John: Who Is This Man?

In the fifth chapter of John's gospel we have been watching Jesus at the pool of Bethesda with a great multitude of blind, lame and paralyzed people. I have already drawn the spiritual parallel to that of a congregation on Sunday morning. There are many blind people present among us, people who cannot see where they are headed, who are stumbling on into disaster and they do not even know it. There are lame people here, those who cannot walk as they ought to. They know how, but they cannot seem to make themselves do it; instead they stumble, falter, and fall. There are paralyzed people here who want to do more than they are doing, but their wills seem to be in a grip they cannot break. They find themselves returning again and again to habits of thought and attitudes of mind which they know are wrong and hurtful.