by Dr. Lani Wilson

Good Day, faithful prayer partners! Rain is back and hopefully more to come in the next couple of weeks. Continue to pray for Allen Temple and the church of the Christ. As God moves, we focus on The Christ because it is easy to unknowingly become callous in a brutal yet beautiful world.

The word this week for our consideration is stir. Simple word with a common understanding as a verb: To stir something in a container, to stir a person or a crowd, to excite. There’s also a second more informal usage as a noun: To be “in stir;” as in prison. The origins of this probably come from the mind-1800s language of the Gypsies, Romany. The Romany word is sturbin for “jail” (Apple Online Dictionary). And of course, another informal use is “stir crazy;” not heard too much nowadays but pretty descriptive of a level of frustration at being confined. In the NT it’s used mostly to describe an agitated crowd.

But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas instead.
Mark 15:11 (NET)

But they persisted in saying, “He incites the people by teaching throughout all Judea. It started in Galilee and ended up here!”
Luke 23:5 (TMB)

Then there are a couple of instances in the NT that we remember.

That stirred up a hornet’s nest of questions among the disciples: "What’s he talking about: ’In a day or so you’re not going to see me, but then in another day or so you will see me’? And, ’Because I’m on my way to the Father’?
John 16:17 (TMB)

The sick man answered him, ““Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.”
John 5:7 (NET)

And finally, we have the controversial fourth verse of John 5.

At certain times an angel of the Lord would go down into the pool and stir up the water, and whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.
John 5:4 (ISV)

Newer, modern translations of the Bible tend to not have this fourth verse in it.

If you're using a study Bible that doesn't have verse 4, you will likely see a note at the end of verse 3, or the beginning of verse 5, explaining why it isn't there. This is a textbook case of a disagreement between manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. What would be John 5:4 (the missing material that begins in verse 3) is not found in any of the earliest and most accurate manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Scholars who make a career of comparing manuscripts ("textual critics" and "paleographers") have discovered that in roughly two dozen manuscripts scribes put asterisk marks at the verse to warn the next scribe who would copy the manuscript that the verse was likely not original. To top it all off, four of the last five Greek words of what would be John 5:4 aren't found anywhere else in John's writings. This suggests that John 5:4 does not belong in the New Testament, which explains why many modern Bible translations have omitted it.
“Who Took Verse 4 Out of My Bible?”
Michael Heiser, Academic Editor
Bible Study Magazine, 24 March 2010
www.crosswalk.com

Much is written about all the reasons why verse 4 was dropped. Explanations abound regarding why this verse was or was not included in earlier versus later Biblical translations.

1. For example, we take note that verse 7 remains even though it refers to the same stirring of the water in the pool mentioned in verse 4. The difference is that the man who Jesus heals doesn’t mention the angel who is supposedly responsible for the water being disturbed in the first place.
2. Another textual consideration is that presumably, the earliest manuscripts (pre-500 CE) do not have this verse in them.

For our purposes, it might be interesting to think about

1. the use of the word stir,
2. for whom the water was stirred,
3. and the lessons that Jesus intended for us in His healing of this man.

Clearly, we know that to stir something is to mix things together, but to stir something up is different. As pointed out before, in the NT the word was mostly used to describe the agitation or upset of crowds of people, as in disturbing the current situation, the established process: Jesus didn’t come to bring peace, did He? It is also useful to remember that the Bible was translated into Greek from Hebrew by 200 BCE because Jews in the Diaspora throughout the Roman Empire were losing their language.

The Septuagint, the Greek Bible, represents the first known attempt to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into an Indo-European language. Its name is derived from the Latin septu?gint? meaning "The Seventy," hence the abbreviation LXX. "The Seventy" originates from a legendary account in the Letter of Aristeas of how seventy-two Jewish scholars (six scribes from each of the twelve tribes) were asked by the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the 3rd century BC to translate the Torah for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria. The names "Septuagint" and "LXX" are of later Latin origin and are not used in Greek. The usual Greek name for the translation is kata tous ebdomekonta meaning "according to the seventy." From the second century AD onward, the Greek Septuagint itself needed to be translated for readers who did not know Greek. The earliest of these translations are the Old Latin version from North Africa and Italy, and the Coptic versions from Egypt.
www.theopedia.com/septuagint

The translation of Hebrew scripture and certain books of the Apocrypha to Greek led to variations from what may have originally been written or intended.

The LXX differs in many places from the traditional Hebrew text, the Masoretic Text, known as the MT. There are divergences in words, verses, and passages; the order of verses or whole chapters; and the presence or absence of verses and sections. The question of why these differences exist is a difficult one, and is at the heart of the transmission of the Scriptures.
The Role of the Septuagint in the
Transmission of the Scriptures
Michael S. Heiser, Ph.D., 17 February 2012
www.biblearchaeology.com

What we read in our English Bibles is literally the canon, “inspired by God,” and thus, we must lend ourselves to deep prayer and patience in seeking what God is revealing. So it is possible that verse 4 may have been in the earliest stories written about what Jesus did and said and that the translation from Hebrew (or Aramaic) was different than what eventually ended up in our English Bible. However, what is important for us is the fact that Jesus chose to heal this man and the “canon” says that the water was stirred, agitated, disturbed, troubled. And let’s not forget that there were hundreds of other ill people sitting around that pool, waiting for that water to bubble up, foam, and move.

We aren’t given much explanation about how he comes to Jesus’ attention; all we know is that “Jesus knew.”

When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?"
John 5:6 (TMB)

The symbolic distance between what Jesus asks the man after He knew how long he had been waiting around the pool (thirty-eight years) and what the man answers is the stuff of majesty and mystery. Jesus must have known about the pool from childhood: He had been coming to the temple in Jerusalem since He was brought by Mary and Joseph at eight days old, as the law required of good Jews.

In Jerusalem at the time, there was a man, Simeon by name, a good man, a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel. And the Holy Spirit was on him. The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would see the Messiah of God before he died. Led by the Spirit, he entered the Temple. As the parents of the child Jesus brought him in to carry out the rituals of the Law, Simeon took him into his arms and blessed God: God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you promised. With my own eyes I’ve seen your salvation; it’s now out in the open for everyone to see: A God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations, and of glory for your people Israel.
Luke 2:25-32 (TMB)

Anna the prophetess was also there, a daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher. She was by now a very old woman. She had been married seven years and a widow for eighty-four. She never left the Temple area, worshiping night and day with her fastings and prayers. At the very time Simeon was praying, she showed up, broke into an anthem of praise to God, and talked about the child to all who were waiting expectantly for the freeing of Jerusalem.
Luke 2:35-38 (TMB)

Jesus was 30 when He began His ministry and this man had been at the pool “near the Sheep Gate” (John 5:2a) eight years longer than Jesus had lived by this time. So Jesus must have known about this pool the Jews called Bethesda in Hebrew (or Aramaic). We are always astounded when we think about how long that man sat there. We speculate on his passivity; his wasted adulthood; why he didn’t formulate a strategy to get others to help him. It’s inconceivable to us that someone would endure a lifetime of just lying there. John’s Gospel says that there were hundreds of people sitting and just waiting in “covered walkways” (NET Bible) around this pool, waiting for the water to be stirred in order to be healed.

Hundreds of sick people-blind, crippled, paralyzed-were in these alcoves.
John 5:3 (TMB)

Depending on one’s hermeneutics about Who Jesus was, you could say that the healing power of that pool was only for certain people, those who could make it down there in time whenever that angel showed up. The Doctrine of Election would say that only the chosen would be healed, as evidenced by the fact that only one person could benefit from the troubled, stirred up water there at Bethesda, Bethzatha or Bethsaida (NET Note 6 to verse 2). But if we look at where Jesus went in His short three-year ministry, whom He healed, whom He chose to be with daily, we see that His mission was not for the privileged few. It was for regular folk: Us. Everybody. Jesus didn’t - and doesn’t – ask for our qualifications or explanations. He’s already ahead of us, just as He was with this man who had to be at least in his fifties by now.

Do you want to become well?
John 5:6b (TMB)

The disabled man’s answer is an explanation, an excuse, a reason, a fact, a situation.

The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying
to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.”
John 5:7 (TMB)

And Jesus, this time light years ahead of him in purpose, resounds not with a question about where, why, and how this man could spend four decades there but with a command. Jesus knew why he was there: Where else could he go? Where else can we go? So Jesus stirred up trouble for Himself. He healed the man on the Sabbath, knowing the immensity of His actions and where they would lead.

Jesus said to him, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
John 5:8 (TMB)

If we take the time to poke around, this well-known pericope is replete with allusions to how The Nazarene worked while He was alive on earth and how He still works now.

1. He already knows what the problem is.
2. He doesn’t condemn.
3. He doesn’t have a lot of questions about our circumstance, no matter who you think you are.
4. He doesn’t care how much of your life you’ve whittled away, chasing bubbles that burst and earthly dreams that die.
5. He doesn’t care how many people are watching or who else was there first or last.
6. He ignores all our wrong, misguided answers to His soul-deep questions.
7. He heals us before we even realize what He’s done, and then He comes to find us – and talk to us.

A little later Jesus found him in the Temple and said, "You look wonderful! You’re well! Don’t return to a sinning life or something worse might happen."
John 5:14 (TMB)

And finally there’s the question of just who the angel was who stirred the water in that pool, if the verse was even in the Aramaic text to begin with. We need to remember that there were many copies made of the assortment of texts that eventually came to be the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The Apocrypha that the Eastern and Catholic churches use is rich with lessons from God and Jesus the Christ. The great Mystery that is God is even deeper and richer when experienced through the persona and personhood of The Nazarene. And closer still.

LORD, as we stir ourselves from the sleep of daily life, grant us Thy peace. Don’t let us get caught in all the questions about why we are where we are. Move us out from dead end answers and know-it-all reasons. Tune our ears to the questions You are asking, even if they hurt. Remind us that you aren’t going anywhere unless we push You away. And then still…You hover and wait for us to stir again. Forgive us if we cycle in and out of this pool of attentiveness to You. We will tire of the rolling back and forth, around and down, until we finally realize that You are our destination. Then You will embrace us and heal us and calm us and cleanse us. Just like sheep - at the gate - in the pool - befuddled - and now restored.

Stir-fried.
Stir-crazy.
Stirred-up.

But stirred.

Amen.