Have you ever rooted for the underdog? Well I have! I actually rooted for the underdog. Once, well – ok maybe twice, I’ve found myself rooting for the Cincinnati Bengal’s, yea, me a Steelers fan rooting for the Cincinnati Bengal’s. But it wasn’t because I like them or anything but only because they were so pitiful that I actually felt sorry for them, for their city, for their fans. Admittedly though it wasn’t when they were playing the Steelers but other teams. What is it about the underdog that draws our attention to them? What is an underdog anyway?

The term underdog actually came from dog fights and it means the loser in a fight and/or the predicted loser. In John’s Gospel chapter 5 we see such an underdog lying on a covered porch at the pool of Bethesda. Around this pool of spring water were 5 covered porches on which “a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. But there was one person there who had been an invalid for 38 years.” (Verse 4 & 5) In the eyes of the religious Jews of Christ’s time they viewed the disabled, such as these mentioned, as being that way because of some sin that either they or their parents committed. They were the outcasts, the lonely, the underdogs (predicted losers). And this guy who’d been there for 38 years was the loser of the losers.

When you’re an underdog you don’t have a whole lot of hope. Everything is stacked against you. The only hope that this man, along with all the others there had, was to get into the water first when it was stirred by an angel, in hopes of being healed. They didn’t have Highmark, UPMC, hospitals, doctors, surgeons, new metal hips or knees as we do. They only had this pool of water. Yet after 38 years of being the underdog who saw the others make it into the pool ahead of him, this man still had hope. He was still there trying. Then a stranger walking by asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (Verse 6) And although he thought that was a dumb question, I mean why else would he be here for 38 years, he was kind and explained his hopeless situation to the stranger. Who knows perhaps the stranger would help him get into the water if it was stirred?

But to his surprise the man said, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. (Verse 8) Wow, to have feelings and muscles in those limp, shrunken legs again! What it must have felt like to get up after 38 years! Now, no longer an underdog but a winner! Yet, we are just like this man, no not physically, but spiritually. We’ve been underdogs to sin all our lives. Crippled by sin's grip, never able to break its grasp on us and get into the waters of eternal life to be made whole. We’ve been captive to sin's power over us and made sin's slave, we are powerless against it. But there is a stranger, one who wants to heal us, to set us free, to make us well, and his name is Jesus. The fact is he loves this underdog so much that he died on the cross, was buried, and three days later rose from the grave, just to make us winners! Have you met the Savior of the underdogs yet? He’s rooting for you!