***
Gospel: John 5: 1-16
There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
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 else gets down there before me.”
Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.
Now that day was a sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who was cured,
“It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”
He answered them, “The man who made me well told me,
‘Take up your mat and walk.’“
They asked him,
“Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?”
The man who was healed did not know who it was,
for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there.
After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,
“Look, you are well; do not sin any more,
so that nothing worse may happen to you.”
The man went and told the Jews
that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus
because he did this on a sabbath.
The Gospel of the Lord.
***
(The pool of Siloam)
***
I’m sure many of us remember the story last year about a Tennessee man who stockpiled 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer at the outbreak of the pandemic.
He plotted to price gouge people on Amazon, but was quickly discovered, publicly shamed, and forced to donate every last bottle.
It’s easy to be angry with him; he was a greedy opportunist. But selfishness rears its ugly head within every human heart.
***
In the Gospel, there’s a man who’s been ill for 38 years. He’s staked his hope on being healed by bathing in the pool of Siloam.
It was commonly believed that the waters were stirred occasionally by an angel. The first person to race into that bubbly bath could be healed.
Think of Siloam like the shrine at Our Lady of Lourdes. People from around the world migrate to that holy site, praying to be healed of some illness.
Unfortunately, this man never made it in. Whenever the waters were stirred, a stampede ensued, causing a desperate heap of humanity to crawl over each other, racing to be first.
The closest this man ever got was second place – until Jesus appeared.
“Why are you laying here?” he asks him. “Everybody gets down there before me.”
A bit like that man from Tennessee, people eyed an opportunity and thought about themselves first.
***
Can’t we hear the cry of this crippled man still echoing in our world today?
Think of how many are in need of a hug, a handwritten letter, or a helping hand. Many are out of work or out of luck, hoping someone will notice.
May the Lord open our eyes to the needs of our neighbors in need, “for the greatest among you,” Jesus says, “must be your servant.”
How, then, might we eye an opportunity, not to serve ourselves, but someone else today?
***
