18th March 2026

18th March 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (John 5:1-15 focus v3-6)


Message (Alan Burke)


There is a gripe that I often hear, and it comes from young and old, and that is how bad the NHS is these days. Now, I’m not writing this to have a go at anyone who has a gripe about the NHS; there are many failings, but I think we forget just how fortunate we are with the universal health care it offers. And here, as we come to the passage before us, we are confronted with just how bad things would be if we didn’t have modern healthcare and especially universal health care. Aye, we might have to wait; they at times get it wrong, but if we had no NHS and had to pay to see the doctor or if we hit the rewind button and went back less than 100 years ago and experienced health care pre-NHS, we’d have some shock. Jesus comes to the pool of Bethesda; it was a pool surrounded by five covered walkways with their roofs held up by columns. They surrounded a complex of pools that were used for ritual purification, and it had become a place where people went to be healed. There were many under the shelter of the colonnades: the sick, the blind, the lame, the paralysed. Each in desperate need, longing for healing; there was no such thing as the welfare state, no NHS, no charities doing work among the needy.


This is a pitiful scene, filled with those who are broken, who knew the reality of living in a sinful world. This would have been a distressing sight for anyone to witness. This was filled with people who couldn’t physically move, who were sitting there, lying there. Many of them relied on friends and family or handouts from strangers to support them because you couldn’t apply for universal credit or disability benefits to help you survive; you were reliant wholly on others. Not only was the sight of this pitiful, but for many there who would have been unable to do anything for themselves, they would have been in their own filth. The smell would have met you before you entered. Many there were totally unable to do anything for themselves, no carers, no rota of volunteers to do toilet runs. Help if they had soiled themselves, they would have lain in it. Their clothes would have been filthy. They would have not only had their original complaint but hygiene-related diseases, skin infections, rashes due to prolonged exposure to waste. Never mind the physical, think of the emotional distress and feelings of shame or isolation. 


In that place there was much need there, but there was little hope, only that of the water being stirred and being the first one in the water and into this pitiful scene Jesus enters. A scene that is filled with desperate people, looking to be healed, looking to once more lead a normal life, hoping beyond hope that they could have a miracle cure. In this scene we are told of one man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. That is a long time in anyone’s books. While we don’t know how long he has been there at the pool hoping to get into the water when it was stirred, it was long enough to know the disappointment of seeing others time and time again to get there before him. The Greek word that is translated as invalid along with what we are told in v7 means that either this man was paralysed, or at least he was so weak that he could hardly move. He would have been a pitiful sight. And to him Jesus asks “Do you want to get well?”


In all of this, with the scene set, if we are open to seeing it, to accepting it, in the condition of this man we see the reality of all people in our natural state. This man could not do anything for himself and neither can we. The gospel confronts us time and time again that because of sin that we are not just sick, we are totally depraved, we are spiritually dead and we cannot do anything to help ourselves. What this man needed and what we need is Christ to intervene on our behalf. We need him to act for us. For it is not the things that this world looks to, or that many people are trying to do, like being better, trying harder, none of these things will save us what we need is Christ to act on our behalf, we need him to intervene. This man was helpless without Christ and so are we, we need him to intervene for us, to show his mercy, the mercy that would come that that sheep gate figuratively pointed to as the Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world. Only he can deal with our greatest need, our sin so that we might be forgiven.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q18 Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?
A. The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.
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