“There is,” John tells us, “a pool near the Sheep Gate” (John 5:2). It would have been an odd thing to say, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, when presumably he would have said “There was this pool” or “there used to be a pool.” This present-tense word choice is the kind of evidence that John A.T. Robinson (in Redating the New Testament) and others point towards in recognizing that the Gospel of John and the other New Testament documents come from before the year 70 – which is earlier than many scholars have supposed.

Many crippled people gathered at this pool, hoping for a cure for their ailments. An early commentator explained that an angel would come to stir the water and whoever first got into the pool would be cured of their illness, and in (probably) the fourth century this explanation got copied into the text of several manuscripts and eventually became verse 4 in the King James Bible. The best, earliest manuscripts do not include this explanatory note, however; they simply say that the people were there.

One paralyzed man had been there, day by day, for 38 years. Jesus asked him, “Do you want to be made well?” (5:6). Isn’t that an interesting question? The answer might seem obvious: if he’s been waiting for a miracle at the side of the pool for 38 years, what else could it be? Yet the man began to make the excuse that he couldn’t move quickly when the water was stirred, so someone else always got into the pool before he did: a classic case of doing the same thing over and over and thinking this time you’ll get better results.

Jesus told him, “Get up and walk.” That’s a big thing to ask the man to do: and the astonishing thing is that the man did it. It’s a miracle that he was healed; but it’s nearly as astonishing that the man decided to do what Jesus said, after 38 years of doing the same unsuccessful thing over and over. Just like it would be astonishing if we were to do the things that Jesus asks of us, after all these years of explaining – to ourselves, and perhaps to him as well – that it really isn’t possible.

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We get ourselves so stuck, Lord. We can see that what we’re doing doesn’t work, but we keep doing it, unable to see anything else to do. Speak to our souls, we pray; let us hear your question, “Do you want to get well?” and let us hear your command, to get up and get going.

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