It is said that elephant trainers, to keep elephants from running away, chain the leg of a young elephant to a stake. Each day it tries to pull itself loose, but to no avail. Finally after many tries, it quits trying to pull away and accepts its lot in life. When the elephant gets older and stronger, it would have little difficulty pulling up the stake, but it doesn’t know it and doesn’t try. Finally the trainer removes the chain from the elephant’s leg and it is content to remain with its owner.
Today we meet a man who was chained for thirty-eight years to an illness. Jesus stepped in and gave him strength to walk away from his chains (John 5:1-16).
“Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone gets down there before me.’”
Surely this man, after going to the healing pool every day for thirty-eight years, had lost hope. When the water stirred the healing power of God came into the water, and the first to enter it was cured. As the years went by and others continued to beat this man to the pool, he had probably given up trying. Having little or no hope of getting well, the man gave Jesus an excuse when asked if he wanted to be well.
Isn’t this man an image of Israel? They had been waiting centuries for God to send them a Messiah. As they continued to go through the motions of life without the visitation of a Messiah, they got used to their circumstances. Many had given up hope.
“Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your mat and walk.’ Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.”
Jesus did not take the man down to the edge of the pool and push him in the water. Instead, as a fountain of living water, Jesus poured out healing water from his own heart into the man. The Old Testament way—occasional healing in the pool—gave way to the New Testament way—Jesus became the healer. No longer did the sick have to go to the pool; Jesus was the “new pool.” In performing this miracle, Jesus indicated that the promises of God were being fulfilled at that moment. The Messianic age had begun.
We note that there was a large number of people at the pool, and Jesus healed only one of them—the one who seemed to be the most miserable. With a simple word of command, he sent strength into the man’s feeble body, and the man rolled up his mat and walked. He was a living testimony that the time of fulfillment had come.
Though we live in the time of fulfillment sometimes we have the attitude of the man in the story. We accept our lot in life and expect little more. We’ve become like the trained elephant who doesn’t realize the power he has.
Lent is here to remind us that we live in the Messianic age and have access to the power of Jesus.
