Take Up Your Mat and Walk

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’ They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.’ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. John 5:1-15

Sometimes passages like this are very hard to hear. Particularly as someone with mobility issues, this story of waiting by the pool and then miraculous healing, makes my heart ache. Ache with desire for instantaneous healing, followed by another deeper ache and question. Why am I not healed, and why don't I get a miracle? This is something we all ask at times in our lives. We wonder if we are not worthy or even more we wonder if we deserve it. Yet Jesus doesn't require this man to do anything to be healed. The poor man was left to beg by his family, left to beg to be moved into the pool and abandoned by society. Jesus tells him to simply get up. And, he invites us to get up, as best we can and trust that there is more healing and more transformation coming. On this day, as President Carter is laid to rest, may we remember the gift of one who showed us how to serve and have faith in the face of challenges and rejection.

Eternal Creator, you seek us out in our waiting

you know our needs as we linger by healing pools

you seek us out in our lost and panicked moments

and stretch out you hand to help us rise up.

We often sink into despair and disappointment

thinking we have no future and no hope

while you are constantly seeking us out in the dark

and bringing us hope in our hurting places.

Help us today to live as your servants here

give us the faith we need to stand up today 

so we might kneel by the needy and the lost

and offer our hand in love in your name. Amen.