What Are You Waiting For?

John 5:1-9

 

An intrepid leader in our weekly Faith Connections gathering for adults is fond of using the imagery of an onion with its many layers when approaching the study of scripture.  Today’s gospel story is just such an onion-like creature, with its many layers and facets to the story contained in our gospel. For today I would like to focus on just one of those layers – this command of Jesus to the man at the center of the story.

First, Jesus asks this man he meets at a pool of healing, “do you want to be well?” Do you want to be whole? Well, don’t just sit there. “Take up your mat. Walk.”

What an interesting exchange between Jesus and the man he encounters at Beth-zatha in today’s Gospel reading.

We may well wonder what happened to sympathy, compassion and understanding. Jesus’ response to this poor man, who, we read, had been sitting and waiting for a swim in that healing pool for 38 long years, doesn’t seem to contain any of those things.

Don’t just sit there, take up your mat and walk!

Jesus doesn’t seem to be very sympathetic. Why does he notice and engage this man to begin with? The man doesn’t cry out to him, doesn’t call him by name, nor does he confess belief in him; the man doesn’t acknowledge Jesus at all. But, not only does Jesus notice him, Jesus knows something about him - probably knows everything about him, truth be told, and Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”

Is that a rhetorical question, Jesus?

Come to think of it, Jesus could be asking us the very same thing.

As individuals Jesus might ask us, “do you want to be made well?”

As a community – “do you want to be made well?”

As a Church and a congregation – “do you want to be made well?”

Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be rid of all the things that assail you – not only the physical manifestations of disease but all that which robs you of the full life that God created you for – life in relationship to God and others.

Do you want to be healed of your fear, of the resentments and the hurt you carry with you and allow at times, to define you? Do you want to be relieved of your ego-driven need to be right, to control every situation, to manipulate others to your way of thinking? To be “made well” encompasses so much more than to be physically cured. In fact, that is arguably the most superficial and least important part of the true wholeness Jesus offers.

Surely the man in our text wants to be healed, after all, he has been beside this pool for 38 years! Given the life expectancies of the time, that must have been all or most of his life.

When considering this text, there are some who say that maybe the guy didn’t care about the healing so much, maybe he was just lazy, and didn’t want to work. Perhaps he had simply gotten used to his condition, his helplessness. Others say maybe he was really there simply to beg. A gathering place like this would make the perfect spot to put out your begging mat.

I’m not sure so about that. It sounds too much like the presumptions I sometimes hear about those who are on welfare, or disability, or those who accept government subsidies.

And I don’t think Jesus himself makes those assumptions either.

To understand a little of what the man was doing at the pool, let’s look again at our text from this morning. Let’s look at verse 4 together. I’ll wait until you find it.

Ah, you say – there is no verse 4! The fact is, that in almost any Bible you pick up, with the exception of the King James version, this is what you will find. The text mysteriously skips from verse 3 to verse 5. At the same time, most bibles will clue you in to why the verse is missing, with a tiny little footnote.

The passage as we read it today is faithful to the oldest and therefore considered the most reliable of biblical manuscripts. Most likely in an attempt to make things clear, certain scribes later added the explanation that the blind, lame and paralyzed were “waiting for the stirring of the water; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease that person had.” This was a well-known legend of the time.

So now you have it.  Part of the problem is that this man could not avail himself of the stirred up waters at the appropriate time. You had to be quick, or have someone who could assist you, or be just plain lucky to hit that water at the right time – to be the first to enter it after the angels stirred it up, in order to be healed, according to legend.

The fact that in 38 years this man was never able to make it into the water after it had been so stirred, was never able to be the first to slip into the potent healing waters of the pool makes you wonder: didn’t he have any friends or family or others who would take pity on him and willingly help him?

Which makes Jesus’ question to him seem all the more cold-hearted. “Do you want to be made well?” Whereupon the man launches into his explanation – or bitter excuse – for why he has been there in all that time.

            I just read a story about baseball great Joe Garagiola, who passed away just this Spring – do any of you remember him?

I guess “baseball great” is a bit of an exaggeration, because long before his thirty years as a sports announcer and television host, Garagiola was a catcher in the major leagues. But he wasn’t particularly successful.  

He was quoted as saying about himself, “I went through baseball as a ‘player to be named later.’” In the nine years he played ball he was traded four times when there were only eight teams in his league.  He once said he thought he was modeling uniforms for the National League.

Garagiola told a story about one night when he was catching against the St. Louis Cardinals. The pitcher that night was young and inexperienced, pitching his very first game in the major league.

Who should come to bat but Stan Musial, one of the greatest sluggers of all time. Immediately the young pitcher felt a bolt of fear flash through his entire being.  To make matters worse, there were runners on second and third, the score was tied at six all, and it was the top of the ninth inning. 

Joe squatted behind home plate and signaled for the fast ball.  But the young pitcher shook his head, indicating that he didn’t want to throw that pitch. 

So Garagiola signaled for the curve ball, but again the young pitcher shook that one off as well. 

Garagiola tried a third time.  He flashed the sign for the slider, the only other pitch in the young player’s repertoire.  But once more, the young pitcher shook his head, saying he didn’t want to throw that one either.

Garagiola was utterly confused, so he called time out and went out to the mound.  “Hey, man, what’s going on?” he said, “I’ve called for the fast ball, the curve, and the slider.  That’s all you’ve got!  What do you want to do?” 

To which the young rookie answered, “Frankly, Joe, I was wanting to hold onto the ball as long as I could!”

A young athlete, paralyzed by self-doubt and fear; perhaps feeling a bit in over his head. Pick up your mat and walk.

Perhaps you can relate. I know I can.

There are times in our lives when it is easier to simply hang on to the ball. When it feels beyond our ken to trust that our lives will ever be any different or any better than they are; times when we feel like the tides are stacking up against us, and we cannot move against them. It’s easy in those times to lose heart; to lose faith; to feel isolated and paralyzed.

The question then becomes, how do we break the gridlock when something is hindering us, keeping us from both trusting God and growing into the person, or the community, God desires us to be?

We know that this pool, described in the gospel text really did exist – archaeologists actually uncovered and identified it in just the past few decades. And, we know that it was legendary for its healing power – like the present-day Lourdes in France. And, like Lourdes and other places like it, the pool was constantly surrounded by those who would flock there for healing.

It had a powerful reputation, and the legend was that when the waters were troubled, when they were stirred up, that’s when their powers were unleashed; that’s when you needed to jump in.

Rather than help the man into the water, Jesus had another solution.

Pick up your mat and walk. And that’s just what the man did. For whatever reason – could it have been the prodding of a real angel at Jesus’ words, or the Holy Spirit – the man decided to trust Jesus; to follow his instruction; to walk.

In that moment, the man’s life was transformed. He was no longer helpless. He was no longer isolated, or defined by his condition. He no longer had need of a legend to come true for him.

It might seem strange that if it was as easy as simply picking up his mat and walking, he had never thought of it before, never been able to do it before. But of course, we know there is more to this story and this message. Because the fact is, he had never before encountered Jesus.

God’s power and love known through the person of Jesus Christ create and sustain people and communities. God’s power and love, known through Jesus, transform them and open them up to go to unexpected places and do unexpected things.

Like the disciples in the first reading this morning, God’s call to pick up our mat and walk requires trust and obedience. It means being willing to let go of the fear that paralyzes and moving toward all that God is calling us to do and be, trusting that Jesus has the power to heal and save, making true wholeness possible.

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is a healing balm. We don’t know what Jesus was thinking or when he chose this man, perhaps the least likely to be healed (after 38 years of waiting) but we do know this:

Sometimes we sit and wait and wait for something magical to happen. We wait for the waters of our lives or for our ministry here to be stirred and magically take shape so that poof – things might begin to happen. But the angel never appears, the water never stirs, and we are just as broken and paralyzed today as we were yesterday. False gods and false expectations have let us down again.

But then, Jesus reaches out to us. Jesus commands us, take up your mat and walk. Trusting in Christ, our waiting is over, and our healing begins. Jesus, who intimately knows death and resurrection brings life and hope and wholeness, making all things possible.

Jesus brings healing to our personal lives, and to our lives in community. While both may at times feel frozen in fear, waiting for magical release, magical stirring, Jesus is already calling us, getting ready to transform us through the healing power of his love.

In our personal and corporate lives we are being called to prayer; then, to pick up our mats; to follow Jesus’ command to witness and service.

So, what are we waiting for? Let us pick up our mats, and follow Jesus’ command. Because when you think about it, Jesus alone brings life – everything else is just waiting.

The Cross in the Room

John 13:31-35
Acts 11:1-8
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6

 We have before us this morning a beautiful and rich smorgasbord of scripture readings, on a Sunday where we have remembered our Baptism, will soon celebrate, bless, and ask God’s protection on gardens, fields, and the growing things that sustain us, and share once again in the means of grace at the table of our Lord.

My Lord, What a Morning! (I feel like I should break forth in song here). As I read through these lessons again and again in preparation for this morning, I had a hard time choosing just one to preach on. So I decided to take on the entire smorgasbord. We should be out of here by about 4 o’clock this afternoon. (Just kidding)

To try to pull a single theme out of these readings might appear to be a challenging exercise at first glance. First we have Peter speaking to the circumcised believers of the early church in Jerusalem, that is, Jewish converts to Christianity, explaining to them that God has given the Gentiles the same gift as God has given the Jews, without distinction. They are included in the love of God and in the gift of salvation.

The psalm is one of praise to God for the fruits, fowl and fauna of the earth, for all that resides in, under and over the earth, the seas and the skies.

The reading from Revelation relates a vision that has been given to John of Patmos, which reveals a new creation which has dawned through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a creation in which God continues to abide through and through, as we await its completion – its being brought to fruition - at Christ’s return.

Finally, we have this lovely Gospel reading, which is so familiar, containing this new commandment as it does - this commandment to love. Jesus reveals that it is through this loving that all will know that we are Christ’s disciples – and will therefore know the love of God.

It is this commandment, I think, that ties all of these scriptures together and presents us our theme. God’s love binds us together. It points us in the direction of discipleship. It shapes who we are and how we are to carry out our mission – in love and in service born of love.

The commandment in this text is one of the more famous statements in the whole bible, and as Christians it seeks to guides our behaviors and decisions. It is lived out in our actions and in our attitudes.

It is not pointed inward, but is always pointed outward. It is not about us. It is about God! And it is nothing new. Loving one another is part of the Jewish tradition, is present in the Greco-Roman world that surrounded these original disciples and early Christians, and evidence of God’s love is present throughout the richness of God’s creation.

Love is where it’s at, People! It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?

And yet, we know that it isn’t always easy, is it?

Which reminds me of a story I heard recently:

One Sunday a priest was finishing up a series on marriage. Of course he talked a great deal about the necessity of love being at the core of the union, and he mentioned this commandment of Christ’s. At the end of the service he was giving out small wooden crosses to each married couple. He said, "Place this cross in the room in which you fight the most and you will be reminded of Jesus’ new commandment and you won’t argue as much." One woman came up after the service and said: “You’d better give me five crosses.”

We can all probably agree that it is usually pretty easy to love those who are part of our “family” – however you define family – even if it sometimes takes a cross in each room to remind us of the meaning and cost of love.

We can pretty safely say we love those who look like us and hold the same ideological values and wants as we do. And it’s easy to say we love someone, even when sometimes we hold deep personal animosity toward them.

It’s hard to act with love toward those we don’t understand, those who don’t agree with us, those who stand for the things we think are wrong. It’s challenging to acknowledge that people who look, speak, believe and behave differently than we do are the ones, together with those we favor, that we are called to love.

And yet, love, as Jesus does it, is not simply the absence of hatred. Love is living, dedicated action - born testament to valuing, caring for, and wishing the best for the other – and at times requires participating in bringing the best, even when we are in conflict with the other. As Jesus did love, we are to do love.

We remember that right after he said these words, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, showing them that love is embodied in humble service. Jesus shared bread with the very one he knew would, within hours, betray him and hand him over to die.

Here, at the Last Supper, when Jesus knew he had to prepare his disciples for his absence – for soon, he will die on the cross, and they will be left to carry this mandate to love into the world without him at their side - Jesus showed them what love looks like.

They will be fearful. They will be anxious. They will not know where this road will lead.

My friends, these are appropriate days in which to hear and contemplate these words, and think about how our role as disciples of Christ, following this commandment should shape our thoughts, behaviors and reactions.

I don’t know about you, but lately, it seems that there are days when it honestly feels like the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, driven there by deep divides that bring out the worst in people – including us.

This election cycle has been described as being without parallel, in recent history anyway, in terms of the hate-filled, divisive rhetoric that polarizes and defeats us. Many people are fearful. Many people are anxious. Many people are concerned about where this road will lead.

Regardless of who you favor or how you will cast your vote, these deep divisions among us must not lead us to forget this very central command and characteristic that Christ demands – love one another. But we are reminded through this scripture of Christ’s example and words. Have love for one another. Care for one another. Respect and honor one another as creations of God and as co-inhabitors of this world that God so lovingly created and sustains.

Loving one another, Christ tells us to work together to love and reach out to and care for the poor, the outcast, the disadvantaged, the homeless, the refugee, the abused, the prisoner, the addicted, the diseased, the underemployed, the children, the lost sheep.

Jesus shows these disciples that to participate in his kingdom work, they must “be” with Jesus through love – loving the world he is leaving them, and loving one another with depth and humility and humor and devotion and strength.

As love binds together the biblical readings we have this morning, love binds us together as disciples of Christ. We love because God first loved us. We reach out in care and devotion to all whom God created because Jesus did so himself and has shown us the way.

We learn and teach by example, and as we watch Jesus, others are watching us, to see what loving as disciples of Christ look like. We teach about God’s love and demonstrate the love of Christ by what we say and do. That is a delightful – and daunting – truth.

The love of God comes to us anew each day through our baptism. It is love that brings with it grace – and the forgiveness of sin as we struggle, and sometimes – often - fail, to fulfill God’s desire that we be Christ for the world.

The love we are called to is sometimes easy, sometimes made evident in everyday acts among our friends and between strangers; and at other times it is hard, - loving, forgiving and valuing those we are in deep disagreement with. Loving action means going to places and following paths of which we cannot see the ending.

God has created us for love and by God’s mercy and grace God sent Jesus to embody love, to teach about love, to model loving action, and to demand love from those who would follow him. As Christians, through prayer and discernment, we seek to discover how we may best participate in God’s mission to love, care, and do justice.

As students and disciples on the Way of Christ, with love at the core of our action and being, may we embrace others – no matter who they are – because we know that God blesses us in order that we might love as God loves – without distinction

As lovers of Jesus, let us also be lovers of justice and peace, mercy and grace, forgiveness and truth. And when we struggle, let us remember the cross “in the room” – whereby God reminds the lengths to which God will go to love us unto eternity.

There is a beautiful prayer that is part of the service of morning prayer printed in our hymnals, one which reflects the courage and inspiration we need to go forth loving as Christ loves:

Let us pray. O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us.

Amen.

All I Need to Know!

Psalm 23

Grace, mercy and peace be yours and mine through our crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

Back when I was a lay Sunday School teacher I decided to have my young class memorize one of the most quoted passages in the Bible - Psalm 23.

I gave my young charges a month to learn the psalm. I figured it would be a good exercise for these little ones not only to learn this beloved psalm for themselves, but to study and maybe even discuss with their parents, which I encouraged. Because who doesn’t love Psalm 23, right?

Well, little Jason was excited about the task - but he just couldn't remember the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line.

On the day that the children were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Jason was so nervous; so I encouraged him, and prompted him, and developed a back-up plan, in case he should just not be able to come through. But when it was his turn, surprisingly, he stepped up to the lectern with great confidence. I was thrilled to see his self-assurance. When he spoke into the microphone, it was with conviction; in a loud, clear voice, he recited, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know.' And he promptly sat down.

That could have been, and perhaps should have been, the sermon for the day. For what else is there that we need to say? What else is there to know, with true conviction and blessed assurance, than the truth that the Lord truly is our shepherd. There is nothing more that we could possibly want. Right?

Trusting that God will shepherd us, that Jesus cares for us, that the Lord provides for our every need is so vital to our understanding of who God is and how God works, that although our lectionary system mixes things up so that lessons are rotated and we hear different lessons on parallel Sundays from year to year, in each year this Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Easter is always celebrated as Good Shepherd Sunday.

And, no matter what our other shepherd-themed readings for this day might be in any given year, on this 4^th Sunday of Easter, we always read Psalm 23.

Most of us love the imagery this psalm offers us – cooling, trickling streams of water, verdant pastures and hillsides, a feast, an over-running cup, and accompaniment and care during the deepest, darkest times of our lives.

God’s promise of comfort, provision, security, goodness and mercy are important to hear and to acknowledge. They are vital words of consolation and solace during the struggles and losses of life. It’s why in most circumstances this psalm is read or recited at funerals – at times of great grief and uncertainty we need to hear about this good shepherd who provides living water and life in the midst of death and decay.

But is that all this psalm provides for us? Is that all that the Lord is saying to us through these traditional words of reassurance and blessing? I think not.

I think that while this psalm is meaningful to us and holds great value, appropriately so, in its traditional uses, it has much more to say to us than is typically ascribed to it. Because really, while the imagery used is beautiful, is it relevant to most of us today?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see many sheep running our neighborhood here, or in my neighborhood on the other side of Easton, Maryland. I don’t see many shepherds roaming my neighborhood looking for lost sheep though I am sure that metaphorically, there are many of us to be found.

Except for the few who actually do live in the rural parts of our country and even fewer who do raise sheep, most of us have little contact or true experience with sheep.

What we do “know” of them comes from what we have heard about them – that they aren’t very intelligent creatures, that they wander off rather regularly, that they are easily led astray. I don’t know how much of that is even accurate – perhaps there is a kernel of truth in those characterizations, but I’m not so sure.

However, when we talk about Jesus the Good Shepherd who looks after his sheep, we think of ourselves as possessing many of the same characteristics as the sheep of our understanding – while we may be intelligent, we are often unwise – we are sometimes easily led astray – as just as often, on our own we are likely to stray from the path the God desires for our good and the good of God’s mission and kingdom.

But the image of the Good Shepherd, is one that prevails and comforts – it is a sweet image of loving protection and gentle guidance for all those times we find ourselves in danger.

I was reminded recently, however, that the shepherd’s crook is used in two ways; it has two useful ends. On one end there is a crook, useful for drawing the wandering, unwise sheep away from danger; the other end makes a good poker – it is good for prodding sheep in the way that they should go.

Jesus, the good shepherd, does both these things as well. While Jesus is constantly and consistently working through the Holy Spirit to draw us to himself, to draw us into lives of discipleship, and into ministry in his name, Jesus is also constantly and consistently poking us, often agitating, sending us out to graze in new pastures, to take on new ministries, to embrace the new life that is all around us, life that is present and ongoing through Jesus himself.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who is eternally drawing us in to hold us, while at the same time, is unfailingly challenging us to go where perhaps we really don’t want to go. The same God who created us, who fashioned us in God’s own image, who has known us since even before we were being knit in our mothers’ womb, knows thoroughly our potential and urges us toward God’s own vision and plan for our lives, our being, and our future.

There is a tension in that reality. 

We like the image of the Good Shepherd who looks after us, who guides us toward living streams of water and keeps us safe. We like the idea of a God who will be with us through every dark valley, fear, and dangerwe confront. We embrace the saving aspect of this shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.

But, the other aspect of the shepherd? The one who pokes, prods, pushes and agitates? Not so much. If God wants to pursue me to call me back when I have strayed, well, that might be okay.

If God wants to grab me with the hook part of the staff to draw me away from danger, well, that’s alright too, although admittedly I may at times come kicking and screaming, because I don’t necessarily see the danger or understand the risk.

But God’s relentless pursuit, which inspired John Calvin to characterize God as “the hound of heaven?” I’m not sure I like that side of God so much. That God is a demanding God, a persistent God who doesn’t take “no” as a “final answer.”

The truth and beauty found in this psalm lie in this parallel – evil and sin truly do exist in our world today, and in our lives, and they do surround us. In this post-modern culture in which we live, speaking in such terms has gone out of vogue.

But the reality of our lives, is that we are constantly tempted through media, through consistent focus on materialism, through cultural insistence on what holds value in life and what does not.

The things of value are typically described as power, wealth, beauty, instant gratification, status, and belonging. We are bombarded by rhetoric that insists that lives in religious community hold no value and to “belong” to such a community is just folly, that the belonging we seek should be our place in the world as defined by those qualities I just mentioned.

Into this wilderness of confusion, the psalmist makes the startling claim that God restores the soul – the troubled, struggling, lost and wandering soul. Did you know that nefesh -  the word usually translated as “soul” here, in Hebrew actually refers to “life breath,” or life? It is the very breath breathed into us by God’s Spirit, the very essence of being.

“The image is of someone who has almost stopped breathing and is revived, brought back to life” writes biblical scholar Robert Alter.

God brings us back to life. Not only in the sense of the eternal life after death that we ascribe to the meaning of these promises, but true, living, breathing, life. Life that is evident through action, here. Now.

This psalm has become our standard - we fear no evil because we trust in God. Trust trumps fear. In the deepest darkest times of our lives, through the confusion and turmoil of competing claims about God and about life itself, despite all that seeks to draw us away from God and therefore closer to death, we are assured through the words and imagery of this psalm and through the image of the Good Shepherd that God preserves and protects us from harm not only for our sake, but more importantly for God’s sake.

This promise is made for the here and now. God’s stake is claimed for our living. God’s crook and staff draw us in as God’s own, and then poke us and prod us to truly live as God’s people, fearing no evil, for the crook is poised to claim us should we falter. Because God is a true and just God, God’s shepherding acts testify to the Lord’s inordinate, steadfast love.

In the gospel today as Jesus follows up his response to the Jews about his identity, he states, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; …..My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.”

Let us truly follow this Shepherd then, sent by God. Let us trust that this Shepherd leads us to true life – that is, leads us into the way of living as disciples, trusting and knowing that the Good Shepherd leads us into the way of streams of living water and lives of bountiful service in the name of Christ.

Then may we, like Jason, with full confidence and blessed assurance, proclaim, “the Lord is my Shepherd, and that’s all I need to know.”