The Fields pt3
When Jesus went to Jerusalem, he did not spend his time in elite hostels; nor did he concentrate his ministry merely in the temple or give attention to the rich and famous who could help him politically and financially with his ministry. He concentrated on people in need, which for the elite of society was part of his problem. In this story he visited the pool below the temple where the helpless dregs of society lay in a pathetic state. Most “proper” people probably avoided places where they had to pass among the sick and suffering both because it was an uncomfortable setting and because of the potential for violation of ritual purity rules. But Jesus went out of his way to visit such a place
In terms of an explanation it is possible that the man’s theory here may have been based on the occurrence of an interesting natural phenomenon in which at high water times the pool apparently was infused by a periodic influx of spring water that stirred the pool with excess water. The question here is not one of the possibility of miracle
Jesus went out of his way to visit such a place, and he found there a paralytic, helpless man, who had experienced the wilderness of abandonment for what seemed to have been an eternity: thirty-eight years (5:5). The same apparent feeling of an eternity seems to have been present in Israel’s almost endless wilderness wandering experiences (thirty-eight years) from Kadesh to the brook Zared (cf. Deut 2:14). It would be difficult to argue for certain that John intended such an immediate comparison of the two time periods because there is no such direct textual reference made here in the passage. But it is suggestive. All who experience hopelessness understand how time seems to hang like an eternity
The man’s response to Jesus’ question, “Do you want to get well?” (v. 6), revealed both his poor understanding of God and his sense of hopelessness. Instead of answering the question, he gave his gloomy testimony and his perception of how God works. The only hope evident in his testimony was his commitment to a myth of a periodic miraculous troubling of the pool, which allegedly brought healing to the first person able to jump in
Over the long period of time of living with his problem the man had seemingly become convinced that God operated on the basis of “first come, first served.” Another of his problems was that he undoubtedly felt a sense of abandonment because of his helpless condition and his lack of support from others, particularly in times when he thought healing might be possible. He apparently had become negative
The point is that this statement should strike the reader with the force of a bomb. In music it would be like a powerful discord. The story had been a wonderful example of the graciousness of God in Jesus. At this point, however, the dark side of the story is introduced. The opponents of Jesus, here designated purposely as “the Jews,” pounced on the helpless man who had just experienced the incredible joy of entering the promised land of a new existence.
The Jews in this story were not interested in the well-being of people but merely in their rules and traditions
All they could see was a man carrying a bedroll and breaking the Sabbath law, defined for us by a later Mishnaic codification (cf. m. Šabb. 7.2, the rule against carrying goods), which was formulated to support their understanding of the Torah principle
In this story Jesus found the man in the temple, a place where in his hopeless state he would have found little welcome but in his healed state was now able to enter. Moreover, Jesus addressed him in his healed state: “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (5:14). These words are not meant to be a cause-and-effect statement related to his sickness or paralysis. Such a direct identification between personal sin and illness, which was proposed by the disciples in the story of the blind man (9:2), was firmly rejected by Jesus (9:3). The statement of cause and effect in this story, therefore, must be taken as referring to the eschatological correlation between sin and judgment that undoubtedly is the meaning of “something worse” in Jesus’ warning to the paralytic
