A Surprising Solution to Suffering

A Surprising Solution to Suffering – John’s Gospel chapter 5, verses 1 to 15

A surprising solution to suffering.

The problem of suffering is ever with us. What could be worse than being sick?

A miraculous poolside healing

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 and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed. 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.

John 5:1-9a

Bethesda, a care facility for sufferers: repeated stories of suffering. One in particular, a man with severe physical suffering. Emotional suffering too, then relational “I have no one”.

But someone else is there. Of all the places He could be, he was here. It says something about this person Jesus. Not in some ivory tower, but in the mess and muck of life, there with them. This is important, loving. But unlike us He can do something! Get up, pick up your mat, and walk (just by His word). 38 yrs shows the gravity of the disease. Picking up the bed shows the completeness of the cure.

A Sabbath related controversy

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.

John 5:9b-15

The religious rulers had defined a sick man carrying his mat as “work”. It was carrying a “load” from one dwelling to another. They were fixated on the mat, not the merciful healing of the desperate man. Here the opposition to Jesus begins in earnest.

There is something worse than severe sickness

Jesus and the man meet again, in the Temple. “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or a worse thing may happen to you.” Jesus does make a connection between sin and suffering. Some suffering, sickness is a result of sin. But Bible makes it plain that we cannot make it concrete. Not all suffering is the result of the sufferer’s sin.

The something worse is the final judgement. Not recognising the reality of sin, and the judgement it must bring.

Jesus’ solution to suffering.

He is the solution. Jesus chose to heal him in the Sabbath, demonstrating what the day was really for, to remember the rest of God and the mighty healing, rescuing power of God. Opposition will take Him to the cross, where he will bear that something worse.

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