Sermon of May 13, 2007

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 13, 2007
John 5:1-18

Poolside with Jesus

Visitors to the city of Jerusalem today will not find the pool of Beth-zatha (or Bethsada). They will find the site where the pool once was. Archeologists have dug down through several strata and unearthed what appear to be the outlines of at least two pools which were associated with miraculous healings at that spot. Even before King David made Jerusalem his capital city, the water at Bethsada was thought to have miraculous powers. The Romans erected a shrine to Asclepius, the god of medicine, there. (He was the god who had that staff with serpent curled around it which eventually became the emblem of A.M.A.)

I was at the site of pool of Bethsada back in March, along with several hundred pilgrims from all over the world. As I was exploring the ruins, a group of Nigerians sang a hymn and a group of Germans read from the Bible. My German isn’t good enough to follow closely, but I could tell that the leader was reading the same story I just read to you.

You need a little of this background to understand that, in Jesus’ day, the pool of Bethsada was a quasi-pagan sort of place. Legend had it that if you managed to get into the water at just the right time – as ripples were appearing on the surface – you’d be cured of whatever it was that ailed you.

That might not sound very Jewish to you. It’s not. It’s more like pagan superstition. Some people claimed it was an angel of the Lord that stirred up the water – so it wasn’t really superstitious to believe in the water’s miraculous powers. There are even ancient manuscripts of John’s Gospel that suggest this “angel theory,” but most scholars think those emendations are pretty dodgy – the theological equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig.

Jesus was strolling by the pool of Bethsada when he met a man lying on a mat who had been ill for at least 38 years. Apparently his friends or relatives took him down to the pool every day and just left him there, waiting for the water to move. The problem was, whenever it did move, he didn’t have anyone to grab him and put him into the water in time to benefit from its alleged curative powers. So every day he just lay there, hoping against hope that his life would change.

Or did he? Did he hope to be changed? It’s very hard to say. When Jesus meets him he asks him a question that would never have occurred to me to ask someone in a similar situation. “Do you want to be made well?” I would not have been surprised if the man had answered, “Duh! I’m at the pool of Bethsada, aren’t I? I’m lying on a mat, aren’t I? Of course I want to be made well. And who are you to ask such a presumptuous question to a person in my condition?”

But that’s not what he says. What he says makes me think that Jesus is onto something. “Well, you know how it is. You’ve got to get to the water just as its being stirred up, and I don’t have anybody to help me. By the time I get there, somebody else has gotten there ahead of me.”

In other words, “I’m just so helpless. A victim of the system. Ain’t it awful?

The man doesn’t answer Jesus’ question. He just lists the reasons why he’s stuck and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Last week I heard a radio story about a young family in Los Angeles that is trying to raise two children in a neighborhood plagued by gang violence. The young father is a former gang member himself, and is undergoing painful treatments to have a tattoo on his forehead removed – a tattoo that spells the name of the gang he used to belong to.

Both the mother and father are worried about their son, who has a fierce temper and is fascinated with guns. They’ve caught him making gang hand signs through the window of the family car as he sits in the back seat. He’s four years old. Whenever he gets so angry that he looses control of himself, they put him in front of the TV to play his favorite video game. It’s the only thing that sooths him, they say. It’s a game about shooting people.

Do you want to be made well?

Well, what can I say? It’s a tough neighborhood. I’ve had a hard life. I’m worried about my children being so violent, but violent video games seem to soothe them when they get mad. I, too, am a victim of the system. Ain’t it awful?

Jesus, you might have noticed, doesn’t buy into this man’s closed system of learned helplessness. Nor does he reinforce the superstition upon which the whole system rests. He simply says to him, “Stand up! Take up your mat and walk.”

As healing stories go, this is a very strange one. The man doesn’t asked to be healed. It’s not even clear that he wants to be healed. He doesn’t profess any faith in Jesus. Faith never comes up.

Unlike the former paralytic in a similar story in the Book of Acts, this man doesn’t go into the temple, laughing and leaping and praising God! He just gets up, picks up his mat, and walks away. Later, when accosted by the religious authorities for carrying his mat on the Sabbath, he puts the blame on Jesus, whose name he doesn’t even know. “The man who made me well said, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” He’s responsible. Blame him.

And, you might have noticed, he doesn’t even say “Thank you.”

If you’re looking to this story to make you feel good about your own efforts to help people, you might be disappointed. I remember a conversation years ago with a person who helped serve the ECHO meal to homeless people over in the basement of our Education Building.

“I’ll never do that again,” he said. “Those people just ate their meal and left. They didn’t even say ‘Thank you.’”

I couldn’t help thinking, “Yeah! Jesus knows just how you feel.”

It might be that this man in the story isn’t grateful. Think about it. Jesus has totally changed this man’s life. Now he’ll have to learn a trade, get a job, and pay taxes. No more lying by the pool of Bethsada, expecting everyone to feel sorry for him. Maybe Jesus didn’t do him a such a great favor after all. From now on, he’s a whole person, and whole people have responsibilities.

I get the feeling, after reading this story many times over, that even John doesn’t like it very much. He puts it in his Gospel, but he doesn’t much like it. Not only does it show that faith isn’t necessary for someone to receive a miracle of grace. It also shows that a miracle of grace doesn’t necessarily produce faith.

This man doesn’t become a believer or follower of Jesus. If anything, he becomes a witness against him before the religious authorities. Jesus doesn’t seem to resent any of this, as I certainly would. It’s just part of his mission, it appears. He didn’t heal the man to make him grateful or to sign him up to be an usher in church next week. He healed him because doing so was his Father’s work. “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”

In a curious sort of way, you could find this story encouraging. Not in a “Hallelujah” sort of way. More like in a “Keep-at-it” sort of way. Being faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t about success or public recognition, or even thanks. It’s about doing the work of the Father. God is at work in the world, bringing wholeness to the broken. Christ is alive, working amongst the grateful and the ungrateful. He is still doing the work to which he is called. We also should be working.

Perhaps, when we’re lying by the pool, playing “Ain’t it awful,? we should read this curious story.

Nobody will help us. Everybody’s out to get us. The City’s taking away our parking spaces. The whole culture taking pot shots at us. The denomination’s falling apart at the seams. There’s just no payback to being a Christian these days! Ain’t it awful?”

“Stand up!” Jesus says. “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk. We won’t get any work done together lying about here. Here, put on half of this yoke, and I’ll put the other half on, and let’s start plowing.”

No more excuses. No more playing “Ain’t it awful?” It’s time we go to work.”

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