There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be well?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me." Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk." Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.
Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, "It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat." He answered them, "The man who made me well told me, 'Take up your mat and walk.'" They asked him, "Who is the man who told you, 'Take it up and walk'?" The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him, "Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you." The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.
The Gospel of the Lord.
In reference to this gospel passage Johann Tauler said: “If we could only wait for the Lord, we would have the power and strength to pick up and carry the thing that was carrying us before.” It is a wonderfully suggestive phrase.
I hope you are convinced that God is often closer to us in times of sickness an suffering than when we enjoy perfect health. Seek no other doctor than him.
John's Gospel is in two parts: the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory.
In the Book of Signs there are seven miracles: Lazarus, Cana, walking on the water, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, this healing of the man blind from birth, the healing from afar of the son of the royal official, the healing of the man unable to walk ill for 38 years
In the Book of Glory, we have the Passion, death and Resurrection of the Lord.
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