I don't have anyone

Sabbath mornings were quiet in that part of the world. No work was allowed on the national day of rest, and even small activities were prohibited. The quiet was deeper still among the people lying beside a certain pool. Here lay a great many blind, lame, and paralyzed people. Waiting, hoping that the water would bubble with some mysterious energy, as it sometimes did, and that they could quickly enter the pool and perhaps be healed.

Jesus walks among the blind, lame and paralyzed people. Here, he is not recognized, he was probably alone. He notices one particularly man, a man who has lain there, beside that water, for thirty-eight years, hoping to be healed. He stoops down, and says to him, "Do you want to be well?" I have no one, says the sick man. He does not says yes he wants to be healed or no he is reconciled to being sick, he simply explains what is perhaps his biggest grief, I have no one to help me get to the pool and by the time I get there it is already too late.

He had laid alone in the crowd of sick people. Surrounded by people but without anyone to help him. Thirty eight years of trying to make it on his own, living with hope, and coping with despair, alone.

"Get up!" Says Jesus, "roll up your sleeping pad, and start walking." Feeling the new health rippling through his body, the man does just that. Jesus slips away. Where does the man go? This man without a relative? Alone, he carries his sleeping pad, but wait; it is illegal to carry a burden on the day of rest, and a sleeping pad is a burden, a biggish roll, as long and as wide as a man. The streets are busy as people walk to the temple to worship. Soon he is met by religious leaders who question him. The man with the bed-roll has no answers. He does not know who it was that knelt beside him as he lay amongst the blind, the lame and the paralyzed. He does not know who it was who said to him, "Get up!"

Jesus knew where to find the man, he would be in the temple. He would have gone there to worship, to make a sacrifice to atone for breaking the day of rest, or perhaps to beg for money. Jesus finds him alone in the crowded enclosure, and there is another quiet conversation. The conversation is surprising because we are expecting encouragement or blessing. But all the recorded words we have of this conversation are these: "Sin no more" says Jesus, "in case something worse happens to you."

Stop, Start a new paragraph here, because a new topic has invaded the story. Jesus makes a connection between sinning and bad things happening. The questions that the religious have wrestled with over the years are many. Do all people who sin suffer misfortune? If something bad happens to a person does it always mean that they have sinned? Can we surmise that any friend of ours who is ill, deserves to be ill, because of some secret sin. This is no place to read the book of Job, but he and his friends argued this very question ferociously.

The consensus of religious opinion today is, no. Being sick does not mean that a person is being punished for sinning. Sickness happens because the world is no longer perfect and the world is no longer perfect because of .... that's right, you've got it.

Now, the man who carried his bed-roll knew who had healed him. There is no mention of gratitude or promises of repentance, maybe they were made and omitted from the story. He goes to the religious leaders and tells them, "The man who healed me is called Jesus." There was probably a gasp of satisfaction because now the religious leaders had something to accuse Jesus of. They can make him stop preaching, or make him go away. They can turn his popularity with the people into disapproval. Ah, good, they make their plans, they will expose Jesus as a law breaker in front of the people in the crowded temple enclosure. The man who had carried his bed-roll on the day of rest goes...where?