At the Table with Jesus – John 5:1-15

I am a classically avoidant man.
I delay,
displace,
compartmentalise,
run until the problem
seems further away.

But distance spreads.
Church becomes too hard,
so we stop going.
Friendships become complicated,
so we let them fade.
Family becomes stressful,
so we stay home.

Soon avoidance becomes
a household,
a church,
a society saying,
We do not want to deal with this.
Send someone else.
Send a link.
We will contribute.

But Jesus went
to the Sheep Gate,
to the place where the sick gathered,
waiting beside the water,
hoping to be healed.
There he found a man
who had been waiting
for thirty-eight years.
I have no one to help me.

It is the cry of the elderly
sitting in bright facilities,
surrounded by programs,
air conditioning,
gardens
and empty afternoons.
They do not always need another service.
They need someone
who will sit long enough
to hear the regrets
that arrive when life slows down—
I did not spend enough time
with the people I loved.

It is the cry of the prisoner
behind steel and concrete,
carrying the harm they have done,
the harm done to them,
and the fear that no road
leads home.
I have no one.

And yet a grieving father
can stand before the man
who destroyed his world
and say,
I have forgiven you already.
A forgiveness
that does not deny justice,
grief
or consequence,
but reaches through them
with wounded hands.
Who among us
has not needed such grace?

It is the cry of the poor,
standing beneath the weight of life:
I cannot do this alone.
Poverty is not only
the absence of money.
It is the absence of someone
to call,
someone to trust,
someone who notices
when you disappear.
We build organisations,
fund programs,
publish strategies,
and still the human heart says,
I have no one.

Jesus does not keep his distance.
He sees the man.
He speaks to him.
He calls him to rise.
The society around him
had pushed him aside.
Jesus brought him back
into the world.

We do the same.
We separate ourselves
from the old,
the imprisoned,
the poor,
the difficult,
the inconvenient.
We decide
their problems are not ours.

But every human face
bears the image of God.
This is not left-wing
or right-wing.
It is the way of Jesus,
where the weak are not discarded,
where guilt does not have the final word,
where the isolated are given names
and seats.

Christianity is not merely
a crutch for the weak.
It is a hospital,
a gurney,
a hearse—
the confession
that none of us
can bring ourselves to life.
We are all poor.
We are all in need.

Jesus says,
Bring them in.
Bring in those
who have waited too long.
Bring in those
who are worn out,
ashamed,
forgotten,
or alone.

There are plenty of seats.
The question is not
whether there is room
at the table with Jesus.
The question is whether
we will go out,
see those we have avoided,
and say,
Come.
You do not have to do this
by yourself.
There is a place for you here.

Original message by Julian Yin
The Bridge Church Macquarie Park NSW
12 July 2026

John 5:1-15
¹ Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda^[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ^{[4]  5} One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, ¹⁰ and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
¹¹ But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
¹² So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
¹³ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
¹⁴ Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.