“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” John 5:7
The fifth chapter of John’s gospel finds Jesus returning to Jerusalem for a Jewish festival after performing His second miracle while in Galilee. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie-the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. (John 5:1-3) The scripture goes on to tell us that Jesus saw a man that had been an invalid for thirty-eight years lying by the pool. When Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed, his reply was the complaint recorded in verse seven. He never really answered Jesus’s question but in spite of himself Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. (John 5:5-9) This account usually focuses on the miracle, that it occurred on the Sabbath and the subsequent consequences for Christ performing a miracle on the Sabbath.
But for this tidbit, I want to focus on the cultural context of the Pool and the often overlooked word “stirred”. Archeologists have discovered there were actually two pools. The lower pool was used as a Jewish mikveh (ritual purification bath) and the upper pool was a reservoir of clean water that supplied the lower pool. But before that, the Romans had built a large temple on the site to the god Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. The Greeks built Asklepions or healing centers all over the Greek empire. The ill and disabled would congregate at these centers, drink and bathe in the waters and sleep inside the temple walls. People seeking healing would wait by the water, waiting for Asclepius or one of his helpful “serpent spirits” to churn the water. They believed this was the best time for a healing miracle was when the water was “stirred”. The Greek word for “stirred” has several meanings but the context in this verse means disturbed, terrified, frightened, confusion, thrown into a turmoil and this context is only found once in the scriptures. (NIV Exhaustive Concordance) Some versions of this scripture attribute the stirring of the water to an angel. And while the people seeking healing believed this superstition, it’s important to realize Jesus never confirmed it and from the meaning of the word “stirred” it was most certainly not an angel of our Lord. Jesus had walked into a place filled with Jews practicing pagan rituals and confronted a longstanding cultural trend. It wasn’t just another day at the baths or another miraculous healing. Jesus was making the claim that He was the only true source of healing-He was the source of “living water” in a place and to a people clinging to a culturally accepted pagan belief.
At some point in our lives, we all are in need of healing. Whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual. Do you sit by the waters of the culturally accepted Dr. Google, prideful intellect or opinions of family and friends before seeking God? I know I am guilty and those sources can definitely stir up confusion, fear and anxiety. Instead, when we congregate at the feet of the Healer we can get up and “walk” in peace and drink the only “Living Water” that redeems our health and well-being. And that’s your Tuesday Tidbit.