Caistor St Edmund

For reasons that will become clear, I’ve been trying to remember where I heard the phrase, “If this is the answer, what is the question?” When I looked it up, I discovered that it comes from Mock the Week.

It is amazing what questions people came up with on that programme. A lot of the comic effect was that they obviously had nothing to do with the right answer, and in the end, after a number of occasionally highly inappropriate questions, someone would come out with the correct one, related to something that was in the news that week.

I say this because recently we have been reading some stories from John’s gospel, both on Sunday mornings and at All Invited on Sunday afternoons (you’re all invited, by the way, to both of them) and one of them was about the time Jesus met a man who was unable to walk, by a pool in Jerusalem. This pool was said to have healing properties, so that each time the water stirred up, the first person to get into it would be made well. I’ve read this story lots of times, but Cathryn pointed something out that I hadn’t noticed before.*

Jesus asks him a question, and the man answers like this: “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

So let’s play the game for a minute: If this is the answer, what is the question? I asked some people in my house and they both suggested it would be something like “Why aren’t you in the pool?” You might suggest “Why haven’t you been healed all this time?”

But that isn’t anything like the question Jesus asks him. He asks, “Do you want to get well?” Given that he is at a pool which is famous for its healing powers, and he is frustrated that he can’t get in, you would have thought that the only logical answer would be an exasperated “YES!”

The fact that the man doesn’t give that answer ends up showing us a lot more about where his heart is than we might have expected. A whole lot of disappointment, and reasons why things aren’t going to work out for him, come pouring out in response to a very different question.

It makes me wonder how often I don’t listen to the question Jesus is asking me. Where do I jump in, and give him a whole lot of reasons why something won’t work? What if I am introducing all sorts of complications, when all Jesus is doing is asking me “Do you want to get well?” Why don’t I just give in and say, “Yes?”

It's a good question, isn’t it? And like the comedy show, we already know the right answer. Whether it’s physically well, or emotionally well, or spiritually well – at peace with God through knowing the forgiveness and love and grace that come through faith in Jesus – isn’t your answer the same? Shouldn’t you really just give in and say, “Yes?”

*Much of this article was inspired by a brilliant scene about this story from the fantastic TV series The Chosen. You can watch it by clicking here. It’s definitely worth 5 minutes of your time.

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