Jn 5: Epic Hope for Epic Failures

My Many Epic Fails

If you are reading my blog and haven’t ever met me, I want to let you in on a secret: I mess up a lot! Some of my friends think I’m super confident because of how I don’t hide my mistakes. People will say things to me like, “I love how you don’t feel any need to put on a pretense of having it all together.” (supposedly that’s a compliment…)

The truth is I sometimes wish I could be that put together with-it person who does things like fold her fitted sheets and connect her ideas to each other in conversations. I just find those things boring. I’m always looking for the next adventure. I’m always jumping in, then considering if it’s a good idea. So, yeah. I mess up, a lot.

I really wish I could tell y’all that I have been a paragon of virtue during this whole pandemic thing. But I’ve been spending a lot of time being angry and then despairing. It’s such an issue that I’ve set up some stops to keep me from venting either of those emotions on social media or anyone else I might encounter. Still, I’ve had a couple of epic fails and I’m trying to muster up the humility to epically apologize.

Reflecting on my grand failures from last week, made reading John 5 this morning especially encouraging.

The Healing of the Man By at the Sheep Gate Pool

The following is a paraphrase of John 5:1-15 from the Cindy Felkel Version. The CFV is an extremely biased paraphrase which no one should ever rely on as their main source of Bible knowledge. I highly encourage you to read the story for yourself here: (John 5)

Jesus and his disciples were walking around Jerusalem during one of their festivals. As they walked around, they came to a pool where a whole lot of people with disabilities gathered. Some of them believed they could be healed if they went into the pool just as the water was stirred. All of them depended on charity from people coming to Jerusalem to worship.

Jesus went to this pool and walked through the crowd of people with disabilities. He walked up to one man, Bartholomew and asked him, “Do you want to be healed?”

Now, you’d think a man who couldn’t walk would immediately say, “Well, duh. Yes. Of course.” But Bart told Jesus about how hopeless he felt. “There is only one way I know of to be healed and that is to go into this pool when the waters are stirred. I’ve sat here for 38 years and no one has ever cared about my condition enough to spend the day with me and help into the pool at the right time.”

Jesus smiled and said to Bart. “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” Then Jesus slipped away without saying anything else to Bart.

Bart then walked through Jerusalem during a religious festival while carrying a mat. Which was a completely shocking, in-your-face, ballsy disregard for the religious rules about the Sabbath day. He was soon stopped by some religious leaders who accused him. “You are breaking the law. You are not supposed to work on the Sabbath day. You are blatantly sinning. Carrying your mat is work.”

Bart knew the rules. He also knew he had just been healed. So he replied to these elite leaders with a boldness which surprised him, “The man who healed me told me to pick up my mat and walk. So that’s what I’m doing.” (So sorry. Not sorry about your rules. I can walk.)

The leaders continued to ask Bart who it was who healed him. But Bart had no idea it was Jesus.

Later Jesus found Bart at the temple and talked to him for a while. “It’s nice to see you walking. You need to quit doing the foolish thing* that caused you to be paralyzed or something worse is going to happen to you.”

What This Story Means for Me and You and Our Epic Failures

This story is found in John 5:1-15. I definitely added my own biases into my paraphrase. The most controversial is the last sentence where I said “the foolish thing” instead of “sin”. The original Greek word means “missing the mark”. It refers to not keeping God’s commands. Many influential top Bible scholars and teachers use the words “sin” and “sinner” with an added implication of being rejected by God. They’ve studied lots of theological texts which I have no desire to sort through or argue with. I simply spend a lot of time reading the stories of Jesus and trying to learn all I can about them.

Because of what Jesus did, I believe the best definition of the word “sin” is: missing the mark of God’s intention for his good creation.

Sin hurts us and hurts our relationship with God. It grieves God because he wants better for us. Everything Jesus did demonstrates the Father’s heart for us. This view of sin is the only way this story from John makes sense or gives us any hope when you and I mess up (even if it’s continuously…)

How God Really Feels About Our Sin

Think about what Jesus did in this story to demonstrate how God feels about us when we “miss the mark”/sin.

Jesus walked into a crowd of people with illnesses. He didn’t pick the only guy there who was worthy and righteous. He picked a guy there who was hopeless. The man Jesus healed surely thought he was despised by God for whatever rule he had broken that caused him to be there in the first place. The religious elite told him so. Thirty-eight years of no one caring enough to help him, shamed him into believing it was true.

Jesus separated the man’s mistakes from his value by healing him then immediately telling him to break the rules. Imagine how empowered this man must have been. After a lifetime of being condemned by the religious elite, he was healed and on the same day confronted by a group of religious leaders for doing that which was forbidden: carrying his mat on the Sabbath.

The seemingly simple exchange was really about the most profound religious question. Why do people suffer? Is it a judgment from God or simply the human condition? The religious leaders of the day (and today) said this man’s condition was because he broke “the law”. He sinned. Jesus healed his condition and then told him to break the law. (or their interpretation of the law anyway…)

Then it gets even more AH-MAZING!

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” John 5:14 (NIV)

Jesus had already healed the man, empowered him to confront the religious leaders, then he talked to him about whatever thing he had done or was continuously doing which “missed the mark”. Jesus didn’t look at this man in his suffering and think “serves you right you dirty, rotten sinner”. Jesus showed him his value. Separated his condition from religious rule keeping and then confronted a behavior he needed to change.

When you consider this alongside the next section of chapter 5, it is incredible. The healing of Bart on a Sabbath day and then telling him to carry his mat, drove the religious leaders into a tizzy. They immediately began questioning Jesus. “Who gave you the authority to do this?”

His answer is surely what gave John the incredible hope he had at the end of his life as he wrote these reflections. In John 5:16-45, Jesus tells the religious leaders that God the Father has given him all authority. He has no need to be validated by humans. He has come to show people who God is. Everything Jesus did shows us exactly how God works.

Think about that in relation to the story of Bart. God doesn’t look at people who are suffering and think they deserve to suffer because he is disgusted with them for being dirty rotten sinners. God sees people suffering and values them deeply. He longs to show them their value. For some reason, he doesn’t take away all the problems in our world, he shows us all our value while we suffer. Sometimes, he takes away the suffering but it isn’t because of our ability to “not sin”.

The really, really cool part about all of this is :

Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son… whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged. John 5:22-24.

Consider Jesus’ interaction with Bart alongside this passage from John and how it applies to you and me and all the ways we miss the mark. When you and I believe in Jesus, we have eternal life, not because we instantly got our act together. Jesus is the one in charge of judging and the story of Bart tells us how he judges us and our sins. He cares very deeply about everything we do because of what it does to us and how it hurts us and our relationship with him. Does he want us to quit sinning, to quit being foolish, to quit missing the mark? Absolutely! Because he doesn’t want something bad to happen to us. He wants us to live a full abundant life with him. Sin messes that up. It doesn’t make us less valuable or less adored.

How does any of this apply to our current pandemic struggles?

Whatever you are struggling with, it is not a judgment from God. Though it may very well be a consequence of foolish things you or others have done. Viruses are not signs of God’s displeasure, they are a part of the natural world and the human condition.

Jesus is our judge and he deals with the world the way he dealt with Bart. He wants the best for us. He wants you to follow him, find your purpose, and quit doing things which hurt you, hurt others, and keep you from seeing how much God adores you.

Whatever you are feeling right now, Jesus wants to hear about it. He cares about your isolation. He cares about your fear. He cares about the uncertainty we are all facing. He’d love to hang out with you and talk about it. He’d love for you to follow him so you can know all he has for you. He sees all of the sin in your life. He absolutely wants you to stop missing the mark because he adores you and wants the best for you. He wants to empower you just like he empowered Bart.

So, I’m sorry for those things I posted on your page. I’m sorry for that thing I yelled. I need to write a letter, or several…

Thankfully, Jesus’ work in my life isn’t dependent on me deserving it!

Blessings y’all. Praying for your pandemic peace and at-home hope!

Cindy

P.S. The man with a disability is not named in John’s re-telling of the events. It just made the story easier to write about. Especially since I use people first language.