| July 22, 2007
You are welcome to reflect on this message
In Jerusalem, John says there is "by the sheep gate, a pool." Everybody wants to go there. I can imagine this basin is crowded with all kinds of people and animals hovered around it; including "a multitude of invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed." They had a special interest in going to the pool, more than to just get a drink. It's understandable why folks went to the pool, there’s something in it for them. Like going to the doctor, it was said to have mysterious curative properties. (You have to look for this in the footnotes of your Bible because it’s not in the body of the text.) So the handicapped congregate there, and try to get into the water. OK, here’s the skinny: periodically an angel is said to come and stir it up. And the first one in while the water's bubbling, gets well! So picture the sick and impaired engaging in a feverish race to be number one. This is not a pleasant portrait because the ambulatories always pass up the immobile. It suggests a rough, degrading madhouse scramble.
John is interested in one of the afflicted individuals who hung-out around the pool. He notes in detail how this nameless-pool‑person has been there for 38 years. And that his bad knees and hips severely limited his mobility. And he complains the cards were stacked against him, since he can't move fast enough to compete with the others. It is to this one yelling “Unfair!” that Jesus addresses, "Do you want to be healed?" "Do I want to be healed?" "Well, it has crossed my mind a time or two," as he drips with sarcasm. But his reply reflects the ambivalence a lot of people feel about wholeness. He doesn't answer Jesus directly, but whines that no body will help him. And others even push ahead of him. A reason or an excuse? Ahhhnh! Jesus thought it's an excuse. One thing he never did was to buy into the “games people played” to avoid abundant living. They keep dialing up life's cruelties, to justify their misery.
But Jesus, the king of compassion, would have none of it. He refuses to be distracted and comes across with firmness, sticking with his curious question, "So do you want it or not?" 38 years? I'd want something! It’s hard to imagine what it’d be like to lie in one spot all day, every day for nearly four decades. At the very least, after years of trying to get into the pool with the magic bubbles, it had to be monotonous. But also habit‑forming? The ritual of going through the motions, almost making it, then crawling back to his spot can become a comfortable routine. He might've hoodwinked others, but he didn't fool Jesus. Notice at first Jesus doesn't heal him. There’s something more important. He just wonders if his heart’s really in it. There’s something missing in this guy's eyes as he looked beneath the surface, into his soul.
However wretched he must've felt by the pool, he got so used to “waiting on the bubbles,” that it became a more attractive option than getting well. Because healing means...change; and being responsible for yourself. He trusted so deeply in the bubbles that he couldn't visualize any other alternative. The repetitive motions of trying to get there when the “angel stirred” and never making it, had become an ingrained way of life, that the thought of getting well never occurred to him.
When Jesus confronted him, it scared the daylights out of him! Being more than others think you can be and doing more than you think you can do requires risk. Being whole would take away the crutches and masks we rely on. Healing means getting up and going to work and doing something with your life. Instead of lying around the pool all day. Being well means having no alibi’s. So here’s Jesus holding a lame man accountable. Besides, where would getting well take him? He may be going no place. But at least he knows where he is. And that he is. By the pool there were few surprises, that is until Jesus showed up. Why take away somebody’s predictable “devil they know for the devil they don't?" Why risk losing the security and the special attention that of being a victim?
How do you break the habit of putting your faith in bubbles? How do you re‑blow a bubble once its burst? First you see it. Now you don't. Grab at it and its not there. It's as ephemeral as cotton candy, all pink and fluffy. But the moment you bite into it, nothing's there but air. "Do you want to get well?" "Well yeah, but," came the dubious reply. So he fell back into his worn out habit of justifying himself with “If onlys.” "The bubbles would do it, if only somebody would help me into the pool. But I can't." And Jesus wouldn’t buy it. The comic strip "Peanuts" has this scene of Linus standing at the door on a snowy day with Marcie outside. He says pitifully: "I'm not going to school today, Marcie...sniff, sniff...I have a cold." And Marcie tries to be helpful. And she shouldn’t have done that! “Shall I bring some of your school work home so you can do it tonight?" To which Linus yells, "Are you out of your mind!?" In the final frame, a crestfallen Marcie says, "I, I don't understand sick people."
Well Jesus did. Either they're not all that sick or they're more interested in "laying out of school than doing homework." Sick people aren't expected to do any work. Because being well has its own hassles. But Jesus wouldn't budge. When our‑man‑by‑the‑pool moaned, "Nobody will take me to the water when the angel shows up." It's their fault that I'm the way I am. That finger-pointing surely colored Jesus' response. Most of the time when Jesus healed somebody, he was sympathetic, pastoral and understanding. Not this time. By the pool he challenges a person, paralyzing himself from a purposeful life. And instead of excusing him or pitying him, Jesus called his hand, “Do you want it or not?” And the man who'd been at it for 38 years who never asked Jesus to help in the first place, had become a Houdini‑expert at getting out of things; trotting out all these defenses to exonerate himself. Yeah, I’d say he wanted it. But at the same time he wasn’t sure. I expect most of us knows what that feels like. Simultaneously seeking and resisting healing. Se he keeps dragging himself over to the bubbling poolside. But it's never enough. "Because other people get there first,” or whatever. It’s always something.
I’m thinking there's a greater miracle than a man lame for 38 years getting well. And that would be the ability to change from his trust in bubbles to trust in God, who wants us all to leave our sickbeds and get back involved in life‑‑healed or not. To accept the paralysis as a given and still walk away from the pool? Now that would impress Jesus! Think of all the biblical characters who did not get what they wanted, but were still useful to God. Abraham looked for "a city whose builder and maker was God," and never found it. But he never quit looking for it either, even though he never received the promise. And the writer of Hebrews says, "If you want to know what faith is, he’s your huckleberry." Moses stuttered but led in the Exodus in spite of it. Hosea got divorced but found his vocation as a prophet through his pain. Peter denied the Lord in Jerusalem, but made a comeback up in the Galilee when he changed his vocation from fishing to shepherding. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh" taught him about grace. All these are hampered by life. But not a one let it lick 'em. And God used them in spite of their particular form of paralysis. That is the greater miracle.
Healing is nothing next to victorious living. It's quite a story and it reminds me: 1) That some people would rather be sick than well and, 2) Too many people out there are trusting in the bubbles of their old familiar remedies than in the amazing grace of God. But everywhere you look these days, people are leaving the church and going to the pool or some substitute for church. “Whatever happened to the Jones family and their kids? They used to be in Sunday school. But now they go to the pool.” The pool! The Pool! That’s where the action is, not at church. They have everything you want down at the pool. So what's happening at the pool? Well they're not sitting around holding hands singing "we're one in the spirit, one in the Lord." That’s for sure. It's very competitive down at the pool. Those with the biggest and most win. And when the angel shows up to trouble the water, sometimes it may not be an angel; just the afternoon breeze blowing through.
Some folks think this is a story of faith, but not me. There's no evidence that this guy had any faith, in Jesus or anything but the pool. In fact, when he was arrested, the authorities wanted to know, "Who told you to carry your pallet?" He said, "You got me. I didn't bother to get his name." Later, when he found out it was Jesus, he went to the critics and tattled! “Y’all know that guy who broke the Sabbath? That was Jesus." This fellow not only didn't believe, or have an ounce of gratitude or humility, but he narked on Jesus! I don't like this guy.
God knows we've got to want to be healed enough to get up off the pallet and get a life! Or else being healed accomplishes nothing. God doesn’t heal us for healing's sake. We’re healed so we can be blessers. And God's greatest saints are those "wounded healers" who make something out of themselves whether they get their way or not.
As I see it, each of us has two choices: We can either get busy living. Or get busy dying. Time waits for no one. We have no option in this. It has to be one or the other. And the man from Galilee who understood his calling to bring "abundant life" to the world, prefers the former. So in this case, the Bible teaches a negative lesson, about how a person let life lick him. We need positive models to help us when we're down, to remind us to get busy living. Like Jesus on the cross. That’s where I believe John is really going with this story of the odd query. Which means Jesus' question isn't nonsense after all. We all have our particular forms of paralysis. And if we cave in to them, they can keep us from ever knowing abundant life. To be alive but never live. Some even for 38 years or more. It’s a thorny question for anybody to have to answer. How would you respond? Jesus plays no games, wastes no words, gets right to the point. "Do you want to be whole?" Do you want it bad enough to “stand up, take your mat and walk?”
This man, in the end, did that, finally vacating his familiar spot by the poolside. But he never made it into the pool with the troubled water. Because God knows he never needed it all along. All that remained was for him to know it.
Pastoral Prayer:
We come to worship today, Lord, hearing Jesus invite us to stand on our own, even though a God worth having is Somebody we can lean on. But even better, is a God who makes leaning unnecessary. Help us in this worship to sense the power we all have through your Spirit, who overpowers our excuses, lends new perspective and equips us to walk into the future unafraid.
Led by the Lamb, we carry your lamp to illumine our dark places. Let the lamp shine its healing light on all who struggle: the addicted, the abused, the tricked, the betrayed, and the exploited. May this worship bring the Spirit's counsel to all who are troubled. Open to them the gates of your guidance. We pray for all who are attacked by real or imagined demons; may we not compound their disease with unwarranted judgment, and guide them to discern the cause of their affliction.
We pray for those with learning disabilities or any other disability, and those in hospitals and care centers. We pray for those whom society has forgotten or doesn't want to remember. Those struggling with death that breeds good questions that we can't answer...but you can.
Inspire us out of our lethargy so that we won't rest until the last lost sheep is brought back safely into the fold of the Lamb of God who takes away the world's sins. Amen. Back |
