Explore the Bible: Pick Up Your Mat

The Explore the Bible lesson for Jan. 15 focuses on John 5:5-16.

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  • The Explore the Bible lesson for Jan. 15 focuses on John 5:5-16.

The theme of water continues from chapter 4 to 5. John 4 presents the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Jesus’ request for a drink of water being pulled from the community well sparks discussion resulting in the discovery of his messiahship and the transformation of a community.

In John 5, water is again the center of attention. Here, the setting is the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where the tradition of its healing powers is alive and well. And once again, Jesus is the instrument who will “stir” not the waters needed for healing, but so much more.

The stirring of the water

The Bethesda Pool was seen in Jesus’ day as prime real estate for finding a cure that couldn’t be found elsewhere. While its use as a ritual bath (known as a mikveh) is still debated, the history of the site as a destination for healing is well established. Even after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the location was used by the Romans for its medicinal benefits.

What is certain in John is the commonly held belief that one could receive healing when the waters had been “stirred.” As noted in 5:7, this healing comes with one major caveat, one must be the first to get into the water when the undesignated time of “stirring” occurred. While John 5:4 is best read as a later addition to the gospel by a scribe somewhere down the line and not a part of the original text, the tradition of “stirring” is noted in 5:7.

Day after day was a poolside teeming with people hoping to be first into the healing waters when the mysterious moment presented itself.  It was this “stirring” of the water they all longed for. And it was a stirring of a different kind that Jesus would deliver.

The stirring of a new life

Hope is a powerful thing. Sometimes, it becomes the only thing that enables a person to hold on when a situation is dire. John does not disclose to his readers that the ill man at the Bethesda Pool was a man full of hope, nor does he suggest the man has given up. Instead, the picture is one best defined by one caught between the two.

The man in John 5:7 tells Jesus: “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.” What Jesus does for the man comes out of the blue, as he directs him to “pick up your mat and walk” (John 5:8).

When the man thinks that his best way forward is receiving help into the pool, Jesus offers something much more. This is the point for John—the sign that Jesus is the messiah is again connected to water.

For the Samaritan woman, Jesus suggests that the “living water” he provides is superior to the water in the well. Here in John 5, Jesus shows the man that the healing he offers is superior to the “stirred” water of the Bethesda Pool.


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Jesus does not stir the water for a needy man. He does however stir a new life defined by healing. Gone is the old life of the mat and the attempts to get into the pool first. Now, neither the mat nor the pool is needed. A new life of healing has been stirred.

The stirring of controversy

In his haste to experience his new life fully, one might assume, the man does not get the name of the one who healed him. John suggests this is primarily the doing of Jesus as he, “slipped away into the crowd that was there” (John 5:13).

What does not seem to be a problem for the healed man is seen as a major problem by the Jewish leaders. For Jesus not only stirred a new life of healing for one, but also stirred a controversy for others.

The problem for the religious leaders was not the man’s healing. Rather, it was his being healed on the Sabbath. Wrapped up in the compulsive desire to keep the Sabbath day “holy,” the Jewish leaders missed the sign of the miracle that the Messiah was afoot.

Jesus is eventually outed as the Sabbath-dishonoring culprit he was seen to be in 5:15, and it is noted by John in 5:16 that this leads to “the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.” Simply put, a controversy is stirring.

Jesus does not leave the issue alone. In John 5:17, he states to the Jewish leaders, “My Father is always at work to this very day, and I too am working.” Further exasperating the issue of Sabbath disobedience is now the suggestion in 5:18 that Jesus is “making himself equal with God.”

What was a possible correction of Sabbath misunderstanding is now a full-blown controversy of Jesus’ self-image as a presumed blasphemer. Needless to say, Jesus is not afraid to stir up a new life of healing as well as a good controversy—all for the sake of his mission. And as those needing to be stirred, we all rejoice to hear “pick up your mat.”

Matt Baird is assistant professor of Christian ministry and director of the graduate program in the School of Christian Studies at East Texas Baptist University.


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