If I surveyed everyone asking the question, “What do you want more than anything else?”, I’ll bet that the answer would vary greatly according to age and/or life circumstances. If we asked a child, they would think in terms of the immediate. A McDonalds Happy Meal, perhaps, or the latest Lego set. A teenager might want the latest smartphone, or video game (appropriately rated, of course). The VCE student would likely talk of wanting good marks that would see them placed in the tertiary course of their choice – and obtaining their driver’s licence, too. A University student would love to have all their final essays and assignments done and dusted, and their new career all mapped out. A young married couple might talk of looking forward to the new house or, maybe, the first baby. The retiree would love to be able to afford that six-month world trip, … You get my drift.
What do you want more than anything in life?
Ask that question of somebody who has been injured and finds their health irreparably damaged, and they’d probably say, “My health back”. In John’s Gospel (5:1-9) is recorded a moment where Jesus asked a crippled man what seems to be a very strange question. The man is laying by the pool of Bethesda – amongst hundreds of other sick and maimed folk. It is basically a hospital and hospice in His day – it’s a place filled with pain and despair. This man has been there for 38 years, waiting for healing. Thirty-eight years! Jesus goes over to him and asks him the strangest of questions: "Do you want to be healed?" What a strange question! Sitting there all that time, helpless, frustrated, bitter and probably angry, and Jesus says, "Do you want to be healed?"
But Jesus is not being rude, or callous. He is not toying with this poor man, either. His question is very, very serious, indeed. The word used here for “healing” is not the word related to our English word "therapeutic" which is about physical healing. The word Jesus uses means much more than physical health, it means “wholeness or soundness in a totality of being” – body, soul and spirit. So Jesus is saying to this man, "Do you want to be whole?" He is concerned with much more than the physical picture before him - He sees an entire physical, emotional, mental and spiritual picture - and asks a very challenging, probing and disturbing question – “Do you want to be a whole person?”
The man doesn’t say “Yes, of course!” He starts complaining about his circumstances and his lack of help. Jesus cuts in and says, “Get up! Pick up your mat, and walk!” The man does so. Many inferences can be drawn from this moment. But the big issue here is not so much about physical healing, but change. The man hesitated and started to complain. He’d probably spent decades complaining and had become quite used to being disabled. He’d built his world around his disability and dysfunctionality – understandable in many ways, yes. But the past so powerfully governed his present that he could not see any valid future for himself as an autonomous human being. So, one of the things I see when I read this ancient narrative is that when Jesus asks His strange question – “Do you want to be whole?” - He is really asking, “Do you want to change, or stay the way you are?”
That’s the critical question Jesus asks of each one of us: “Do you want to change?” And when He does ask - as Holy Spirit, or God’s Word challenges us - so often we start finding reasons for not wanting to change, and not wanting to embrace wholeness. “It’s too hard”, or, “God won’t do for me what He has done for others”, or, “But you don’t understand my situation”, and a whole raft of other complaints, excuses and diversion tactics. Why? Well, one main reason, I think. We want Jesus to do “magic” for us that is work and effort free. We can become so “comfortable” in our predictable dysfunctionality (some of it chronic and painful!) that change requires just too much energy, it’s too stressful and there is way too much responsibility required of me – and I have learned to manipulate others and build my world around my dysfunctionality, bad attitude … and sin. I don’t want to change. Not really. Harsh? Jesus didn’t think so …
Jesus’ question of his man was no joke. He saw what was going on and challenged the man to accept change unto wholeness … or stay in the dysfunctional world he had built around his “unwholeness”. The point is this: that when Jesus confronts us with an invitation to wholeness, He is challenging us to stop bowing our knee to dysfunction and wrong thinking and accept the need to change by repenting, that will usher in wholeness of body, soul and spirit.
I get it. I do. Change is difficult. It can be very stress-inducing. Definitely! But it is essentially about repentance - changing the way we think, and embracing the new possibilities offered to us in God’s salvation. But change, even difficult change, with which Jesus challenges us, is worth it as we start coming out of dysfunction and distorted views of reality, to see and know and live God’s abundant life – our best life.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth AND THE LIFE.”
Do you want to change? Or stay the way you are?
Think on these things … and maybe, start repenting … and asking for help.
Ps Milton
Sources: Gospel of John; a conference lecture at Wollongong Institute by Dr. Martin Robinson ca: 1993.