The third miracle from the gospel of John.

I promised a few months ago to look at the miracles in the Gospel of John and to retell them. This story can be found in the fifth chapter of that gospel. First, I will explore the background; then I will tell the story.

On the outskirts of hustling bustling Jerusalem, there was a pool called Bethesda. It was a crowded place, filled with broken people, whose only hope was in the water. The story went that an angel from God would come down occasionally to stir up the water and the first person into the water would be healed.

I do not know if this was true or not. To me it seems somewhat cruel for God to send an angel down to stir up the water, and then sit back and watch these people, with their broken bodies, stumble and fumble their way down into the water, on the hope that the first one that stepped into the water would be healed. Cruel, yet there was hope.

One of the people waiting beside the pool was a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. This brings up two things. First, had he been sitting there for thirty-eight years? I do not know, but I think he had been waiting to get better for that long time. John does not say he had been lame since birth, just for thirty-eight years. This leads to the suspicion that he once was not lame.

Next, why do we refer to people who have some physical limitation as invalids? Does their limitation make them less than valid? Do doctors validate people when they assist them into good health? Are people 'parking passes' that get validated?  It seems to me, whoever invented the English language ought to be invalidated.

I digress, so let me do the opposite and regress back to my story. This man is lying by the pool, when Jesus walks by and speaks to him. “Do you want to get well?”

After thirty-eight years of disability, countless years of waiting by the pool, innumerable numbers of insults and insensitive remarks that were meant to be kind, but which actually hurt, the man thinks to himself, “Is this guy for real? Is he joking? What does he think I am doing sitting by the pool?”  Many angry and bitter things raced to explode from his mouth, but with just a snippet of sarcasm he responded, “I try to get into the pool first when the water is stirred, but someone else always gets there first.”  He looked at the man that spoke to him, gauging him and his reaction. A strong man, hands rough from working as a carpenter, muscles toned from carrying lumber and walking across the countryside. Perhaps, just maybe, this man would stay and help him into the water. This was the simple wish of the man waiting by the pool, as he looked expectantly.

Then he heard the words, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” The man did not hesitate. He knew the feeling; he knew he could walk. He stood up, picked up his mat, and walked. He walked straight into a gaggle of members from the Jewish Rule Clique.

“Hey! You cannot carry your mat! It is the Sabbath! That is work!”

He replied, “All I know is, the man who healed me said, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’”

When the Ruler Clique found out it was Jesus who had healed the man, they threw him a party. They festooned with streamers and broke out the party hats. They ordered cake and ice cream. They were thrilled that someone was going around healing the lame people. NOT! They persecuted him. They were angry. “How could you heal on the Sabbath? That is work! There are rules and rules MUST be followed. ”

Their response, an epic fail, rendered them invalid. Invalid to the rules that hobbled the spirit of joy in the man’s healing, blind to the miracle before them, and deaf to the joy in the man’s voice.

The second miracle from John's Gospel.

A few weeks ago, I re-told the first of the miracles recorded in the gospel of John. This week I am retelling the second miracle recorded in John.

Sometime later, in that same city, Cana in Galilee, there was Royal Official Dude (Rod) whose son was dying. He heard that Jesus was just a two-day trip away. He remembered the wine from the wedding, and he had heard rumors of Jesus healing other people throughout the countryside. Without wasting a moment, he left to find Jesus.

His staff, of course, was in an uproar. They scurried after him. Frantically, they emailed on their black berries, and asked him questions about important royal governance stuff. His security team unobtrusively moved ahead of him, scanning the crowd as they swiftly moved down the road. No one noticed the team, except that they kept saying weird things into the sleeves of their robes. Things like, “pile of donkey dung twenty clicks to north”, or “incoming camel at about your seventh hour”, or “herd of swine approaching, deploy Angry Birds”.

Rod was an important man, with important stuff to do. However, his son was dying and that was taking precedence as he and his entourage hurried the two-day journey to find Jesus. As they approached, crowds parted and people stared. The man searched the crowd, wondering where Jesus was, what he would look like, and what Jesus would say when they met.

Finally, he saw Jesus. He was not what he had expected. This man was dusty from travelling, his clothes were shabby, his skin was darkened and weathered from days spent in the sun and wind, his hands were gnarled from manual labor, and a dozen suspicious characters, each of whom looked more unkempt and distrustful than the last, surrounded him. His security team were talking to their robe sleeves apprehensively. His advisors were snapping pictures and uploading them to “Face Scroll” indiscriminately.

Used to all the kowtowing, bowing, and backslapping requests made of royal officials, Rod pleaded. He pleaded for his son’s healing. The crowd stood by, watched, and waited, eager for another miracle. Something exciting, something they could talk about; something they could tweet.

The hush grew over the crowd as Jesus spoke, “Unless y’all see signs and sensations, you won’t believe!”

The royal official blinked, then swallowed. His mind raced.  His son’s life hung in the balance. The silence grew and spread, even the security detail stopped talking to their sleeves. “Sir,” the official pleaded, “come down before my son dies.”

“Go.” Jesus said, “Go. Your son will live. Now go on, git outta here.”

The man did not wait to see if it was so.He believed and started home. The second day of his journey back home, servants came from his house, meeting him along the way. “Rod, your son…He is alive.”

“When? When did he get better?” Rod asked.

“Yesterday, just after lunchtime.”

“Slamming!” Rod exclaimed, and told his family and friends his story. “It was yesterday, right after lunchtime that Jesus said my son would live!”

There was a wedding...

Hans Christian Andersen wrote in The Puppet-Show Man, “The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.” Sometimes that is how scripture is read. The miracles have become so commonplace that any sense of wonder, excitement, and joy has disappeared.

I was struck by this thought while talking with a few teens about the seven miracles found in the Gospel according to John. By the way, the resurrection of Christ, although miraculous is not included in those seven miracles. When I investigated why the resurrection was not included, I was told that theologians do not count it as one of the seven. Go figure.

So we have a gospel where we count the miracles, stand when it is read, and have become dull to the wonder of the stories—the miracles. I wanted to try and recapture some of that joyful excitement and wonder for myself, so I retold the first miracle contained in John to myself and would like to share it with you. I have been told that to enjoy fiction a reader needs to suspend reality.  In order to enjoy this retelling I invite you to suspend memory. Pretend you have never heard this story before  and immerse yourself in it anew.

There was in a little town in the back country of Galilee, a wedding. The ceremony went off without a hitch, for which Hazaliel, the wedding coordinator was thankful. Now the reception was in full swing. The happy couple was happy. The guests were happy. And Hazaliel was happy.

The mood in the kitchen was not so happy. There was no more wine. This was not just an inconvenience; it was catastrophic. There were furtive whispers, “I am not gonna tell Haz, you tell him.” “No way, he is gonna pop like an over ripe fig.” Servants scurried, whispered, and cast accusing glances at one another. In the midst of this, a woman walked in. The servants thought to themselves, “This woman is no help. We need a man. Someone who can take charge; someone who can go buy more wine!” She heard the muffled whispers, she saw the looks, she knew they thought she was just in the way. But, she knew something they didn’t.

She slipped quietly from the kitchen and returned a few moments later with her son. Twelve of his friends tagged along. She cleared her throat and in a stage whisper spoke to her son, “They have run out of wine.”

Every eye turned to look at the pair. The servants began to hope that perhaps this strong young man was a vintner, someone who makes wine and could get them out of the pickle they were in.

The man scratched his head and looked at the woman. “Ma, this isn’t our concern, this is their party, they can cry if they want to, but it isn’t time for me to do my thing yet.”

She looked at him, with that look. You know the look. The look only a mother can give her son, the look that says, “I know all about you and you better do something about this because I am your MOTHER!”

The son knew that look too. The servants in the room watched his expression change. They knew that finally someone was going to do something. A man, someone who could do something, someone with authority.  

“Fill those jugs with water.” He directed. Everyone looked at him blankly for a moment. They were jars for ceremonial cleansing. They were to hold water for people to clean the dirt from their bodies. They were…bathtubs.

One of the servants started to bring in water. He thought to himself, “This guy is a lunatic, but at least when Haz finds out we are out of wine and hears what is going on he will yell at him and his mother, and not us.”

Another joined carrying water thinking to himself, “Oh this is rich, I wonder what kind of shenanigans this guy is up to.”

When the jars were full, the man told the servants to dip some up and take it to Haz for approval. The servants just stared. Gawked. Until finally, one of them worked up the courage to take a sample of the bathwater to the coordinator.

Everyone crowded in the doorway, watching with great, gleeful anticipation at the wrath that poor servant would incur when Haz tasted the bathwater. They held their breaths and watched him taste it. Then they watched him as he hurried to the groom. They overheard his excited words. “The best wine I ever tasted.”

Wait…What? “Best wine?”

They ran back into the kitchen and dipped some up. It was the best wine they had ever tasted and in the corner stood the woman, a scarf over her face as she suppressed her laughter.