The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
May 13, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 19

Everything But...
           The Lectionary makes little allowance for Mother’s Day. It’s not that mothers are not mentioned or are undervalued in the Biblical saga, but there is no story in Eastertide that really features a mother. Instead, we have a miraculous healing, something mothers are accustomed to doing.
           For a long time, scholars thought that Jesus’ healing of the man at the pool of Bethsaida was a non-historical parable, because they had never found evidence of such a pool in Biblical times. John has always been viewed as the most theological of the Gospels, but not on the same wave length in terms of historical detail.
           But now the archaeologists have found the pool, and the story acquires a little more oomph. This was the Watrous spa for the Jerusalemites, where an underground stream would periodically issue a rippling current which people were convinced was caused by angels and so was able to heal of all sorts of ailments. But you had to be there when the angels flapped their wings or it wouldn’t matter how nice the water was.
           In a Bible where numbers are usually intended as symbols, not mathematics, the number of 38 years this man was lying poolside is unusual. Perhaps that was his exact tenure, so that number stuck in the collective memory of early Christians. The Tragically Hip rock group has a well-known song about a man “38 years old and never kissed a girl.” I think that 38 year old man and the crippled man 38 years waiting having lost all hope must have known one another. Jesus simply told him to get up and work at carrying his bed which had carried him for 38 years. There are quite a few things I haven’t grasped yet after 38 years.