The House of Mercy (A Reflection on John 5)

I have been living rough for the past thirty-eight years. I sleep on a hard, cold slab of stone. I can’t drag myself more than twenty feet in any direction, and I am surrounded by two hundred people in more or less the same situation. We all exist in an open-air shelter provided by the generosity of the temple called The House of Mercy.

That’s exactly what it is and exactly how it feels. Every morning you wake up after a terrible night’s sleep and are immediately reminded you are an object of pity. Without the charity of the good people of the temple, and others who throw food our way, we would shrivel up and die in a couple days’ time.

It’s an ugly place. The smell is strong and embarrassing. Out of shame, we don’t look each other in the eye. Once a day, shepherds lead hundreds of animals through the Sheep Gate right nearby. They take them around the corner of Fortress Antonia and off to the Market of Annas, in the court of the Gentiles, where in a few days they will be sold and slaughtered. We are treated to that daily spectacle as if to make us grateful that we are not those sheep—or possibly to remind us that we are all just awaiting a final slaughter.

Can you picture my situation? It’s pretty bad. This has been my lot for almost four decades. I am crippled, sickly, unemployed; I smell like human waste, and no one ever comes to visit me. I cannot blame them. My neighborhood is pitiful. We are all nothing more than objects of sympathy.

I spend my days quoting verses I have memorized: Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. For man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward. For He inflicts pain, and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal. The lame will leap like a deer. When men are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’ then He will save the lowly. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my soul refused to be comforted. Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who satisfies your years with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle…and many, many more. I have plenty of time on my hands.

One day a man named Jesus walked right up to me. Something like that just doesn’t happen in this part of Jerusalem. He asked me if I wanted to get better. Out of all the hundreds of sad cases, he singled me out. He told me to stand up, and that was it. I stood up, and my world completely changed.

I was one hundred percent better. Strength, health, vitality—I felt like I could run around the city for hours with energy to spare. I washed myself, got a clean set of clothes. I secured a job, found a place to live, and started making friends. Eventually I married, bought my own place, and began to influence the community. I had a growing sense of importance, dignity, and self-worth. Most importantly, I was no longer sick. I don’t know what I was, but I was something else.

The man who made me whole all those years ago left me with some strange parting words. “Go and sin no more, or something worse will happen to you,” he said. He told me that something worse might happen to me. He said I was to sin no more, and then he walked off.

That was a bizarre encounter. Sin no more. What does that mean, and can I do it? What can possibly be worse than thirty-eight years in the House of Mercy?

I tried it. I tried to “sin no more.” I wasn’t successful that first day. I gave it another, more serious effort the next day, and wouldn’t you know, I failed again. This kept happening day after day. I was making progress in every other area of my life but not that one. I started to really worry about this “something worse.”

Just for the heck of it, I did something today I had not done in a long, long time. I went to take a quick peek at the poor folks stuck in the House of Mercy. I did not get too close, but from a safe distance I glanced around the corner to see who was still there and if the place was as horrible as I remembered.

After watching for thirty seconds or so, I turned around and headed back to my wife. God, I am so thankful I am not like those stinking, disgusting wretches still living off of the pity of others. I am healthy, happy, successful, and making a difference here in Jerusalem. Tomorrow morning I am going to wake up and have a sinless day. You just wait and see.

I woke up hopeful that today would be the day, but it wasn’t. Another day filled with envy, lust, hatred, petty rivalries, a little harmless thievery, and so forth. I wish Jesus had not said that to me. Every morning I wake up and have this ever-present burden, a constant heaviness that I cannot shake. Every time I look at myself, I see a person falling short and committing the very transgressions that great healer told me not to do. One of these days this worse thing is going to happen to me.

I remember waking up all those years ago in the House of Mercy and being painfully aware that I was in constant need of someone’s pity and goodwill. I was nothing more than an object of pure grace. I never forgot that—not for one moment.

But now, at least I have a few things going for me, and I am truly thankful that I am not an object of unmerited love. I don’t need God’s grace any longer. I just need…what do I need? Let me think about this for a minute.

I don’t need God’s grace. That’s for losers who are sick and still living in the House of Mercy. I have made improvements and am no longer at the bottom of the barrel. What do I need from God?

I know…I need Him to acknowledge my improvements. I need Him to announce, if only to me—but preferably to many others—that I am not the person I used to be. I used to be sick and worthless, but now I am exemplary. I can serve as a guide to the weak, blind, and needy. What I need from God is a pat on the back. Look what I did with the gift of health given to me all those years ago.

My life is now something to celebrate. My name is beginning to make a little noise here in town. I can boast about my citizenship. I can serve as a light to those who are foolish, unproductive, and stuck in sickness. I might even open up a shop and advertise healing for those in need. Then I will write a book about how to improve your life and get things turned around the way I did.

This life I am now living is so much better than being a pathetic object of God’s charity. Nothing worse is going to befall me. I may still be sinning every day, but I am steadily making my way forward, constantly distancing myself from that horrible, sickly thirty-eight years of illness. Being where I am today is infinitely better than being a declining, incurable, bedridden object of God’s compassion. I thank God I am not “that” anymore.

And there it is. Do you hear it? The Pharisee’s prayer echoing through the corridors of my self-congratulation: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” I have become the very thing Jesus warned me about. The paralytic at the pool has traded one paralysis for another—a paralysis of the spirit far more crippling than any withered limb.

The worst thing that can happen to a person is for them to be healthy, whole, productive, exceptional, and God’s gift to the world. When we wake up every morning in a world of hurt—when we are ill, nauseated, scared, confined, pain-ridden, and frail—when it is obvious that we are creatures of mercy through and through, we cannot help but cry out. We are under no illusion that we are anything but beggars before God.

When our ship comes in and the good times are rolling along, then the “something worse” has already happened. That something worse is the misguided illusion that we are no longer proper objects of grace. We can put grace in the rearview mirror. Grace is for those who are truly sick and languishing in their sins. The Great Physician need not darken my door. Should he stop by…I know where I will send him, but He need not bother with me.

Those living in The House of Mercy are broken and contrite in every way, every day of their lives. Some people are given a blessed reminder of the real human condition by way of illness, poverty, or neglect. Hanging with Christ on the cross, we scream, “My God, why have you done this to me?”

“Go and sin no more” is the new, daily, and constant burden that characterizes the life of faith. Whether we are sick or healthy, rich or poor, or whatever our condition, we wake up with the burden of perfection. It is a heavier burden than thirty-eight years of enfeeblement. It’s the command that keeps us in His House of Mercy.

We never actually leave God’s House of Mercy. Success, strength, and youthful vigor deceive us into saying goodbye to that place. Adios to that old life, and on to the real, abundant life. Pain is a loud reminder to “Come back.”

Jesus gives us the life of abundance by doing what? He connects the gift of superabounding, all-encompassing happiness with dying on the cross, laying his life down in excruciating pain. In his sacrifice he makes us the smoke, the fragrance, which rises to heaven as both an aroma of death and an aroma of life.

Right after Paul wrote those words to the Corinthians, he himself did not comprehend what the Holy Spirit had just said through his pen. He pauses a moment and then writes, “Who is adequate for these things?”—meaning, who understands what I just wrote? I certainly don’t.

None of us reaches the point where we understand God’s pain, sickness, indifference, and lack of power or interest to heal. Illness and bad news from the doctor cannot be understood or embraced, only lamented. Even for the Son of Man in the midst of suffering, the whole thing is an enigma. God’s presence is felt as a terrifying absence, and His absence is experienced as a judgmental, condemning presence. Nothing brings that out in a person more than illness.

God heals us by fatally wounding Christ. What could be worse than chronic, excruciating pain? When Jesus speaks of something worse befalling us, He is speaking about not needing the cleansing, comforting, wounding medicine of his cross.

In our condition of weakness, his forgiveness is most powerful. When suffering is at a premium, then the unique comfort that comes from being on the cross is also at a premium. All holiness and godly sincerity of heart, and all confidence deep down in our conscience, comes from living in God’s house of pure grace. It’s the only thing to be proud of.

I wake up every morning in my own bodily fluids, and by the grace of God I am aware of that fact. What could be better? Do I really want to be a person who wakes up and doesn’t need His mercy? I am feeling a bit better today and looking forward to showing off for God.

Test yourself every day to see if you are in the faith. How do you do that? Ask yourself if your life looks like a crucifixion. Am I up on the cross with Jesus yelling at God? If yes, then you have passed the test. Christ is in you. The grace and mercy of God are sufficient, and in fact, God’s real power is perfected in my illness.

Psalm 103 is a famous and beautiful psalm about youthful renewal and being restored to perfect health. It is one of the verses I recited every day while in the House of Mercy. Don’t we want a new beginning? Yes. Where do we get it?

It is not happening inside the life of any one of us. Look at the Nativity scene. See the baby Jesus? That’s the new, perfectly healthy version of you. You have been born again to a newness of eternal life inside of Christ in Bethlehem.

Jesus was laid in a feeding trough. He was placed like so much grain for consumption in a crib for devouring. Exactly. His manger anticipates his cross. Jesus is the food that has come down from heaven. Take and Eat him! His flesh nourishes the whole earth. His wounds are what heal. His illness is what makes us well.

This is the great reversal that the world cannot comprehend and the flesh refuses to accept. We spend our lives trying to climb out of the House of Mercy, when all along the House of Mercy is where we were meant to dwell forever. The Pool of Bethesda—that name itself means “House of Mercy” or “House of Grace”—was never just a waystation on the road to self-sufficiency. It was, and is, a permanent address.

Is the cross a healthy condition or an unhealthy one? It is both an aroma of life and an aroma of death. The King of Kings is the dregs of the earth.

How blessed is the man God chooses to bring near to Himself. Being brought near to God means being brought near to his cross. That is much more than any of us bargains for. It means going back to the House of Mercy, remembering we never actually left.

All we like sheep are being led to the slaughter of Christ. Illness is like being crucified to yourself, to the world, and to God. Paradoxically, that is something to boast about.

In Christ, Pastor Frank