Low Expectations

May 26^th, 2019         “Low Expectations”         Rev. Heather Jepsen

John 5:1-9

         All this month we have been jumping around in the gospel of John.  We started at the end of the gospel after Jesus had been resurrected, and we looked at the story of the risen Lord on the beach with the disciples.  We jumped to the middle of the gospel where Jesus talked about his sheep knowing his voice.  Then we jumped back towards the end with a reading from the last supper.  And finally, today, we go back to the beginning with one of Jesus’ early healing miracles.  It is enough to make one’s head spin!

         As always we need some context to help us find meaning in the text.  Jesus has been traveling all over the countryside.  He has been in conflict with the Pharisees and others.  He has been teaching and healing and generally mixing it up with strange folks from Samaritans to the disciples.  Today the author tells us that there is a festival in Jerusalem (we don’t know which one) and so Jesus is in Jerusalem for this festival.

         Just inside the sheep gate Jesus enters the area called Bethzatha where there is a healing pool.  This is a real place and I visited it last spring when I was in Jerusalem.  Matt is going to show some pictures, nothing fancy, but I always think it is interesting when we can connect these stories to our own time.  Plus, seeing the remains of the stone columns and the deep pools gives us an idea of how this story might have played out. 

These were probably hot springs or mineral springs of some sort.  In other versions of this story it is said that an angel came down and stirred the waters which would lead to healing.  I imagine this could have been some natural bubbling in a hot springs.  This story doesn’t say anything about an angel but it does speak of the waters being stirred.  In our own time we know that any medicinal aid in the mineral springs could be there with or without the stirring of the waters but of course folks back then didn’t know that.  In this story, you have to be in the water when it is stirred to be healed.

Jesus comes to the springs and encounters a paralyzed man there.  This man has been ill for 38 years which we can imagine was probably most if not all of his life.  When Jesus sees the man lying helpless beside the pool he asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”  This is a really interesting question.

The man’s reply is also interesting, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”  When we first encounter this story it sounds like the man is making excuses, and I have preached sermons to that extent.  But when I read the story this week, I heard something else.  Instead of an excuse, I heard a cry for help that came from a place of hopelessness.

Let’s go back to Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?”  The writer of the gospel of John is clear that the man has been ill for a long time.  And Jesus in John’s gospel knows things; he can read minds and hearts.  So even though he has never seen this man before, Jesus knows he has been ill a long time.  And he knows how long the man has laid beside the pool.  When Jesus asks if the man wants to be well, to a man who has laid beside a source of healing for years, I think he was asking about the status of the man’s heart.  I think he is asking about hope.

Let’s imagine the pool again.  Even from my pictures of the ruins we can see that the pool was deep, the stairs were steep, and the area would easily become crowded.  This is no zero entry wonder like we have on modern pools today where one can just easily step in centimeters deep water and then move down a gradual slope into increasing depths.  No, this was steep stairs and deep waters.  If this man has any movement at all, I would imagine it’s a rough dragging sort of affair.  And someone like that cannot get down steep stairs and in and out of deep water easily.  If there was a rush for healing when the mineral springs bubbled up, then this fellow would be easily pushed aside.

In fact, as I mentioned to the kids, I imagine this fellow was easily unseen and ignored.  If he was always there, if he was never healed, if he was never helped into the water, then he becomes part of the landscape.  Like a column or a decorative feature, this man just becomes part of the background of the pool.

Imagine what it would be like to be this fellow.  I think one would feel totally hopeless; 38 years of illness and 38 years of being ignored.  How many times do you try to get down to the water before you give up?  He’s not completely without hope, for he is still at the pools, but at this point I imagine he has low expectations.

It is from this understanding that I began to rethink the traditional preaching on this text.  If the man’s answer of “no one will help me” is understood as an excuse for not being healed, then Jesus’ question, “do you want to be healed?” becomes “what’s your problem?”  It is way too easy to get into a space of victim blaming if we play that game, and no good preaching can come from that.

But if the man’s answer of “no one will help me” is a cry for help it is something else.  I don’t think this man was giving an excuse for his own miserable state.  I think he was asking Jesus for help.  If no one has seen or interacted with this fellow and suddenly Jesus is talking to him, he is not going to let this opportunity pass him by.  I think he was asking Jesus to help him down into the healing waters. 

If we read the man’s answer as a cry for help, then we can read Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?” as an insight into the man’s heart.  I think it is a question about hopelessness.  I think Jesus can sense the pain and frustration of the man.  I think he can feel the heartbreak and sadness.  I think he knows this man has almost entirely lost hope.  And so Jesus asks if he still wants to be healed, or if he has given up.  The question could easily be “Just how hopeless are you?”

And the man responds with his last shred of hope.  “No one will help me” which implies that if someone, Jesus perhaps, would offer help then he would be healed.  Jesus’ response is overwhelming, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  Jesus does more than help the man into the pool, he heals the man completely.  The man obediently follows directions, at once being made well he stands, takes his mat, and walks away.  These are not the actions of a man who is making excuses.  They are the actions of a man who has received a gift far beyond his expectations, and is now following directions.

So what an interesting story this turns out to be.  A person who is near hopelessness encounters Jesus.  Jesus asks after the state of the person’s soul, and he responds with his low expectations, asking for the least amount of help he needs.  And Jesus goes above and beyond the request offering total and complete healing.  This is not a healing story about faith.  There is no point here where Jesus says “your faith has made you well” which so often appears alongside healings.  And this isn’t a story about worthiness, as there is nothing to make this man more worthy then all the others at the poolside that day.  Instead, this is a story about grace.  For Jesus gives a gift of healing to a person in need, for no other apparent reason then the fact that he can do it.  Jesus is able to heal, and so he does.

As always, this week I am trying to find a connection to the story of this man and our own stories today.  And while we might visit the pools of Bethzatha, or at least their ruins, we aren’t going to lay there and try to crawl in to the dried up spaces for a blessing.  And while some of us may be longing for physical healing of a 38 year ailment, most of us probably don’t fit into that category either.  But where I do see a connection between this man and our own stories is in his sense of hopelessness and his low expectations.

It is easy to become hopeless in our day and age.  And in the face of the world’s suffering it is easy to have low expectations.  I saw it a lot last week at the Festival of Homiletics, a preaching conference I attended.  Most of the sermons I heard had low expectations.  They were all about the hopelessness of our world today, all the ways we need God to intervene and bring healing, and all the things we preachers were probably doing wrong.  In those sermons I heard the voice of this man, approaching Jesus with low expectations for change or justice.

And that makes sense doesn’t it.  We are tired of our hearts breaking for the world around us.  Preachers are tired of preaching justice into a world that loves other things instead.  And just like the man at the pool we have good reasons for having little hope.  “Jesus, I have tried to preach your word, but anytime I say something that matters I step on people’s toes and I ruffle feathers.”  “Jesus, I have tried to change the world, I have tried to be a force for good, but I am just one person, I can’t do it.”  And as the injustice of the world rolls on with school shootings, and social media madness, and increasing poverty, and deaths at the border, and restrictions on health care, and the drums of war, and the madness of hate crimes we begin to lose hope.  We have low expectations. 

And into this space Jesus asks us, “Do you want to be made well?”  I want to respond like the man, saying “help me”.  “Help us Jesus, help us to be made well.  Give us a hand down to the waters, carry us away from this suffering, and bring us to a place of healing.  Fix it for us Jesus.”  I don’t want to have low expectations.  I want Jesus to bring healing justice to our world.

Instead of carrying the man down to the pool, because how else would Jesus get the man in the waters, Jesus tells the man to stand up, take up his mat and walk.  What if that is Jesus’ response to us as well?  Instead of carrying us down to the water, instead of fixing it for us, Jesus tells us to stand up and walk there ourselves.  Maybe Jesus says to us “Do you want to be made well?  Then get out there and go do something”.  Because unlike the man, we have the power to heal that which makes us hopeless.  We have the power to change the world.

Jesus has already offered us healing.  God has already given us the gifts of grace.  We have the love and compassion we need to change the world.  God has already given us a fire in our heart for the work of justice.  Jesus has already told us to take our mats and walk.  Maybe we just need greater expectations from the gifts of God.  Maybe we just need greater expectations for ourselves and our world. 

And so today I would encourage us not to lose hope, and not to have low expectations.  Look at this guy, lying by the pool.  He has no faith, there is nothing special about him, and he doesn’t even know who Jesus is, he doesn’t recognize him.  He is just a guy by the pool, waiting for his life to change.  And Jesus changes his life, and brings miraculous healing.  Jesus injects this man with healing and hope.

How much more so, will Jesus give gifts to us?  We have faith, we have hope, and we recognize Jesus and his work in the world.  We aren’t giving up, we are standing up.  We are walking out into the world full of hope and great expectations.  We are the people of God and we are working for justice.  We pray each day for God’s kingdom come and we work each day to bring about that kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. 

We can’t let ourselves get down, we cannot give up now, Jesus has given us a charge.  Yes you are tired, yes it has been a long wait, but God is here and now is the time to take up your mat and walk.  Let us not be crushed by hopelessness.  Let us recognize and see every moment, every blessing, every place where the kingdom is breaking into our world.  Let us take up our mats and spread the good news, helping others down to the healing pools, and lifting others up out of hopelessness.  Let us be the people of God.  Those who know Jesus and follow him in our world.  Let us have great expectations of our God and ourselves.  Today let us have hope.  Amen.