Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Holy Community


May 26th, 2013         “Holy Community”     Rev. Heather Jepsen

Genesis 1:26-28 and John 16:12-15

          What is God?  If I asked you to define God what would you say?  I bet that among this congregation I would find a variety of answers.  Many of you would probably give me a list of adjectives: God is all knowing, all powerful, all present.  God is justice and righteousness.  God is great and mighty.  God is all encompassing.  God is love.

          Your list would probably be based on ideas – things people have written and thought about God in theology and scripture.  God is the omnipotent creator of the universe.  God is the only God.  Some adjectives on your list would probably be based on your personal experience and feelings of God.  God is good.  God is warm.  Again, God is love.

          When we talk about God – we can never say exactly what God is.  We are human and part of that means that we are limited in the ways that we can talk about and know God.  We could stay here and talk all day about God and we wouldn’t be able to say all that God is.  We wouldn’t even be able to say all that God is in a year – or even in a lifetime.  God is more than our words.  But words are helpful to us.  We can use words to name ways that God has been known and experienced throughout history.  One way we use words to describe God is to talk about the Trinity.

          Today is Trinity Sunday in the liturgical year so I want to talk about the Trinity this morning.  The theology of the Trinity can be obscure, and I hope that you find something in this morning’s sermon that isn’t obscure.  I hope you find something that is a little closer to home.

          Now, I am sure nearly everyone here has some idea about the Trinity.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost right?  It’s the stuff classic Sunday school lessons are made of.  We have all heard of the “Three in One” the mystery of three persons – one God.  I bet everyone here knows this, but how far does your thinking about the Trinity go.  It’s not something we ever really discuss, even from the pulpit.

          First of all, I want to discuss what the Trinity is not.  The Trinity is not a hierarchy.  When we talk about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we don’t mean that the Father is in charge and then the Son and Spirit do the Father’s bidding.  It’s a common misconception.  The Father does not boss around the Son who in turn gets to boss around his little sister the Spirit.

          Instead, the Trinity is God in a community of equals, all giving and all sharing with each other.  Through the parts of the Trinity, God is giving to God.  God is loving God.  God is dancing with God.  The parts of the Trinity are known together.  It is their relationship to each other that defines them – and it is a relationship of self-giving love.  God is not a static solitary being; rather God is a personal being in movement and in relationship.

          God is defined by God’s relationship with God’s self.  The Trinity is defined by how the three parts relate to each other in a dance of self-giving love.  When you think about it, we are defined by our relationships as well.   Imagine if someone lived every day of their life alone in a cave with no friends and no family, no acquaintances, nothing.  This imaginary person would have never seen anybody else.  It would be hard to define that person’s life.  But, if that person has friends and family and even just acquaintances that person becomes defined.  They are a wife, they are mother, they are a father, they are a son, a niece, or a cousin.  They are a friend, a confidant, a person that comes to your church, or someone you saw in the coffee shop.  They have become somebody.  They are defined.  We are defined by our relationships with other people.

          God is Father relating to Christ.  God is Christ relating to the Spirit.  God is the Spirit relating to the Father, and so on.  God is defined by God’s relationship with God’s self.  In our New Testament reading today we hear Christ discuss how the different parts of the Trinity work together to bring us a message of hope and salvation.  Christ has knowledge from the Father which he has shared with us in person.  When Christ leaves the community of John, he will send the Holy Spirit which will continue to guide them in the ways of truth.  It is the Spirit who guides us today, helping us to have a deeper understanding of both the Father and the Son.

          Language like this helps us to understand that God is not alone.  God is not satisfied to sit alone up in heaven.  God is not some old man with a beard, sitting on a cloud, watching us for all eternity.  God is not a solitary being; God is a personal being in relationship.  Similar to the way that God is in relationship with God’s self; through the Trinity God is in relationship with us.  God is active in our world.  Our God is a God that makes covenants with us.  We read this in the Old Testament stories of Noah and Abraham.  In the New Testament we find God in relationship with us in the figure of Jesus Christ.  God is in relationship with us and like God’s relationship with God’s self, that relationship is hospitable.  God welcomes us, God loves us, God is with us.  God does not desire to be alone; God desires to be in relationship with each of us and that is why we were created.

          Just as God’s relationship with God’s self is one of self-giving love, so is God’s relationship with us.  God loves us.  And God empties out God’s self to love us.  God suffers for us in love.  We find this in the miracle of Christ, who would suffer and die an unjust death on earth with us, for us, like us.  Because of Christ, God also suffers with us in love.  When we suffer God can be a present help, because God has known suffering.  We feel the presence of God with us through the Holy Spirit.  God enters into vulnerability in love.

          Now I know I just hit you with a lot of information.  The Trinity is a really hard subject to discuss at all, let alone in a Sunday sermon.  What I really want you to hear this morning is that when we talk about the Trinity, we talk about God being in community, holy community.

          In Genesis we read that we are made in the image of God.  God desired to make humankind in God’s own image, the image of community.  God did not make one man to sit alone on this earth.  God created two people, (at the same time in this version of the story) and then God encouraged them to make more.  And not only that, but God encouraged the people to be in relationship with the world around them, from the beasts of the field to the birds of the air.  In the very beginning God created relationship and God created community. 

          Like God, we are made to be in community.  We are made to be in relationship with each other and with God.  Now I know this is something everyone here can connect with.  Everyone here is in community, simply by being here this morning.

          We reflect God in our close knit communities.  When we are in loving relationships between husbands and wives we reflect God, loving relationships between parents and children reflect God; loving and hospitable relationships between friends, between co-workers, between church members are all a reflection of the community we find in the Trinity.  When we are in self-giving relationships, we are in the image of God.

          When we talk about sin, we are talking about broken relationships.  When we talk about sin we are talking about unhealthy relationships that do not reflect the image of God.  Sin is selfishness in relationships; its pain, its violence, its using other people to get what you want.  Sin is hierarchy, racism, classism, and sexism.  Sin is every way that we can think up to distort the image of God we are created to reflect.  Sin, is bad community, no community, and broken relationships.

          When we talk about the Trinity we talk about grace.  We talk about God who shows us what it is to live in God’s image.  It is to live in relationships of equality, relationships of hospitality, relationships of love.  It is to dance with each other in joy, and to see the image of God reflected in us, when we are together, when we are in community.

          What is God?  God is community.  God is loving relationships.  God is reflected in us.  God is here.  Thanks be to God for creating us to be together in holy community.  Amen.

 

Monday, May 20, 2013

Blessing Babel


May 19th, 2013         “Blessing Babel”            Rev. Heather Jepsen
Genesis 11:1-9 with Acts 2:1-21
          You might not know that I start my sermon each week on Monday morning.  I hardly have time for one word to settle in before I start brewing on what I am going to say the next Sunday.  Each Monday morning, I meet with a small group of Warrensburg pastors and preachers to read over the texts for the coming Sunday.  This is a great opportunity to start the week fresh, bounce ideas off others in discussion, and start ruminating on a topic for Sunday.  Some weeks I get nothing out of it but a good visit, some weeks it lights me on fire.  This was one of those on fire weeks for me.
          We were sitting in the group and we approached the Genesis text, the tower of Babel.  As the story was read I started to think, wait a minute, this doesn’t feel right.  God punishes the people for seeking unity?  That doesn’t sound like my God.  What is going on here?
          The usual explanations were presented; the people are sinful, the people are proud, the people are seeking to go against God.  I know that story, I’ve preached that sermon.  How many pastors will sit in a pulpit today and tell folks that the scattering at Babel was a punishment that was reversed at Pentecost?  Lots will.  That is the Pentecost sermon.  I know, I’ve preached it multiple times.  But this week, that didn’t sound right to me.
          So after group on Monday, I started digging a bit.  My first thought was that this was some primeval story explaining the origins of language.  I was wondering if perhaps this story existed in early, early cultures and that the Hebrews adopted it for their own sacred text.  That answer gets me off the hook, as suddenly this could be a story about any god (lower case g) and not necessarily the God I worship, the Judeo-Christian uppercase G God.  But, I couldn’t find good support for this theory, and standing in the pulpit claiming this Bible story isn’t about our God, is probably not a good idea.
          So I went back to the drawing board, back to the text.  Look with me at Genesis 11 and tell me where it says the people were sinners, the people were proud, the people were making themselves into God.  It doesn’t say those things anywhere.  It says the people wanted to build a city, and it was a big city with a big tower.  It says the people wanted to have a lasting legacy, a name for themselves.  They did not want the name “God” they wanted their own name.  And they wanted to be united.  They wanted to be with other people like them.
          And God comes down, with the heavenly court, and mixes them up.  “Let’s mix up their language,” God says.  The word “confuse” balal in Hebrew, can also be translated mix.  God seems to worry about what people might do if they are too united, if they are too much the same.   And God scatters the people over the earth in a variety of places with a variety of tongues.  Nowhere does God say that the people deserve punishment, nowhere does it say that the mixing is wrong or bad; in fact there is no mention of sin anywhere in this story.
          So I started thinking, what if the diversity of language, the so called punishment of Babel, wasn’t punishment at all.  What if it was a blessing?  What if God’s desire for humanity is diversity.  Diversity is a blessing, diversity is good, diversity is the divine will for humankind.  How boring would we be if we were all the same?  Wouldn’t a creator God value difference and diversity?  If this story is about judgment, then I am inclined to say “That’s not my God.”  But if this story is about blessing, then that sounds like a God I know.
          So if this story is about the blessings of God, about God’s will for humanity and creation to exist with diversity, then that changes the traditional reading of the Pentecost text as well.  Rather than being two stories back-to-back, Pentecost a reverse of Babel (which you read in almost every commentary) I want to look at these two stories side by side or facing in the same direction, Pentecost a blessing of Babel.
          Let’s look at the Pentecost text in Acts 2.  “When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place.”  Who were all together?  The traditional reading is that the disciples were all together, this miracle happened to the twelve of them.  But the text doesn’t say it was the disciples.  It just says, “they were all together”.  Back up to verse 15 in chapter one and we read that Peter has been addressing the early church and the crowd numbered 120 people.  Perhaps this is the “they” who were all together.          If the spirit of God came upon the whole early church community, 120 men women and children, that is a lot different than it coming on just the 12 apostles.  I think the text supports this alternate reading, as “they were all together in the same place”, “tongues of fire rested on each of them”, “all of them filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Why does it have to be the traditional interpretation of just the 12?  Why can’t everyone who was there, all persons of the early church, be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit?  Now that is a Pentecost event!  And that is a mark of God, blessing in diversity.
And of course, the blessing of diversity continues.  The sound of all these people, 120 people, speaking in a multitude of languages, with energy and fire, is a cacophony.  The gathered crowds, from every nation under the stars, come together to witness what is going on.  And the miracle occurs as each one hears those blessed by the Holy Spirit speaking in their own native language.
If Babel is punishment, and Pentecost is a reversal of Babel, then wouldn’t everyone be speaking the same language?  But that’s not what happened at all.  If Babel is a blessing, and Pentecost confirms the blessing of Babel, then God is at work confirming the beauty of diversity.  God is at work, affirming all of these people, from all places of the earth, with all sorts of languages as good and as people of God. 
         The miracle of Pentecost is the blessing of diversity.  It is a repeat of Babel.  Those who were the same, those who were the early church, those who were all Galileans speaking in their own dialect, are once again dispersed, and blessed with the ability to speak other languages.   Pentecost is a blessing of Babel!  God’s desire for humanity is not sameness, is not uniformity, is not one people with one language.  No, God’s desire in creation is diversity.  And diversity is a blessing from God, given at Babel, given again at Pentecost!
So where do we go now?  To the church of course!  Pentecost is typically thought of as the birth of the church.  This is the story of how the church was born.  And how was the church born?  With unity and uniformity and no talking, and sitting straight and still in your pew?  No, that’s not how the church was born.  Like all of us, the church was born in a mess.  It was loud and confusing and weird and scary because everyone there was different and everyone there was speaking a different language.  The church doesn’t look like this, with folks all dressed the same and doing the same thing.  No, the church looks like Times Square.  With everyone going every which way, looking different, talking different, and doing different things. 
The miracle of Pentecost and the miracle of the church, is that we can be diverse, we can be different, we can even say different things, and still be the same thing, still be the church.  Like two people headed toward the same goal, we don’t need to walk the same path.  We can get there going two different ways, and both still get there. 
In the brown bag Bible study we are talking a lot about the Reformation, and this time we are in now of re-forming again, or as some call it, “The Great Emergence.”  Perhaps, we can find the blessing of diversity again there, in that conversation. 
So often as modern Christians, we lament the vast numbers of denominations.  Seriously, how many denominations are there, how many in the reformed family, how many in the Presbyterian family?  They are legion.  And we always assume that’s a bad thing.  But what if it isn’t?  What if denominationalism, when we do it right, not when we fight, is a blessing and not a punishment?  What if the reformation was another Babel, another Pentecost, another breaking up of unity to ensure the blessing of diversity?  And what if we are in another breaking up time right now?  Perhaps this age of unrest and non-unity is a blessing from God?  Perhaps we have been too united and now we are called to embrace diversity within the church again.  Perhaps we are called to go out into the world, in diverse ways, bringing the message of God to people who are not like us.  And perhaps we are called to bring the message of God in languages where it hasn’t been spoken before, outside the church in social media or other new gathering places.
  O sure, it’s a scary idea in a scary time.  That is a unifying theme in all these stories.  I am sure that the people of Babel were scared when they were dispersed over the earth.  And I am sure that the people of Pentecost were terrified when everyone suddenly started speaking different languages.  Why else would Peter reference the end of the world, “with blood and fire and smoky mist?”  We humans like sameness.  Change and diversity are scary!
But maybe we just like sameness because it is easy.  We like to tell a story where sameness and unity is right, is a blessing, is ordained by God.  But what if that is not the true story?  What if God’s actual design is diversity that appears as chaos, authority that appears as lack of authority, and church that appears as non-church?  What if God’s actual design is that we move out of our comfort zone and move into a new way, a different way of being church all the time?  Would that not be the work of the Holy Spirit – birthing church in a new way again over and over?
I am not the only person feeling the unrest in the world of church right now, and I certainly don’t have any answers.  But I do feel Pentecostal energy and fire around these questions.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit is trying breathe new life into us, a new blessing of diversity.  I certainly hope so.  Amen.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Ascension


May 12th, 2013       “Ascension”        Rev. Heather Jepsen

Luke 24:44-53 and Acts 1:1-11

          The Ascension of the Lord is one of those church holidays that we skip more often than not.  I have been in the pulpit for seven years and I have preached on this subject only once.  One could argue that we skip the ascension because it technically occurs during the week.  The Ascension of the Lord is celebrated 10 days before Pentecost which means it happened last Thursday while we were all going about our normal business.  But I think we really skip the Ascension because it is such a strange story.

          In our church year we celebrate quite a few happy holidays.  My personal favorite is Christmas when we celebrate the coming of our Lord as one of us in the form of the baby Jesus.  And we all love to celebrate Easter and the coming of our Lord afresh in our lives as the one who has conquered death on behalf of all of us.  And most of us even love to celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, because that is the Sunday when we sing a little louder and clap a little more.  By the way – don’t forget to wear red next Sunday for our celebration.  But the truth is, no one wants to celebrate the ascension because it is not about the coming of anything good; in fact, the ascension is all about saying goodbye.

          Of the gospel writers, only Luke tells the story of Jesus being carried bodily up into heaven after his resurrection.  Though he is the only one to tell this story, Luke gives a spare account of what happens.  Jesus gives a final word to his disciples, lifts up his hands in blessing, and then is carried up into the heavens.  Even though we don’t consider the ascension often, I think we all have a collective picture of this in our heads.  Almost every church that has stained glass windows has a window of the ascension; we don’t of course, but many churches do.  I am sure most of us here can imagine Jesus, his body hovering just feet above the disciples’ heads, his hands outstretched toward them in a blessing as he is raised up in a sunbeam and transported into the clouds like he’s riding some sort of holy escalator.

          The only other place we read about the ascension is in Luke’s other book, Acts.  In Acts, Jesus teaches the disciples that the Holy Spirit is about to come upon them, foreshadowing the day of Pentecost.  Then as they watch he is lifted up into the clouds.  The disciples sit there staring at the sky with their mouths hanging open until they notice two angels with them.  The angels say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven?” as if staring into the sky is not the proper response to having just seen someone float up into the clouds.

          It’s hard to imagine what this moment was like for the disciples.  Here was Jesus, saying goodbye to them all.  Of course for us, living without the physical presence of Jesus is pretty normal.  We would be much more shocked and surprised if Jesus was suddenly physically present with us than we ever are at his absence.  It has been almost 2000 years since that day the disciples stared up into the blinding sun and by now we are pretty used to the fact that Jesus has physically left the earth.

          Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor points out that the ascension is so hard for us because it is such an abstract idea.  She writes,

Almost everything else that happened to Jesus makes sense in terms of my own life.  He was born to a human mother; so was I.  He ate and drank and slept at night; so do I.  He loved people and got angry with people and forgave people; so have I.  He wept; me too.  He died; I will die too.  He rose from the dead; I even know something about that.  I have had some Easter mornings of my own – joy found in the midst of sorrow, life in the midst of death.

But ascending into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God?  That is where Jesus and I part company.  That is where he leaves me in the dust.  My only experience of the ascension is from the ground, my neck cranked back as far as it will go, my mouth wide open, my face shielded from the sun by the cloud that is bearing my Lord away.

As a church holiday and as a story of our faith, the ascension is so easily ignored by us simply because we have nowhere to file it away within our own experiences. 

          Now in his gospel, Luke says that after the ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem with much joy and that they were continually in the temple worshipping God.  Now I imagine this was true to some extent but after a point I am sure they lost a bit of their enthusiasm.  Having never really known a long term absence of Christ, they would constantly be wondering when he was coming back.  As days turned into weeks, then months and then years they must have wondered just where Jesus went.  How many of them died carrying a deep disappointment that the Lord had not returned within their own lifetime?  Goodbyes are never easy.

           If we look at the role of the disciples that day, we see bits and pieces of our own lives; for we all know what it is to say goodbye, and we all know what it is to feel an absence in our lives.  To feel an absence there must first have been a presence.  Absence is that silent house after the kids have gone off to college; we see it in the too quiet, too clean bedroom, and in the overstocked fridge.  Absence is reaching our arm across the bed at night to find our beloved’s spot empty and cold.  Absence is the first time out at a favorite lunch spot, missing our recently departed friend and knowing exactly what she would have ordered if she was there.  Absence is that lonely return home to an empty yard and a discarded chew toy after the loss of a beloved pet.  We all know absence.

          And like the disciples, we all know the absence of God in our lives.  We feel that sense of longing, that sense of reaching out for more.  It is almost as if we feel that we were once connected with God but we no longer are.  There is a void in our lives, and a constant desire to get closer to God.  Through prayer, study, and attending church we are trying to get ourselves right with God, to get back to that place where there was no space of absence between us, only a sense of presence.

          I think the message the angels had for the disciples that day is also a message for us.  “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  Why do you spend all your time staring into space looking for God?  Why do you search for something which is gone and will never be the same again?  Instead, look down and look around you.  For God is here among us, we can find God in each other and we can find God here in the church.  We can know God in a new way.  We don’t need to spend our time looking up, for God is everywhere around us. 

          The great spiritualist Thomas Merton beautifully describes the time he suddenly became aware of God’s presence in humanity.  He writes,

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.  It was like waking from a dream of separateness and self-isolation. 

(I realized) it is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, through it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. 

There are no strangers!  If only we could see each other as we really are all the time.  There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, and no more greed.  The gate of heaven is everywhere.

It was like waking from a dream of separateness and self-isolation.  What a powerful thought and what a challenging idea to what has become such an individualized culture. 

The ascension teaches us is that we should stop looking for God in the clouds and look for God instead here amongst each other.  If we want to reconnect with God, to lessen our sense of absence, then we need to reconnect with each other.  We need to reach out to each other in love, for we all have a piece of God within us and it is together that we can do God’s work in the world.

          This connects with that idea that Jesus was always talking about, the kingdom of heaven.  This kingdom, of God’s reign and justice is here among us now and is yet to come.  We live in it and we look forward to it at the same time.  As one of my preaching friends is so fond of saying “I can step in, and I can step out . . . I can step in, and I can step out.”  Like waking from a dream of separateness and self-isolation, we can come to realize that we are not alone in this world.  Rather we are connected to each other and connected to God; and that this is the kingdom of heaven.

          As we gather at the table, we celebrate the kingdom with joy.  The table is a place where we gather with believers of every time and place.  Yes, Jesus ascended into heaven and left the disciples behind staring at the sun.  But he also gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit that binds us together here at the table and out in the world.  This is the feast of celebration, the table that is now and the table that will be when people gather from the far corners of the earth to be together in celebration of the risen and ascended Lord.  The kingdom of heaven is here at the table and this table looks forward to the kingdom of heaven fulfilled.

Next Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit and the fire that gave birth to the early church.  But today I think we should hang out in the in-between time with the disciples.  We should ponder the lifting up of Christ into the clouds, and consider what it was like for the disciples to stare into the sun that day.  We should sit with them as they first experience the absence of their Lord.  And we should listen to the voices of the angels who tell us we should not look for our God in the sky, but rather we should look for God here, amongst each other in worship and at the table.  Amen.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Do You Want to be Made Well?


May 5th, 2013                “Do You Want to be Made Well?”             Rev. Heather Jepsen

John 5:1-18

          Close followers of the lectionary cycle will note that there are two gospel readings to choose from this morning.  A pastor can read from John 14 where Jesus speaks of the coming “comforter” or Holy Spirit, or a pastor might choose this reading from John 5.  I have always found this story intriguing, and since this is its only turn in the three year cycle of readings, this is where I have decided to focus today.

          What we have this morning is a typical miracle story from the gospel of John.  The setting of our story is the healing pool of Bethzatha or Bethsaida, depending on your translation.  Unlike some Biblical places that are a challenge to locate, the pool of Bethzatha is a place historians are familiar with and a current archeological site in Jerusalem.  Probably some sort of natural spring, those in need of healing would gather around and wait for the waters to bubble up.  Later copiers of the text will add in the story that an angel would come down and stir the waters and that only the first man in the pool would be healed.  This cruel tradition would certainly make it hard for the weak and lame to get a turn in the pool, as the most agile person would likely be the first to jump in.

          We are given little detail of the man at the pools edge, only that he has been laying there for 38 years; quite a long time to wait for change.  Typical of Jesus’ talents in the gospel of John, Jesus demonstrates not only the power to heal but also holy awareness or inside information on a person’s life.  Though he has not previously met the man, Jesus knows that the man has been waiting a long time for healing.  Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”

          The man replies with that may be simply facts or may be excuses.  “I have no one to help me get in the water and I am too slow to get there myself.”  The man does not say he wants to be healed.  The man does not know Jesus or show any sign of faith.  The man simply explains why he has yet to enjoy the healing elements of this pool.  Jesus’ response is to command the man.  “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.”  That is all it takes as the man is made well and follows Jesus’ command.

          Now we enter in to the purpose of this story in John’s gospel, to discuss the meaning or trouble with Sabbath.  It was on a Sabbath that this miracle was performed and so Jesus and the man are bound to have a run-in with the religious authorities.  First the man is in trouble for carrying his mat on the holy day.  It is interesting to note that when the authorities ask the man who healed him he doesn’t know.  It is only after Jesus runs into him again that he remembers who Jesus is. 

Eventually Jesus is in trouble for healing the man on the Sabbath.  Jesus’ excuse is to tell the authorities, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”  The conflict escalates as the religious leaders rightly understand that Jesus is equating himself with God, another theme of the gospel of John.

I am intrigued by this miracle story for two reasons.  First of all, there is no mention of faith, at all, anywhere in the story.  The man does not know or recognize Jesus, he does not demonstrate any faith, he does not ask for healing, and there is no typical “go in peace, your faith has made you well.”  This is all particularly striking as the story directly follows a story in which a royal official’s son is healed from a distance due to that man’s great faith.

Today’s story flies in the face of all the connections made between faith and miracles.  The guy demonstrates no faith before the healing, and even more surprising, the man appears to demonstrate no faith even after the healing.  Miracles are not caused by faith, and miracles don’t appear to cause faith either.  It is an interesting counter-example to what we have come to think of as a typical healing story.

The other thing I find very intriguing about this story is the question that Jesus asks the man, “Do you want to be made well?”  The man doesn’t reply with a “Yes” or “Of course”.  Instead, the man begins to list the reasons that he is not well.  Excuse one “I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up” and excuse two “While I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”  Now, the gospel writer does not explain in detail this man’s condition so I don’t know exactly how bad off he was or how limited his movement was.  What we can discern from the gospel is that the man had waited in the same place for 38 years and did not experience healing.  Maybe he didn’t ask for it, maybe nobody was willing to help him, or maybe he was not truly motivated to seek healing.  It’s hard to say.

I am intrigued by Jesus’ question, because I wonder what our response would be if asked.  “Do you want to be made well?”  I imagine that for most of us, the initial response is an emphatic “Yes!  I want to be made well!”  But then when we look at what it takes to be made well, we might find we have more excuses than we have the energy to seek healing.  “I want to be made well, but I’m not ready to quit smoking.”  “I want to be made well, but I am too stressed to start eating right.”  “I want to be made well, but I don’t have time for exercise.”  Like the man by the waters, we have lots of excuses for why we are not well yet.

I think there is a deeper component to this question as well, and that concerns spiritual wellness.  When Jesus encounters the man later, he says to him, “See, you have been made well!  Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”  At first it appears that Jesus is associating illness with sinful behavior.  But we know from the story of the man with the withered hand that neither Jesus nor the author of the gospel of John, believe that.  It is my guess, that rather than physical illness, Jesus is speaking of spiritual illness here.  While the man has been made physically well, he is still lacking in the area of healthy spirituality.

Again, I would ask us, when it comes to our spiritual health, “Do you want to be made well?”  If the church is offering a spiritual pool of healing, a place where the proverbial waters are stirred up by the Holy Spirit, how many of us are jumping in, and how many of us are hanging back?  How many of us have sat on the sidelines for 38 years with excuses for why we haven’t been made spiritually well?  Like the man at the pool, we have lots of reasons for why we haven’t gotten into the healing waters yet.  “I can’t pray because I don’t know how to talk to God.”  “I can’t read the Bible because I am too busy and it is too boring.”  “I can’t come to church today because I have company, or because I have too much to do, or because it is nice outside and I have yard work to get done.”  How many excuses do we have to explain why we haven’t been healed yet?

Thankfully, God’s response to our excuses is not judgment or condemnation, it is grace.  The man by the pool didn’t recognize Jesus, didn’t show any sign of faith, didn’t even ask for healing, and yet by the abundant grace of Christ he was told to “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  So too, God offers us abundant, grace-filled healing.  Even if we have been sitting beside the pool of faith for 38 years, coming to church every Sunday and watching as others’ lives are transformed; it is not too late for us.  It is never too late for us to rise, take up our mats, and walk forward into a new life of rejuvenated spirituality, and a new life of mission and ministry.

So the question today is “Do you want to be made well?”  Of course we do.  For some of us there is a need for physical healing.  We are recovering from illness or surgery and we are doing everything we can to take care of ourselves and get better.  Not everyone at the pool had as many excuses as this guy.  For others of us there is a need to do more; start eating right, getting out for a walk in the sunshine, and doing a better job of taking care of our bodies. 

“Do we want to be made spiritually well?”  Of course we do.  That is why we are here today.  But when it comes to this one, I think all of us could do better; including me!  We all could use a little more prayer time, a little more Bible Study, a little more church in our lives.  In some ways we are all still standing by the edge of the spiritual pool waiting for something to happen.  And when something does happen, we often still hold back, afraid of what jumping in the pool might mean, afraid of the change that God might work in our lives. 

Today we are all standing on the edge of something great, we are standing on the edge of healing spiritual waters.  It is my hope that the next time the Holy Spirit comes down and stirs the waters of this church; that we will all jump in.  And not only that, but we will grab the hand of the person next to us and jump in together.  By the abundant grace of God, perhaps this church will stand up, take up our mat, and walk.  Amen.