Context is everything. If you read about a pool with a bunch of people lying around it every day, you might think it a place of joy and leisure. This place was anything but. This was a spot where invalids gathered, drawn by a tradition that healing could be found when the pool’s waters were stirred.
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
The invalids may have been there for several reasons – perhaps it was a convenient place for their caretakers to park them for the day, where they could keep one another company. People blemished or infirm in any way were considered ritually unclean, and thus unfit for entry into the temple courts where they might defile others. It was a harsh, isolating life for the blind, the lame, the paralyzed in Jesus’ day, with no promise of medical treatment. We are told that the man at the center of this week’s story had been ill for thirty-eight years; how many of those had he spent in this place? This faint hope of healing in the pool must have kept them going, one day to the next, a community of invalids stuck together by misery and occasional blessing.
You don’t have to be blind, lame or paralyzed to know the power of faint hope. In fact, usually when people say, “I’m hoping for the best…” they have long since abandoned any hope for the best, and have settled for a dim “maybe things will change…” Often we will endure unhappy or unfulfilling circumstances for far longer than we should because of our stubborn hope that something could change. And often the only thing likely to cause a positive change is our changing the way we engage that situation.
As we begin to explore this story, let’s bring to mind the places we feel stuck or running on fumes. Where in your life might clinging to a faint hope actually be blocking movement toward a more robust change?
Who do you know who puts up with circumstances that could perhaps be altered – enduring pain or misconnection or half-life because it seems too scary or difficult to seek a better strategy? This story might give us some clues into how we might facilitate some movement in others.
The invalids gathered at that pool were hoping for the best, without knowing what the best really was – that the Best had walked into their midst that day when Jesus showed up. Even we who know his power sometimes hesitate to hope for his best in our lives. And to us he whispers, “Let me show you!”
No comments:
Post a Comment