Get Up
Now there is in Jerusalem … a pool which in Aramaic is called Bethesda … Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learnt that he had been in that condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am going to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked John 5:2,3,5-9
The pool of Bethsaida was a well-known place of healing. It was in Jerusalem itself, just to the north of the Temple mount area. The original site has been excavated by archaeologists and is a tourist destination today. But it wasn’t just a Jewish healing place. Evidence suggests that pagans too regarded it as a holy site.
The waters in the pool would bubble up periodically and the common understanding was that the first one who then got in would be healed. Modern Bible versions tend to leave out verse 4 and its explanation of an angel stirring up the waters, because the verse was not added until well after John’s gospel was written and circulated.
Clearly the man found lying there had made a way of life out of his long wait for healing. Jesus’ question to him is quite pointed, “Do you want to get well?” Don’t assume the obvious answer would have been “Yes, of course I want to get well.” Prolonged illness wears down the strongest of us and that’s assuming the man really wanted to be healed when he first got there. We can get so used to our situation that we honestly no longer think about it changing.
John doesn’t record the paralysed man ‘believing’ but he does record him responding to Jesus’ command and the man couldn’t have done that without some measure of faith. “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” What would you have done? Would your eyes have been on your limitations or on the possibilities?
Jesus isn’t putting a patch on an old situation. He’s telling the man to get up and start a new life. The word for “Get up” is regularly used in the New Testament to describe the resurrection. Jesus is bringing new life, a new creation, bursting through from the world to come into our present world (Matthew 12:32).
Do you find yourself complaining to God about your life? Do you drag yourself around from one day to the next like the paralysed man in our story? You might be waiting for Jesus to put a band-aid on your old life and wondering why nothing changes. Jesus is calling out to you “Get up.” You want a bit of resuscitation but He wants a full-on resurrection. Your old life is dead. Find out who you are in Christ and start to live out of His resurrection life in you.
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