In this brief series, we are taking a look at two important locations for healing miracles in the Gospel of John: the Pool of Bethesda (John 5) and the Pool of Siloam (John 9), both located in Jerusalem. In Healing Pools, part 1 and part 2, we began to survey the Pool of Bethesda, where Jesus healed a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. The site of the Bethesda pool can be a bit confusing to the pilgrim visitor today because of its many layers of archaeology. One of the reasons for those layers, however, is . . . pilgrimage!
This site where Jesus expressed the healing power of God became important to early Christians. The memory of what happened there drew pilgrims to the place from very early on. Believers in Jesus came to worship him as well as to remember and connect with who he is as the Healer. The complex of grottos, temples to gods, and smaller pools alongside the large northern and southern basins of the Pool of Bethesda had been a Roman healing center for years before the time of Jesus, and it continued as such through the fourth century.
In the Byzantine period that began in the fifth century, the site was so important to Christian pilgrims that a large church was built over part of that healing center, including over part of the area that separated the two original basins of the pool. In the diagram to the right, you can see the footprint of that Byzantine-era basilica outlined with the heavy red line. When we visit the site on one of our days in Jerusalem, you can see some of the foundation arches and their pillars that held this church up as it straddled the center section of the pool (see the header photo). There were seven such arches on each side–one set extending to the bottom of the southern basin and another set in the northern basin. Locating these arches can help to orient us to the larger site. The church was called St. Mary of the Probatic (meaning “sheep-pool” in Latin and referring to John 5:2). It was destroyed by the Persians in 614 but soon rebuilt by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Modestus.
In 1010, the Arabs destroyed the basilica. When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, they found it in ruins, but they did not rebuild it. Instead, they constructed a small chapel on the northwest corner of the ruins. The diagram above shows the smaller footprint of the Crusader chapel, and the photo to the left shows the excavated remains of the structure. In about 1140, they built the famous St. Anne church alongside the Pool of Bethesda.
As Christians, we do not worship sites. However, as pilgrims in a long tradition of fellow pilgrims, we know the blessing that comes from visiting, remembering, and worshiping at places that help us to connect with our own Christian story and with the Lord of life and healing who leads that story. We seek his healing also, and we bathe in his compassionate grace. Just like the man who encountered him at the pool, we need to learn that it is to Jesus that we turn, and it is ultimately his love that heals us.
