I can see why he might hesitate. It would be hard to be able to walk after not being able to walk for so long. But even more, this man’s whole life has centred around this place, this shape, this rhythm, these people, not to mention his pain. He must have grown used to his inabilities, and to the fact that his only relief having to come from others, his dependency on others.

So, I can see why he does what we all might find ourselves doing – shiting blame to protect himself from change.

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

He blames no one specifically and therefore everyone generally.

So easy to do when the Lord offers a significant change.

Easiest thing in the word to get used to your problems by shifting blame to another for them.

Do you want me to heal you? Hang on. I’ll just go and have a think about what that will cost me in terms of change. If I could guarantee my income I would follow your calling.
Do you want that relationship restored? If that person treated me better, I could forgive him/her and the relationship could be restored. It is actually their fault …
Do you want to be an instrument of my healing and new life for your kids, your grandkids, your spouse, your friends, your colleagues? Well, if they were more open to it, I might actually say something or do something reflective of my faith in you, but……

Do you want me to heal you? Do I want to be healed? Do I want to have my life and rhythm, and plans and complaining re-shaped? Well, depends on what your healing does to me and my little life….

Maybe this is us. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. Easier to stay miserable in our wrong doing and bad habits and relationships than be set free from them and have to live a new way in God’s healing change…

A Worse Paralysis

I think the seemingly ‘dumb’ question is the only question.

Just after Jesus actually does this healing for the faltering man, he says something that shows this question was crucial because how we respond matters

¹³The man who was healed had no idea who it was [that healed him], for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

¹⁴Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So, refusing to receive and live in Christ’s healing word leads to something “worse,” Jesus says (5:14).

What is this man’s sin – his disability, his pain? No. His sin is refusing to receive God’s healing mercy and love at its best in this Jesus, despite what you think it will cost you or how awkward a new life in him might be!

His sin is the only sin – No faith. No trust that whatever this Saviour gives is good. Whatever this Saviour gives while changing you will be far better than ‘living with the devil you know’.

Jesus Makes Well

Despite this man’s disability and inability to seek Jesus’ healing and tendency to shift blame to others for his troubles – Jesus the “good shepherd” by the “sheep gate” who “saw,” “learned about,” and “asked him” about his desire to be made well, now simply heals this physically and spiritually crippled man.

His kindness and healing power are no match for my inabilities, lack of trust at times, and unwillingness to welcome his gifts of healing and love. Thaks the Lord for that!

Rise, Roll Up Your Excuses & Walk

Jesus’ healing changes do require some ‘rehab’ work. Like going through major surgery that fixes the physical problem, there is new learning required to get it all working again.

For this man, the rehab in his new life is simply ‘walking’. There is a “walk” that needs to go with the “talk”.

This healed changed man needs to respond and he does. He does what Jesus says. He picks up his little mat and walks off.

Friends, we have been made well. We live in the House of Mercy under the care and protection of the Good Shepherd who is the Gate for the Sheep – the entrance to full and meaningful life in the here and now.

A House of Mercy

Down by the poolside we got healed. We got saved. We got filled with the Spirit and now we who walk the talk are a “house of mercy”.

Like this old man, we did not deserve it or earn it. He did not even know who it was that healed him and gave him a way to walk on in life.

But, like a good stockman or woman; a good Vet, Jesus did some follow up. Jesus seeks this man out again later on.

Jesus finds this now walking man in the temple – a place from which he had been excluded for those 38 years. His healing was also his forgiveness of the sin of not trusting God with all his heart, mind and strength. His healing and forgiveness are his restoration to community – the worshipping community – the new song of faith in the community of God.

And then the natura thing came. He spoke up about Jesus!

¹⁵The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Do we want to be healed?

I am praying we can say. “Yes, no matter what changes it may mean”.

Why? Because left unhealed and un-restored shaped by unbelief, it only gets worse.

His healing change is better than a thousand comfortable devils. With his healing touch it only gets better even if it will require so ‘rehab’ some ‘re-learning’; learning to walk new.

Like it did for this flawed person, Jesus’ healing grace gives us something to give and bring and say. His healing forgiveness makes us his house of mercy here in this town.

Like the restored man, we walk here in this temple of people called church and then we walk out of here – down to the poolside.

And we tell them

“It was Jesus who healed me”.