New Year’s Eve December 31, 2025
“A New Story” John 5:1-15
Rev. John R. Larson Ascension Lutheran Church Littleton, Colorado
He was stuck. Howard was stuck. I had seen his wife, Lori, the previous day. She had pancreatic cancer and was going to die. But we didn’t think it was going to be that day.
But it was. The family called me and I went over. When I entered the house Howard was outside of the room, their bedroom, where Lori had died. But Howard was stuck. Paralyzed. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t enter the room where his wife had died.
Today we put a conclusion to 2025, and we begin new, tomorrow, in 2026. But some people are stuck. Maybe you. Maybe me. Stuck in the past. Stuck and afraid to go forward.
That is where the account of the paralyzed man in John 5 takes us. Let me read this story to you. You’ll find it on page 1084 in the pew Bible.
In Jerusalem there is a pool called Bethesda, it means “House of Mercy.” Two thousand years ago, an underwater spring occasionally caused Bethesda to bubble. Some believed that it meant an angel was dipping his wings into the water. They also believed that the first person to touch the water after the angelic presence would be healed. Did it happen? I don’t know. But I do know that a crowd of paralyzed and handicapped and sick people would give it a try.
So, Jesus enters the story. He comes to the pool and sees a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. He approaches the man – one whom He had not met before, and who was unknown to this man, and asks a question, “Do you want to get well?” (Verse 6) Did you notice his answer? “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. When I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (Verse 7)
How long does it take to give up? How long before you lose hope? 38 years is a long time to never see any change. I wonder if he was ever counting on getting well.
Maybe New Year’s Eve can be a discouraging time. Some people are beset with an affliction called “Apathy”. “A” = no. “Pathos” = passion. No passion. No drive. No enthusiasm. No hope. “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.” Someone defined apathy in this way, “My-get-up-and-go got up and went.” In a high school trigonometry class two young men were not so enthused about being in that class. The teacher could see the ambivalence of their ways and so he wrote on the board A-P-A-T-H-Y. One of the young men leaned over to his friend and said, “What is apathy?” His friend’s response – “Who cares?”
“Do you want to get well?” That is a good question. Sometimes we get struck and we are okay with that. Change is hard. Leaving old ways and old patterns can be hard. Even though something is wrong in our life we have grown to live with it. We can even accept something that is harmful to us and harmful to other people. We might not be healthy, physically, spiritually, emotionally, but it is all that we know.
Sometimes we are apathetic. Sometimes we are stuck and don’t feel that we can change. Reed Lessing says of this, “We shrug our shoulders, make excuses, and keep living half-baked, half-hearted Christian lives.” (Page 6, “Deliver us: God’s Rescue Story in Exodus)
“Do you want to get well?” That is God’s question to every one of us. It is the question that church people are asked. It is the question that people who have never entered a church are asked. Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?” Lessing writes, “However, I must warn you. It takes spine to tamper with and edit our story. It’s so much easier to let sleeping dogs lie.” (Pg. 4)
3 doors to the north of my house lives my neighbor, Karen. She is a member of St. Francis Assissi Roman Catholic Church in Littleton. She saves the newspaper for me and I catch up on the news after she had read it. This week she included the parish paper from St. Francis along with The Denver Post. It was the newsletter for Christmas Eve – when many who come to church haven’t been there for a while. They had a wonderful article titled, “It is time to come home”, calling lapsed Catholics and unchurched people to come home, to come back to their faith, and to come to Jesus.
Jesus offers that invitation for you and me. He invites us to come home – to see what He is going to do for us and in us. It is time for God to write a new story in our lives. There are probably a bunch of reasons to stay put, stuck. There are many excuses that we can give why change cannot come. Like my friend Howard, it is too difficult to enter a hard place. But Jesus takes the initiative and does His work.
Look at what Jesus does: “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” (John 5:8-9)
There are many times when the phrase “Your faith has saved you”, or “Your faith has healed you” is found in the Gospels. It is used in relation to one coming to Jesus. But I see no such phrase here. It is all the doing of Jesus. When asked who made him well, our reading says, “The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.” (John 5:13)
“Do you want to get well?” Yes!! Jesus makes people well. He can make you well. He did it here in this man’s body. He does it for the bodies, souls and minds of many others – including you and me. He does it for today and for our eternity. II Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”
That man had a new story that day, and so do we. When you come to this table you will receive the body and blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sin. When you walk past the Baptismal Font you can remember the day when you were “born from above.” When you hear the promises of God such as, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26) That is the new story written by Jesus for your life. It is a life of faith in Jesus.
“Do you want to get well?” Yes, Lord, I do. Happy New Year; Happy New You. Amen!!
