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DO YOU WANT TO GET WELL?

JOHN 5:1-9

It can be one of the most frustrating things we ever experience. Perhaps it's happened to you at some point in your life. I'm referring to the difficulty of trying to help people who really don't want help. At least that's how it seems at times.

I think of the church that discovered that one of its families was living in very poor and unhealthy conditions. For whatever reason they had not been able to keep their home in a clean and organized manner. Now, I'm not talking about the kind of disorganization we all experience in our homes at times. This was a situation in which the children were living in virtual squalor.

The church family decided they would help, so they went into the home and worked and cleaned and disinfected. They hauled out trash and organized things and within the space of a very long and very hard day's work, they got that home looking presentable again. Most importantly, they reestablished a healthy physical environment for the children.

The folks who had helped with the cleanup went home that day feeling like they had really accomplished something important. The family was not offended or embarrassed but truly appreciative for the help.

But do you know what happened? It was only a matter of weeks before that home was back in the same deplorable condition in which the church folks had originally found it. And it left them wondering, "Did they really want help?"

They said, "We thought we were doing the right thing to help them get started on a different track, but apparently they were more comfortable with their old lifestyle."

It's tough when you try to help people who don't always seem to want and welcome your help. Sometimes it seems as though people are more comfortable even in their difficulties because it's at least familiar.

I think of our neighbors when we lived in another state. The sounds of their late-night fights often came filtering into our house. There were many times when the police had to be summoned to try and calm the situation.

I remember one particular night when my wife and I were awakened to the sounds of something crashing next door. We moved to the window to investigate what it was and could hear them at it again. Things were crashing and breaking all over the place, and it was obvious the husband had gone into one of his drunken tirades again. It was summer and their window was open, so we heard it clearly when he screamed at her, "I'll bet you've slept with every man in the neighborhood!" My wife shot a look at me. So I yelled back, "Not every one."

The police came again that night, and they stood in the street while she packed up some belongings and went off with a friend. He would never let her leave unless the police were there.

Tragic events, but we said to ourselves, "Well, at least she'll be safe and be able to get some help." But would you believe it. The very next day, here she came again with all her stuff and moved back in. That cycle was repeated over and over again.

It makes you wonder when you witness things like that. Could it be that sometimes, even when it seems obvious to everyone else that a person needs help, the person doesn't really want it?

In fact, you've seen people and so have I, who almost seem to go through life creating crises, because it's what they know. Oh, they'd never admit that they want life to be difficult, in fact they really don't. But somehow the cycle of pain becomes more comfortable than the process of healing and wholeness.

When I began my first pastoral assignment, I started with the assumption that everybody in my church wanted to be whole and well and growing in his or her Christian walk. I no longer assume that. More often than I would care to count, I have watched people succumb to their illness or difficulty, "bedding down" with their addictions or past hurts--their shame or failures.

Pastors, counselors, psychologists, many in the helping professions have compared notes across the last several years and observed an identifiable pattern. There are some people who will actually (subconsciously) sabotage their own healing because it's just easier to stay where they are, even when they're in a bad place.

You know we probably all experience that to some degree. This isn't a phenomenon restricted to very ill people. All of us have issues like that. Perhaps they are issues of discipline, habits that we can't seem to break, temptations we can't seem to resist, spiritual disciplines we just can't seem to master. We know what we need to do. It isn't an issue of information. We sense what it would take to change, but somehow it's just easier to stay where we are.

You know, Jesus understands that part of us. He dealt with it, too, in the people that He encountered day after day. This story that we read together this morning is an example of it. In bringing healing to this invalid man, Jesus asks him a question that somehow we need to have directed at us. Could we somehow put ourselves in the place of this man and hear Jesus confronting us with the question?

In the northwest corner of Jerusalem, not far from the walls of the Temple area, we see a great pool of water. It's obviously a major gathering place for the people in this section of the city known by some as Bethesda.

Besides the regular, everyday functions of this busy gathering place, there was also some very special significance attached to it. That was evident by the great numbers of disabled persons who gathered around the pool.

The blind, the lame, the paralyzed would come and lie there hour after hour, day after day, year after year, because there was a belief that the waters of this pool were not ordinary by any means. They had special properties, unusual qualities.

Many people believed these waters had great healing powers. Particularly when at certain times the waters of the pool would be agitated either by an intermittent spring or by replenishing waters from another place in the city, some believed by an angel of God. And the conviction was that whoever could get himself or herself down the stairs and into the waters of the pool when it was being stirred up would be healed of his or her infirmity.

The scene was heart-rending as word of the bubbling waters spread through the crowd and the blind try frantically to feel their way down the stairs and into the water. The lame and paralyzed drag their withered, lifeless bodies, or someone carried them if they were more fortunate down into the source of healing. And once again those who are disabled hope against hope that perhaps this time they will be the blessed ones; they will receive the benefit of the healing waters.

Jesus had come to Jerusalem to observe one of the major feasts, as was His regular practice. In His travels around the great city, He happens by this pool and observes all the sick and lame people waiting for their opportunity for deliverance.

John tells us that Jesus noticed one man in particular. He learned that this man had been lying there for 38 years. Thirty-eight years! Trying to be healed. Dragging himself down toward the water each time it was stirred up. His arms and legs had become bruised and bloodied from his attempts to make it into the water in time.

Jesus gets the man's attention. And He asked him this question, "Do you want to get well?" What? Jesus, you must kidding. This man has been here for 38 years trying to take advantage of something that he believes will heal him. That looks like determination and persistence if nothing else, and You ask him, "Do you want to get well?" Jesus, what are You thinking about? No offense, but isn't that kind of a silly question?

Or is it? Could it be that in fact it was toughest question this man ever had to answer in all of his life. Why would it be a tough question? Well, perhaps this man, like so many of us, had become so secure not only in his disability but in the way he thought healing would come, that he really wasn't open to any other option at all.

In fact, I think that's clearly revealed in the conversation between Jesus and this man. Did you notice what happens here? Jesus asks him, "Do you want to get well?" To which we would expect the reply, "Yes, of course I want to be well." But that's not what he says. Instead he replies, "Sir, . . . I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred." Do you see? His whole focus is on the pool. He apparently doesn't even consider the possibility that before him stands the Source of healing because over the years of pain and disappointment he has become convinced that the only possible way to be healed is in the water of the pool of Bethesda.

John Calvin said it this way, "This sick man does what we nearly all do. He limits God's help to his own ideas and does not dare promise himself more than he can conceive in his own mind."

Jesus, seeing that the man's will to be well had been so damaged and clouded says to him in effect, "Forget the pool. Move beyond your narrow belief about how you can be healed. Lay aside your trust in this pool.

"Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." Little did the man realize just how tough Jesus' question would be. Did he really want to be well? Enough to consider new options? Enough to abandon his own narrow notions of how God would heal him?

That's kind of scary after 38 years of counting on the same thing. But John records it, simply yet powerfully, "At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked."

Do you see what Jesus did? In asking the question, "Do you want to get well?" He forced this man to come face-to-face with what he was really trusting for his wholeness.

Somehow this morning we need to hear Jesus ask us that same question anew. Every one of us probably needs to experience healing at some point. For some of us it may be physical, but for most it's probably emotional and spiritual. We are aware of issues in our lives that we want to be freed from. We want to experience healing, and we ask God over and over again to heal us.

"Just take away the pain." Somehow wipe away the memory. Remove the scars. And so often we get fixed in our minds just how we want God to accomplish the healing. It all seems so easy to us and makes so much sense. We focus on the healing waters of the pool, but that's all we see. But because Jesus loves us so much and is committed to our wholeness, He continues to confront us with the tough questions. He refuses to be cast in the role of a fairy godmother waving His magic wand to painlessly cure all of our ills.

He wants us to deal with the deeper issues in our lives. Like where our trust really lies. What our security is really based on. Whether or not we're willing to allow Him to use our pain to bring glory to God and blessing to this world.

And so He asks us the hard question, "Do you want to get well? Do you want to move beyond a Band-Aid solution to a deep problem? Are you willing to deal with the reason for your pain?"

What is the issue of healing you are facing right now? Maybe it's physical. But far more likely it's the healing of a memory or the healing of a relationship or the healing of damaged emotions or the healing of guilt and shame.

Maybe you've just been asking God to quietly and painlessly heal it. And sometimes God does it that way. But could it be that Jesus is wanting to help you deal with a tough question?

Is there an issue that you need to honestly admit to yourself and to God and maybe even to someone else? Are you willing to accept that God's method of healing that issue might be different from what you've envisioned?

Or maybe you've given up hope that your problem can really ever be helped. One man said, "Men die when they are suddenly struck with the impression that everything is without prospect for them." I see it all the time. In people who say, "It's too late for me. Maybe this could have been helped 15 years ago, but not now it's too late."

I don't know what you are facing. Maybe it's a marriage that is crumbling or a family falling apart. Maybe it's a habit that you just can't shake. Maybe financial collapse looms out in front of you.

You've tried and tried to fix it, and nothing works. And so you've come to the place where you've just said, "Oh, what's the use?" It's really not so much that you don't want help but that you've begun to doubt that help is really possible.

If that's where you find yourself this morning, then I challenge you to look up from the murky waters of the pool and into the eyes of the One who truly has the power to heal and hear Him ask you the question, "Do you want to get well?"

Are you willing to trust your healing to Jesus? It might mean you would have to deal with some things that you really haven't wanted to face. But if you will trust your healing to Jesus, He will bring you to wholeness and health--in His time and in His way. Perhaps the real question is, "Are you willing to trust His way?"