Episode
Do You Want to Be Made Well?
- Podcast
- Grace for All
- Published
- May 24, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 286
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not_requested
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Summary
John 5:6-8 (NRSV) "When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be made well?' 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 making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.' Jesus said to him, 'Stand up, take your mat and walk.'" I'll be honest with you. The first time I really sat with this passage, the question Jesus asks made me a little uncomfortable. Not because it seemed cruel — but because I recognized myself in the man's answer. Jesus walks up to someone who has been ill for thirty-eight years and asks, "Do you want to be made well?" Which sounds almost absurd. Of course he does. What kind of question is that? But notice what the man says. He doesn't say yes. He explains why healing hasn't happened yet. He's got the whole system figured out — the pool, the stirring of the water, the people who get there ahead of him. Thirty-eight years of the same obstacle, recited like a script he's memorized so well he's stopped hearing it. Jesus asked if he wanted to be healed. The man answered with his limitations. I don't say that to be hard on him. Thirty-eight years is a long time. Long enough for a situation to stop feeling like a situation and start feeling like an identity. Long enough for the waiting to become its own kind of life. And if I'm being honest, I've done the same thing. Maybe not with physical illness, but with other things I've carried a long time. Old wounds I've tended so carefully started to feel like they belonged to me. Patterns I've complained about for years without ever quite deciding to change. Grudges that have become such familiar furniture that I've stopped noticing them. Jesus's question has a way of cuttin…