Now that I've had time to think about it, I'm appalled at myself, but at the time, I was just too excited to have any clear thoughts. Anyway, how could I possibly know that they would respond the way they did? I expected them to be as excited as I was. There was a prophet in our midst! A man with the power of the Almighty to heal the incurable! Such a thing hadn't happened to us in so long that some of us were tempted to think the Almighty had forgotten about us, or rejected us again.

I'm sure I can be forgiven for feeling that way after being chronically ill for thirty-eight years. A whole life, wasted. Until a new one was given me by a man who saw me among all the crowds of the sick. Remember Hagar? She must have felt even more alone and neglected than I did. She said she was seen—seen by the Almighty Himself. At the time I didn't know who was seeing me, but I too was seen, and the whole world changed.

I didn't think taking my bed home was going to be such a big deal. Well—like I already said, I didn't think at all. I forgot it was Sabbath. Honestly, when you've been sick for thirty-eight years and the only attention anyone pays you is to drag you out to the pool of Bethesda every day, complaining the whole way about what a burden you are, and you can't ever go to the temple because you're unclean—do you know what it's like to be unclean your whole life? No, you don't. You got to take your sacrifices to the temple and be atoned for like anybody else. I was desperately afraid I was going to die in my sins, unatoned for. That pool wasn't just hope for physical healing, you know. It was hope for cleansing from our sins. So—no, I didn't even think about it being Sabbath.

Anyway, I was doing what he told me to do. That day I hadn't even made an effort to get into the pool. It was always a useless effort anyway. There were always other people who had servants or family members who cared enough to help them, or people who were a little stronger and faster and got there first. Someone else always got there first. What was the point? And then this man came up to me and said, "Do you want to be healed?"

What a dumb question! I mean, I thought that at the time. What do you think I'm lying about at this crowded pool with a bunch of other invalids for? No, I don't want to be healed. I'm perfectly happy wasting my life lying on this horrible bed for thirty-eight years.

I didn't say that. But some of my bitterness did come out when I explained exactly what the situation was to this man wandering around asking stupid, intrusive questions of invalids. And he was just quiet and let me talk, and his eyes were fixed on me so intensely that eventually I stopped whining and stared at him. That was the first time I actually looked at him. I'd been glaring bitterly at the pool and the other people poised to get ahead of me. He was looking at me the way people didn't look at me. My brother-in-law, who was stuck with the care of me, didn't look at me, except to curse my existence, eating his food and providing nothing in return. The healthy people avoid you, as if they'd prefer you to get abandoned outside the city like lepers so that they don't catch whatever you've got and become unclean. Rabbis with disciples—provincial guys, it looked like, staring dumbly around at the pool, but still privileged enough to be a rabbi's disciples—certainly didn't come to have a nice chat with you.

He was looking at me as if I was the only person there, as if we were having some sort of important conversation that mattered. Like I mattered. I didn't matter. Except in the eyes of this man who saw me.

And when I finally wound myself down and shut up and paid attention, he said the simplest, most ridiculous thing. "Get up, pick up your bed, and walk." He didn't touch me, he didn't pray, he didn't say, "Thus saith the LORD," like prophets are supposed to. He just said, as if he had the right and the authority and the ability to change reality, "Get up, pick up your bed, and walk."

There is no experience you can ever have had to help you understand what happened to me. I'd spent thirty-eight years inside a useless, pain-ridden, wasted body. Sometimes I could drag myself a short distance on my elbows, and sometimes I couldn't. Sometimes the pain and misery were such that I wished I was dead, except that I was terrified of dying unatoned for. I could feel in every inch of my body that it was not what it should be.

So you should believe me when I tell you that I felt in every inch of my body at that moment that it was what it should be. I mean it was like health and life were a physical, living force that rushed through me, and I could no more help springing to my feet than I could help breathing.

They worked, my feet did. My muscles were strong, capable things, just like any other man's. The weakness and pain were gone. I was really a completely new being, and for a little while I was completely mad with the joy of it. I grabbed my bed, and the first thing I thought of was rushing home to show my brother-in-law and my sister and figuring out how I could use this new life to have a real life with.

I had barely even left the porch when a shadow loomed up on me and someone said, "What do you think you're doing? Today is the Sabbath. You're breaking the Law."

I didn't understand a word he said. Sabbath? Law? What? I stared at him a minute and then suddenly realized it was a Pharisee and he wasn't alone and he'd said Sabbath and breaking the Law.

"You are not allowed to carry a bed on the Sabbath!" he said impatiently.

I looked down at it, and only my respect for the teachers of the Law kept me from bursting out laughing. I was carrying my bed! The thing they carried me on every day! It was the greatest joke! Sabbath, though. How could I start out my new life as a clean, healthy person by breaking a commandment about carrying burdens on the Sabbath?

The thing was, though, the man who healed me told me to. I don't suppose you understand what I mean. There was a man who was so connected to the Almighty Creator that all he had to do was say some words and life overtook me. He—he had a kind of…command over life and health. He knew it was the Sabbath. He knew what respect for the Almighty was. And he told me to do this thing, so I did it.

I tried to explain all that, but I imagined I bungled it badly. Maybe I didn't actually explain that I'd been nearly dead for thirty-eight years and this man had made me alive? Because all they noticed was that a man told me to carry a burden on the Sabbath. I dashed back into the porch to try to find him, realizing that I'd just run away from him without even thanking him or finding out who he was or anything. Anyway, he could explain to them. I looked frantically around, but he was gone, and I felt awful. I hadn't even thanked him!

The Pharisees said, "Point him out to us if you see him again. And go to the temple and make atonement for your sin."

I could have hugged and kissed them (except I never would, because that would be disrespectful). Make atonement! I could make atonement now! I completely forgot about my bed and rushed home.

Only my sister was there. You can imagine the scene when she saw me. The crying, the hugging, the crying some more. She promptly gave me money to go to the temple and buy a sacrifice, and I rushed away to the temple.

You can't possibly know what it mean to me to be able to make that sacrifice for the first time in nearly forty years. No one who hasn't been living in his sin for that long with no chance for atonement can understand. No one else knew why I wept. No one else wept. It was routine with them. You do something the Law says is a sin, like accidentally carrying your bed on the Sabbath, you bring a sacrifice, you're all good. Too bad you keep doing stuff like that. You could end up spending a lot of money on getting your sins atoned for. And what about people who don't live in Jerusalem and can't just drop by the temple on an afternoon? It becomes a lot more difficult for them. And people like me, who aren't even allowed to approach the temple. We're almost as bad off as the Gentiles. Don't even get me started on the Gentiles. They've got no hope. Even less than I had lying bitterly by the pool of Bethesda. I had a lot of time to think about having no hope.

Afterward I was just sitting there quietly, sort of recovering from making an idiot out of myself with my sacrifice and also just enjoying having the right to be there, in the temple. And he found me again. As if he hadn't finished what he'd started. He just sat down next to me like we were friends and introduced himself.

"My name is Jesus of Nazareth," he said. "Now that you've been healed, make sure you don't continue sinning any longer, or something worse might happen."

I just stared at him. What worse thing could possibly happen than being an invalid your whole life? And what was with the "stop sinning," too? Didn't he know you couldn't just decide to stop sinning? If you could do that, surely the priests at least would know how and wouldn't have to offer sacrifices for themselves, too.

Well, he was an explainer. Not many people would bother explaining things to someone like me. But not many people would bother seeing me, either. Sin, he said, is not just an outlawed action, carrying a bed on the Sabbath, for instance. Sin is inside you, a sickness eating away at you. Nothing can do away with it but the source of life itself.

"I know you have that life," I whispered. "How do I get it?"

He smiled a smile of such sweetness you would think the earth would tremble. "Follow me," he said, "and I will give it to you."

I got up and ran away. Not because I was afraid but because I was unbearably excited, and I saw the group of Pharisees I had seen at the pool. I knew that they would want to know what he had told me. The Pharisees are the ones who have been responsible for the pure knowledge of the Almighty in our people since the dark days of the Exile. They would want to hear this prophet, this…this one who carried life within him. I thought to say Messiah, but I couldn't help wondering if he might not be greater even than David himself.

I ran to the Pharisees and cried, "I've found him! The man who healed me! His name is Jesus of Nazareth!"

It appeared they knew that name. It appeared they didn't exactly like it. "I knew it," one of them muttered to another. "It's that man who's been causing trouble all over Galilee. I couldn't quite believe the reports that he makes it a point of breaking the Sabbath, but now I do."

"Galilee?" another said. "Didn't you see what he did the last time he was in Jerusalem? He was like a madman! I don't know how the priests let him back into the temple."

They had no interest in me at all. They went in a body toward him and demanded that he tell them what he thought he was doing.

"Working," he told them quite pleasantly. "My Father has been working, and that is what I am doing as well."

They drew back as from a snake.

I couldn't understand it. Didn't they see? Didn't they see me? What he'd done? He told them more—I said he was an explainer. He told them exactly what I'd already seen and felt so clearly—he had life from the Almighty. He was able to give life—as he had to me. Oh, he had a lot of strange things to say—but it was so obviously true of him! Anyone can talk, if you're stupid enough or insane enough or a big enough fraud. But what he did to me was no insanity or fraud. What he did to me was something only someone with authority over life can do. He was no mere prophet. He was more than anything that had ever come among us before.

But I blame myself for what happened. I was so eager to be the one who introduced him to the leaders—as if he needed someone like me to do that. I just went and—betrayed him, in a way. Because they hated him, and they—well, you know what happened. They killed him.

I don't understand how they could. They're the teachers of the Scriptures! They are the ones who guard our religious life so we don't fall into the sin of our fathers. But they could not see him in the Scriptures! He told them so to their face. "You don't believe in Moses if you don't believe in me." How could they do this?

But I betrayed him. He offered to let me follow him, and I betrayed him to his enemies. Don't tell me it's not my fault. It may have been done in ignorance, not fear like Cephas or—or an evil heart like Judas. But the result was the same. They began persecuting him, and eventually they killed him.

So why am I here now? Haven't you heard the news? They're saying he's alive! They're saying if we go join his disciples we'll see for ourselves.

Don't you get it? He had life inside him. He had the ability and the authority to give life. By the words of his mouth he had control over the life of my body. If Cephas, whom we all know was a coward, and John, who was the only one who watched him die, say he is alive, I for one am perfectly willing to believe it. And if he forgave Cephas, I think he'll forgive me. You should have heard the way he talked about sin, as if he had authority over that, too.

So stop being so skeptical and come with me and find out if it's true.