The pool at Bethesda

Last week I really struggled to write a sermon on John 5:1-18 (where Jesus heals a paralysed man at the pool of Bethesda). In my preparation I came across this interesting fact. I quote from the sermon's introduction:

It was common among radical and liberal scholars of the nineteenth century to dismiss this morning’s story as a legend, at best an allegory. As far as they were concerned this was a piece of religious fiction. They wrote that the Sheep Gate pool was an appropriate place for the good shepherd to find a lost sheep, but they would have said that the pool did not exist. They pointed out that Bethesda means ‘House of Mercy’, what an appropriate place for such an event, but of course there was no such place. The five colonnades represented the five books of Moses and so on. Then in the late nineteenth century, in north east Jerusalem, archaeologists discovered the remains of a church which was clearly intended to mark the site. Later excavations have indentified the pool itself, or rather twin pools. There are five porticos, just as described in this passage. Indeed they have even found a wall painting portraying an angel coming down and stirring the water—the footnote in the NIV, which appears to be the words of a later copyist, shows that people superstitiously believed that an angel of the Lord stirred the waters.
I believe that there is no reason to doubt the historical reliability of the miraculous signs that John records. But this is history that is to impact us directly. Remember that these events show what Jesus does, so that we might know who he is, in order that we would respond with faith and so have life in Jesus’ name (John 20:30-31).