Siloam

This was written for an Easter service when we explored how various biblical characters might have reacted to the resurrection.This was how I imagined the man by the pool might have reacted.

This pool reminds me of my pool. For once I was a man sat by a pool. A nameless nobody, just a bad sore-covered, paralysed non-entity with a BO problem which made people wince. Unable to help or heal myself. The pool was called the pool of Siloam and I knew every ripple in that pool, every crack in the marble, every slight discoloration in the colour. I'd counted them enough times, till the numbers swam around my head as I lay there for 38 years, scratching the passing of time in the sand, trusting in a promise of healing, and never being healed. Every so often the water was stirred up, by an angel they said, and the first person to get into the pool afterwards was healed of their disease. But I was never quick enough, and so I never was healed. Over time I got so used to my life that I never even bothered to try anymore. But one day Jesus the Christ came over, and asked me if I really wanted to get well. I told him of my problem and my despair, thinking maybe he might help me get in the pool, but instead he commanded me to pick up my mat and walk. I did as he asked, and as I stretched out my hand to move the mat I felt the power go through my legs, stretching sinews, creaking bones. Strength at last. He gave me new life at that pool. I left the ghost of my own one, lying on the bricks with the other beggars. And then I went and told the world what had happened. For they all knew what I was like before.

I followed Jesus from time to time and heard him preach of many things, some too deep for me to understand for sometimes he spoke in riddles. But then he died. And what a death. Naked and cursed by being hung on a tree, like the worst of criminals, the scum of society. And I mourned his passing, for now no-one else would know what it was like to feel new strength flow into them.

But three days later, that was when the rumours started. We thought they were crazy at first, those who said they had seen him alive once again. Some group hallucination? Wanting to believe too much! But as the weeks passed more and more people were telling the same story, even THOMAS, who had been a lone voice of sanity amongst a crowd of lunatics. And then the call went around, whispered from face to face about the city. "Meet us, meet us here," - a map on a scrap of paper leading to a lonely spot, a promise that we'd find out the truth soon. Of course I went, I couldn't resist an invitation like that. It couldn't be true, some trick of the light, an actor or a double at a distance..... But no it wasn't. He made sure we could all see clearly, 500 of us. He walked around the crowd and let us see him up close. It was true, dead men don't walk, and no-one could survive what he went through, he was drained like a sheep carcass on a butchers hook, there was no life left in him to revive. But here he was, staring deep into my eyes, my soul, and I knew there was only one explanation. (stage whisper) Resurrection.