Questions God Asks Us, Part 8: Do You Want to Get Well?

 Friends, we’re now in part 8 of 10 of this sermon series I put together based on a short study book called Questions God Asks Us by an author and pastor named Trevor Hudson. In every chapter of this book, Hudson has us take a look at a question that God poses to people in the Bible–either through the voice of our Creator in the OT, or through the voice of Jesus in the NT–and then he unpacks how we might faithfully respond.

We’re getting very close to the end of this book. The last two chapters are both about Jesus’ death and resurrection.This week we’re in John, chapter 5, taking a look at one more miracle. Jesus is in a place called Beth-Zatha, or Bethesda, depending on spelling, and it’s a Hebrew word that’s used with a purpose, because it means “house of mercy”. The house of mercy has a watering hole that has become the preferred hangout spot for the ill, injured, and disabled folks of the area. A safe place, with constant access to free water. And not just water, SAFE water, water that you can bathe in and drink without making yourself sick. Ever wonder why Jesus’ very first miracle in John’s Gospel was to turn jugs of water into wine? It wasn’t just because it was a wedding and the open bar ran out. Wine was safe to drink. Contaminated water could kill you. That miracle didn’t just ensure a great party, it saved lives.

Back to the watering hole–just having constant access to safe, free water is, in itself a miracle. About 2.2 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia would be spared of their suffering with that miracle. But, all the water in the world does no good at all if you don’t have access to it.

Fighting for access to a resource that’s RIGHTTHERE is a huge struggle for the poor among us, in every age, and that struggle is intensely magnified by disability. Because of my life with my son, these stories about Jesus helping the disabled hit harder. Whether it’s water and food, or safe and affordable housing, or healthcare, or education–even here, in the wealthiest country on earth, accessing what you need is a constant struggle for those who are stuck behind the barriers we put up: race, class, gender, disability. 

Jesus drops by this watering hole and realizes he’s on holy, vulnerable ground, and he decides to stay and hang out for a minute. Among the folks he meets there is this man with no name. We know he can’t walk due to a vague illness, and we even know that he hasn’t been able to walk in 38 years, which is an awfully specific number. It’s also more years than Jesus has been alive. The folks around this man know him, and his story, and they know it well. Yet, these folks haven’t been very helpful. 

Legend had it that this watering hole wasn’t just valuable for washing and drinking. A rumor circulated that every time the water started moving, that happened because an angel stirred it up. If you stepped in the water right at the moment it started swirling, you’d be cured of whatever ailed you. This man tells the reader: I’ve been here since before Jesus waiting for my turn in the water, and the line just keeps getting longer and no one helps me get to the front.

The question Jesus asks this man is an interesting one: “do you want to get well?” Jesus doesn’t presume to know how to be helpful. He’s also a poor, homeless man, but he still knows that he can’t understand what he hasn’t experienced himself. Would a healing miracle help this man? Does he want the kind of wellness that Jesus can imagine for him? Is that his desire and goal? Does he want to put in work toward that goal? Jesus wants to understand this man’s mind and heart.

This man’s reply is even more interesting: no, he actually doesn’t want to get well. At least, he doesn’t want Jesus to snap his fingers and make his health perfect. He doesn’t need or want Jesus to do the labor for him. He’d be happy to do it himself. What he asks for, of all things, is access: just help me get in the pool.

Of course, Jesus does the big thing anyway, and he tells the man, hey, no prob, why don’t you just get up and walk there? You’d have to imagine the man’s sarcastic inner voice going “well, golly, if only I’d thought of that!” But it works. The man walks to the water, and whether it’s because of Jesus’ power, or because of the legendary angel stirring the pool waters, or because the man saw strength in himself he didn’t know he had until someone believed in him–he’s finally at the pool with everyone else, which is what he wanted. Not necessarily to walk again, but to have fair access.

I’m gonna tell y’all that that’s what I want for my son, Daniel, who’s autistic. Not a perfect life. Not for anyone to snap their fingers and get him everything he wants. And not healing. I want him to be my wonderfully quirky little boy, with his stims and his shoes on the wrong feet and his knowledge of Star Wars that puts George Lucas to shame. I want him to have the miracle of access. I want him to have the same chance as someone without a developmental disability. 

On this day, Reformation Sunday, we celebrate that just over 500 years ago, when a friar named Martin Luther saw that his Church wouldn’t give access to all people, he changed his Church. He boldly named 95 things that needed to be different, and nailed a list of demands to the front door of his church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31st of 1517. He stirred the waters in the pool. While he had many blind spots, he fought for the poor and the less educated to have the same access to the Church as he had. He started by tackling the practice of selling indulgences–telling folks their sins would be forgiven if they’d give some money to the Church. He eventually moved on to making the Bible available in the language you speak at home, not just Latin, a language you’d only speak if you had an expensive education, and he utilized the recent invention of the printing press to make the Bible affordable for the average person. He taught that everyone could read the Bible, everyone could pray, everyone could talk to God, without having to learn Latin, and without needing the intercession of a priest. Did the common person around him want to get spiritually well? Maybe. But they could get there on their own if they had access.

So, for us sitting here in this room in 2026: do we want to get well? From whatever it is that ails us? Maybe it’s an illness or an injury, or that of a loved one. Maybe we’re ailing in another way–struggling to make ends meet with bills and debt and the cost of living, struggling to get by at work or school, struggling with friends and family, struggling with faith, struggling with hope, struggling with the injustices of the world.

Do we want to get well? Sincerely? Do we want to align our goals with that wellness? Are we willing to work for it? It’s worth honestly asking ourselves that. And, like with the man by the pool, the answer might be more nuanced than “yes”. But the Good News is that because of Jesus, because of Martin Luther, because of faithful folks that changed a Church that wasn’t serving its people–we have access.

Amen.