The healing of the paralytic
at the pool of Bethesda provides interesting insight into who Jesus is and what
he expects from us. For one, notice that Jesus immediately responds with compassion
to the man’s condition. His compassion motivates him to ask the
paralytic whether he wants to be healed. Jesus does not
wait for the man to ask for healing, but he does wait for the man’s
response. He does not force or impose healing. He offers,
and then he waits for the response.
Although the man responds in
the positive, he only asks that Jesus help him to the pool. For, he
does not yet know who Jesus is or what Jesus can do for him beyond giving such
assistance. Thus, the man’s request is not born of faith. Had his
request been born of faith, he would have looked for healing from Jesus rather
than from the waters of Bethesda.
Despite his lack of
faith, however, once the man indicates desire for healing, Jesus responds with
mercy. His mercy provides far more than assistance to the pool. It’s
as though Jesus cannot wait for the man to say yes, so that he can heal him
completely of his paralysis. Later, Jesus also heals the man of his sins,
proving once again that he has power over both life and death.
In the same way, Jesus
does not expect an expression of faith on our part before healing us. He offers
and then he waits for a simple desire on our part to be healed. This
is the nature of his mercy and forgiveness. Indeed, the two qualities that
Jesus talks about the most are mercy and forgiveness.
Jesus shows how important
these qualities are in relation to the kingdom when he heals the paralytic on
the Sabbath, even though this goes against Jewish custom. Jesus does
this on the Sabbath because it is the right thing to do. In this
way, Jesus shows that mercy and compassion take priority over ritual
and custom as a guide for our behavior.
Our hope is to avoid the
predicament of the Pharisees. They try to explain away the miracles of healing
rather than accept what their eyes were telling them. Even worse,
they claimed to know God’s Word and how to keep God’s Law but failed to live
its spirit. Jesus condemns their blindness as the worst kind of
sickness because they refuse to see him as the light of the
world. In fact, they find every reason not to believe in
Jesus. The Pharisees suffer from spiritual paralysis because they stubbornly cling to spiritual darkness as
their preferred way of life.
The way that we seek, on
the other hand, is the way of the Lord. Our search is really a
journey of conversion. We all need conversion. Conversion means
leaving behind one way of life and taking up another. Our conversion
is a spiritual rebirth and gift of faith from Jesus, the Light of the
World. For this reason, spiritual enlightenment is one of the
primary goals we focus on during Lent. We all need to be enlightened
and to grow in faith. During Lent, we prepare to receive the light
of Christ so that we can celebrate our gift of faith once again at Easter.
