House of Kindness

I lean against the cool stone column behind me, legs sprawled, staring down the wide cobbled steps at the still waters of the small rectangular pool with all the others. It’s not very inviting. Even though the air is hot, and a trickle of sweat beads down my side I don’t care to touch it.

There’s a myth about that pool; a myth that every once in a while an invisible angel comes and stirs the water. Whoever can get in first when that happens will be healed of whatever ailment they have. Maybe that’s why this place is called the House of Kindness. There’s many that call it a “mikveh” – a ritual bath that the ancients used to clean themselves of impurities.

Anger stirs in my chest and I turn my head, studying all the various forms that surround me, many of them twisted and malformed. Many of them, like the man next to me, lying prone – unable to move. Underlying each and every one of their gestures and speech is a tension – a cutthroat readiness to do whatever is necessary to get to that water first if it moves.

Many of the sickest have given up hope and are here because they have nowhere else to go. They’re here for the shade, for the slight hint of moisture from the pool in the arid heat, for the random acts of kindness from strangers who come to care for or feed them. While I’m here, none of them touch the water. You wouldn’t want to disturb it at the wrong time and risk obscuring the stirring of the water, neither would you want to cause a stampede with accidental ripples and be blamed for the chaos when someone gets trampled.

I close my eyes and rest my head against the stone behind me, breathing in the heat-soaked oxygen. So much pain all gathered in one place; it presses in around me from all directions. I can’t help but feel guilty that I am whole and healthy. Can’t help but feel a boulder-sized lump of secondhand anger for those that lay here. I have no right to that feeling, but I can’t help but feel it for the loved ones I know who’ve suffered like these. There’s a stench in the air. Of unwashed bodies, of human waste and infection. It’s the dumping grounds of those who are too much work to care for.

House of Kindness indeed.

Guilt crawls over my skin – I’d rather be anywhere else than here, experiencing my inability to fix even one piece of this pain. I’d rather not see and feel the desperation that laces the whole area. Even those who’ve given up waiting for the angel can’t help but cast glances now and then at the water.

It makes me sick to my stomach. In my experience that’s all that healing myths do – cause desperation and anger; cause false hope and then despair. For every one person who supposedly gets healed, there are ten more who don’t. Everyone around me knows that the sickest, and those most abandoned, will never get to the water in time.

The man lying next to me is silent, his face turned away from the water. He’s been here for so long he can’t remember anywhere else. He’s one of the abandoned ones. Bitterness fills him – that brittle wall of frustration and resentment he’s built around his soul. It’s a necessary armour to hide from his deepest, most gaping, festering wound – the one of being left to live and die alone. Of being defective. Of the heartless God who made him this way. Who didn’t save him, and hasn’t saved him every one of the 38 years he’s laid here. My heart squeezes tight, but he doesn’t want my sympathy. He doesn’t want to be seen by me, or understood, or empathized with. He’d rather I not be here at all – a reminder of the unfairness that some get to be healthy and some don’t. I get it. There’s nothing easy to say, so we both stay silent.

There’s a stir in the air then; a breath of wild fresh forest and rain – a scent I know so well – and I instantly peer between the columns, trying to spot the person that smells that way. The crowd of the sick around me stirs, uneasy, not recognizing that fragrance, not knowing where it comes from, not knowing they smell it – several of them suddenly homesick for something intangible even as they dismiss it as a figment of imagination.

There’s such a busy crowd surrounding the pool; so many interactions happening, so much noise, so many voices. My eyes are the only ones that pick out the man walking towards us through the mass of people. Only because I knew he was coming. Only because I was expecting him. To all the others here he’s just a man.

He’s walking up to us, his sandals covered in dust, his tunic sweaty just like the rest, and as he gets closer he shoots me a look, acknowledging my presence, making sure I know he sees me, sees my frustration with this place, sees my anger.

And in return he lets me see the pain in his eyes, the ache for these who suffer, the longing for someone to let him in. When our eyes meet, life floods through my body like it always does; I swallow back my instant homesickness, and my anger falls away.

I have to be honest, I don’t really like this story or others like it. I never have. They’ve been used in churches to provide false hope to those in pain. They’ve been used as an example of the supernatural things Jesus can do, and they keep those in pain – those suffering- waiting on tenterhooks for him to do something miraculous in the worst situations. And then wonder why he doesn’t. It causes many to blame themselves for their “sins” or their lack of faith when they don’t get better, or when their child, their friend, their partner doesn’t. Or to hate him, turn away from him. It’s been used in a game of favourites and chance encounters. A rod wielded to beat on the “weak” of faith.

Jesus comes to a stop beside us, me and the man who lies prone beside me. The sick man turns his head slowly. His eyes latch onto this stranger he doesn’t know. The man’s tension says he senses it, that hidden power in this stranger, just as well as I do. There’s something in that gaze that stares back down at him. Some kind of breaking. Some kind of real.

You can’t pretend when you meet those eyes. You don’t get to hide. There’s something in my Jesus, some kind of pull from his real to your own. He wants truth, he exudes it and it’s all he’ll accept. But he’s full of kindness too, and understanding. What many of my kind forget is this: He’s never truth without grace. One twines around the other in him – they’re meant to coexist.

“Do you want to get well?” Jesus’s voice is calm, quiet.

I glance around, hiding my tears at the sound of his voice, the sound of home, the sound of safety. We’re in our own little bubble of stillness, the column partially hiding us, too far from the pool to attract notice. Jesus is crouched now, his eyes level with the man’s. Despite my frustration with this healing thing and all the questions it brings up, my heart turns over with affection – he always does this when he’s reaching out – he makes sure he speaks to you from the same level. There is no judgement in him, no condemnation. Neither is there that power dynamic us humans expect of a King walking amongst mortals. He never, ever, looks down on someone. He’s not careless with his words, he doesn’t have temper tantrums or power trips.

But I’ve watched people in this kind of moment – and it goes many different ways – having him question you. I’ve seen people turn away, resentful of his intrusion into their most private spaces. I’ve seen them twist his voice, twist his intentions. Look at him as if he’s some sanctimonious religious leader who only sees their faults and failures – records them as ticks against their “holiness”. I myself have had every single kind of reaction to his voice, to his questions. So I hold my breath, waiting, wondering which path this man will take.

His gaze falls away for a second; and I brace in sympathy. It’s hard to hold Jesus’s eyes when they see past all your walls and pull out the things you can’t fix and don’t want to think about. When you feel shame about your broken pieces. When you’ve accepted lies about who you are.

Then the man’s chin lifts. Defensiveness resounds through every word he speaks. “There’s no one to help me get into the water in time.” He states. Angry. It explodes out of him through the air, all that resentment at being stuck living a life of suffering. He’s embroiled in the self pity that pounces on all of us when we get tired of feeling all the things that we can’t control or stop.

Jesus doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t argue.

He doesn’t lecture about faith.

He doesn’t say a word about “sins”.

I watch him as he lets the man’s resentment settle onto his shoulders, my throat constricting at the wisdom in him, at the way his character is showing itself. He’s got such wide shoulders – we can beat on them all day long and they won’t break. So much strength and capacity to handle our hate, so much bravery to be vulnerable and open right inside that chaos and desperation. He doesn’t make excuses or explanations for why this man has lived most of his life in this body that imprisons him. He doesn’t cast blame back in defensiveness. Instead he waits for the man to meet his eyes.

My heart is beating fast now. Because I can feel it; the compassion, the intense love he has for this injured man, how he sees past the jagged edges that are trying to keep him at a distance. And I can feel the power in him as it stirs, as he pulls it up to the surface, as the life he carries in him is gathered and then spilled out with such extravagant abundance when he speaks – his voice still quiet, still only for this one person. “Stand up, pick up your mat and walk.”

I can see the war in the man’s eyes. That it could be that easy. That it must be a trick. And the distrust that almost keeps him from moving his limbs at first. But he can’t… quite… stomp out that little spark of desperate hope and he moves his legs, his eyes widening as he realizes he can. Joy jumps into his face, and he stands, unsteady, hardly believing it, expecting to fall over at any moment. In a daze he bends over to pick up his mat, straightens and turns to say something to Jesus. But Jesus is gone already, he’s slipped away into the crowd. The man doesn’t even know his name. Where he came from, who he is. My heart stutters, my throat aches in longing to follow Jesus, to dog his footsteps, to be where he is, but I study the man. Jesus never introduced himself. He didn’t wait to be thanked. This isn’t meant to be a crowd stirring, motivational illustration. It’s a quiet moment, swift, and it’s not even very intimate. The two of them interacted as strangers. Just a man encountering the invisible God he didn’t even recognize.

(part 1 of 2)Man of Kindness