I’ve been asked to preach twice in June. I’m inclined to stay with the Gospel of John. Previously I’ve preached on John 4, John 11, and John 13. I think I am going to backtrack now and pick up in John 5. Particularly, the story of the healing of the 38-year-old paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda. This is such an interesting story with great themes that parallel those in the other 3 chapters I’ve gone through. However, there is a fairly complicated textual issue that exists in John 5 (verse 4) akin to that of John 8. Since I am preaching back-to-back on the same day (June 28th), I think I may follow John 5 with John 9 (the healing of the blind man). Similar stories with dissimilar responses by the healed men. That greatest challenge is always in the translation, since I still need a translator. I am on the cusp of trying to preach in Spanish, and I think I could do that if I translated the text before hand. But since there is a wedding that weekend with a number of English speaking people from out of the country in attendance, I’ve been asked to preach in English with translation.
Here is the text from John 5 that I would like to pursue (from the ESV):
“After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
The above is from the ESV which, like most modern translations, does not include verse 4. The omitted verse reads as follows:
for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.