Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him,
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him,
Where Christ asks “Do you want to be well?” it is possible he may also be asking, Do you prefer your pain to the possibility of change? Do you want more to see the miracle accomplished your way then to see it accomplished at all? Indeed, do you really want the thing you say you long for? His questions gently pierce the heart of the human condition we all share, bidding us to receive the very thing we ask from the only one capable of giving it.
Where we seek meaning, are we willing to be changed by that meaning? Where we seek help, are we willing to receive instruction? Where we seek healing, are we willing to be transformed? Where we seek true community, are we willing to relinquish autonomy? Where we seek understanding, are we wiling to climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die?
To every cry of every heart, Christ calls out, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). The question he asks as we walk forward is “Do you really want to be well?”
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