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Summary
In Monte Python’s “The Life of Brian,” an ex-leper — having been healed by Jesus — plans to ask Jesus to make him a bit lame in one leg so that he can go back to begging at the city gate.
Who would want to be lame? Who would ever choose a self-imposed prison of disease? As I asked these questions, I pulled a doughnut, a flask of whiskey, and a cigarette, out of my coat pocket. And I lit the cigarette.
In John 5, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for one of the pilgrim feasts. Pilgrims would take ritual baths before entering the temple to worship. By “The Sheep Gate” there was an enormous pool with five roofed porches called “Bethesda,” that is “House of Mercy.” In it lay a multitude of “invalids” (the weak), for there was a legend that the first into the pool after the water had been touched by an angel would be healed.
Imagine: Hundreds of the “last and least of these” lying around this pool, just waiting to compete for mercy. The first were first and the last were last at getting into the pool of Mercy. But Mercy IS the first freely choosing to be the last, in order that another might be first. So, if you got into the pool first, it revealed that you were last at Mercy; if you won, you lost at Love, which is everything that the Law requires. And yet, if you had been first and chose to be last that another would be first, it would reveal that Mercy had miraculously bubbled up from inside of you like a fountain in a living temple. I doubt that little, if any of that, had been going on at the Pool of Bethesda. Instead, they all believed that Life was “The Survival of the Fittest” . . . not “The Sacrifice of the Fittest.”
One man had been there 38 years. That’s the amount of time the Israelites wandered in the wilderness after refusing to believe the Word of God recorded in the Law (That’s the five books of Moses — five, like the five roofed porches containing the pool of mercy.)
Jesus asked the man, “Do you want to be well?” How rude! Is Jesus blaming the lame? What could be more . . . lame? Jesus is not like Job’s three counselors. But maybe the man wants to be a victim? If you’re a victim, it means that you’ve done nothing wrong and someone else is wrong; you avoid blame, but you also avoid mercy.
Jesus doesn’t blame the man as if he could’ve done any better.
And yet, he doesn’t excuse the man as if he did not do anything wrong.
In fact, in just a few verses He will say, “Sin no longer that nothing worse may befall you.”
All suffering is the result of “the sin,” but suffering doesn’t pay for the sin; suffering reveals the sin and points us toward our Helper.
In the garden (on the temple mount according to the Jews), Adam (mankind) couldn’t find his Helper (God alone is our “Helper [ezer]”) who was with him. So, God made two out of Adam and planted a tree in the middle of the garden. On the tree in the middle of the garden is The Good in flesh and The Life who is our Helper. The snake whispers: “Help yourself; take the fruit.”
God blames us but not as if we could’ve chosen the Good (We didn’t have the “knowledge of Good and evil.”) And yet, God doesn’t excuse us as if we each didn’t actually do the evil. “He consigned all to disobedience (that’s doing the evil; that’s our choice) that He may have mercy on all” (That’s what it is to be chosen by the Good.)
Jesus is our Helper. The invalid doesn’t answer Jesus’ question. Instead, he seems to make an excuse: “I have no one to help me into the pool.”
Maybe he’s 40 years old? Maybe he was born without “the knowledge of Good and evil.” Maybe, around the age of two, he started taking knowledge of the Good, attempting to make himself Good, and it made him rather bad. Maybe at about five, he went to school where we all learn the first are first and the last are last. Have you ever noticed that winning a spelling bee or the hundred yard dash in school (or business, politics, and war) is what we call “cancer” in a body?
Maybe this man has no idea what “well” is; maybe he’s been institutionalized.
In the movie “The Shawshank Redemption,” all the prisoners are “institutionalized” except one. That one breaks into the warden’s office and plays a symphony over the prison loudspeakers. “For the briefest of moments, every last prisoner at Shawshank felt free,” says one of the old prisoners. But that’s the rub: Those who have been institutionalized by the principalities and powers don’t want to be free. They don’t want to be well, for they’ve forgotten or perhaps never known what it means to be well, or good, or alive. They do not hope.
The man couldn’t choose the Good, so the Good chose him. He couldn’t choose Life and so the Life chose him, and that’s the Good. He couldn’t get to Mercy, and so Mercy got to him — and that’s the Gospel.
Jesus didn’t wait for an answer; He just said, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And “at once” the man did. “So, the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful to you to take up your bed.’” How lame is that? Do they not want to be well?
It wasn’t against God’s law (The Law of Moses), but it was against their commentary on the Law, the Mishnah. That’s why I was smoking a cigarette. I wanted to break some Evangelical American Mishnah. I’m not saying that it’s good to smoke, drink whiskey, or eat doughnuts. I’m saying that there’s something far worse. And that is making laws about cigarettes, whiskey, and doughnuts and then judging yourself and your neighbor with those laws (or even God’s law). For that will trap you in a prison of self-righteousness and then debilitating shame.
When we don’t want to love, we lust for law, call lawyers, and start making excuses (“It was the woman that you gave me,” says the man.) An addiction to law is utter ignorance of, and hatred for, Love. Love fulfills the Law. The Law describes Love, but God is Love. Do we want to be like God — the First who makes himself last and least and crucified on a tree?
If you think that you’re a winner because you made someone else lose, you obviously don’t want to be well. And you didn’t make Jesus lose; He gave His life before you took it.
Jesus found the man in the old stone temple and told him to “sin no more” (stop sinning). “And the man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’”
Maybe they didn’t know, and we don’t know, what “well” is, just as they didn’t know and we don’t know what “the Sabbath” is. If God was working “until now,” then no man was “finished” (well, whole, complete) when and where Jesus spoke those words. No man is finished until he or she truly hears the Word of God on a tree in a garden, praying: “Father forgive them; they know not what they do”; then proclaiming, “It is finished”; and then delivering up His Spirit — the Spirit that falls on His living temple and fills each of us with faith, hope, and love, the Judgment, Choice, and Mercy of God.
That’s the 7th sign that is also the Substance. “Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days.” And “He was speaking of the temple of his body,” where first are last and last are first; where all are humbled and exalted, for everyone is dancing; where all the work is rest. This is the House of Infinite Mercy, Bethesda. Not only does most of the institutional church (the church governed by Mishnah) not know what the Sabbath Rest of God is, they will kick you out for claiming that it exists — this Holy Place where “everything… is very good (Gen. 1:31),” and “It is finished (Gen. 2:1, John 19:30).”
When Jesus finds the man in the old stone temple, He says, “Behold, you have become well. Sin no longer that nothing worse may befall you.” What sin could he have committed for 38 years as an invalid and still be committing other than trying to be Good by taking the Good, such that he could no longer receive the Good, know the Good, or want the Good who is Mercy?
When we look at Him, I think He must be saying, “You are well . . . right now, when and where eternity touches time. You are right; stop trying to make yourself righteous. You are just; stop trying to justify yourself. You are good; stop trying to make yourself good and be the Good that I have made you. You are well; stop trying to make yourself well, lest you make yourself unwell and something worse may befall you.”
Understand? You can only hear His voice “now” and in the inner sanctuary of the temple that is your soul. And so, you cannot live the Christian Life by “trying harder” to do so. You can only live your eternal life from the inner sanctuary as you listen to the music — the voice of the one who speaks all things into existence.
He knows that part of you hasn’t wanted to be well; confess it. And He is the part of you that just confessed it and does want to be well. Thank Him for it. He wants to be Well.
And “now” you’re free.