5/3/2016 0 Comments Do You Want to Be Made Well?Preached on May 1, 2016 at First Church in Sterling, MA
Scripture: John 5: 1-9 Watch sermon here When I met with our newly formed and commissioned Called to Care team, I told them that the most important thing they can do besides listening and providing presence is to ban all theological clichés from their vocabulary. We tried to name them all. Everything happens for a reason. God just needed one more angel. God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle. When God closes a door, he opens a window. What are your least favorites? My least favorite: God helps those who help themselves. According to Wikipedia, 53% of Americans believe that the Bible teaches this phrase. Of “born again” Christians, 68%. This is an improvement. A poll in the late 1990s (81%) believed this concept is taught by the Bible. Despite being of non-Biblical origin, the phrase topped a poll of the most widely known Bible verses. Seventy-five percent of American teenagers said they believed that it was the central message of the Bible. So the reason why I despise that cliché so much is that the central message of the Bible is the opposite of the phrase “God helps those who help themselves.” The central message of the Christian scriptures is Grace. God does not discriminate with God’s love. God showers God’s people with love whether we help ourselves or not. In fact, God favors the least, the last, the lost. That is the whole darn point. “God helps those who help themselves?” Balogna sauce. Perhaps that’s why I really struggled with our text from John this week, about which so many terrible sermons have been preached. In the story, a man is lying on a mat near the healing baths by the Sheep Gate, where many sick people lay. The waters of Beth-zatha, according to the Bible, are said to have special healing properties wherein angels occasionally stir the waters, and legend says that the people who went into them are instantaneously healed of their afflictions. The man in our story had been lame (as in incapable of walking) for 38 years. Enter Jesus. Jesus comes upon this man, sees that he had been lying there for a very long time. And Jesus asks him a question—a question he doesn’t ask in his other healing accounts—a question that should be kind of a “no duh”, right? Do you want to be made well? What kind of question is that, Jesus? Of COURSE he wants to be made well. He can’t WALK. Well, Jesus may have been on to something, because curiously, the man doesn’t answer “yes.” Instead, he says: “no one will help me into the water, and when I try to get in other people get in the way.” So Jesus says: “take up your mat and walk.” Maybe because of the mood I’m in this month, or because of the political debates I’ve been watching on TV…that command by Jesus sounded very much to me this week like, “stop lying around and feeling sorry for yourself, and get up.” It sounded to me a little bit like “pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop waiting for someone else to do it for you.” It sounded a little bit to me like “Quit your whining. God helps those who help themselves.” I identified with the man in the story, and so I got mad at Jesus this week, which usually means the text has something to teach me. If I’m being honest, my answer to the question “Do you want to be made well?” is never an unambiguous “yes.” Maybe in theory, I want to be made well, but the work I have to do or the things I have to let go of in order to change sound hard, and unappealing. I am attached to the obstacles in my way. And so my answer to Jesus’ question sounds instead like the list of excuses the man gives to Jesus: “No one will help me. Other people are going first.” Friends, can I be honest with you? I have had a hard year this year. I have been over-functioning in this job, working long hours, saying yes to too much, losing a ton of sleep, eating less than healthfully, and all but ignoring my family. I have been cranky and resentful at times. I have had interventions by congregants, and colleagues and family members and friends saying, “Do you WANT to be made well? Try exercise. Make sure you take your days off. Enlist help. Shut down your computer and bring your kids on a hike. Quit your volunteer activities. Take a Sunday off. Take a vacation.” And I give a lot of excuses. I tell people there’s no one else to do the jobs, or that the demands on me are very high, or that I promise I will slow down after I’m not new anymore. Frankly, it sounds a lot like “No one will help me into the water, and when I try to get in other people get in the way.” The truth is, I know the path to being made well. But then I do the exact opposite because I have a lot to lose: the approval of others, the ability to be in control, the addictive feeling of success, the ability to ignore my three children’s loud yelling and constant needs because I have “more important things to do.” “Do you want to be made well?” That’s a good question, Jesus. We all need to be asked this question, since we are all afflicted. We are afflicted with addictions: to shopping, to cigarettes, to alcohol, to food, to video games, to work, to email checking and youtube watching. Healing might mean giving up our self-medication of choice and feeling all of the feelings instead of numbing ourselves to them—including boredom, discomfort, anger, sadness. Healing can be like ripping off a bandaid and exposing our wounds to the air. “Do you want to be made well?” That’s a good question, Jesus. We are afflicted with unhealthy relationship patterns. Some of us are committed to being nice, rather than telling the truth, and making hard decisions that might hurt others feelings. Some of us are committed to being right. Some of us are passive aggressive, or just aggressive. Healing might mean engaging conflict, saying out loud what we think and know, listening to people tell us the way we’ve hurt them. Healing might mean having the courage to say “no,” or asking questions we don’t want to know the answer to and listening—really listening to the response. Healing might mean making us vulnerable to hurt, and criticism. “Do you want to be made well?” That’s a good question, Jesus. We are afflicted with stasis. Some of us are living like the walking dead, just going through the motions. Some of us are holding on to grief because the grief feels familiar. Letting go feels like letting go of the last vestige of the person or relationship we are grieving. Healing means death before rebirth, and we are terrified of death. Do you want to be made well? That’s a good question, Jesus. Sometimes it just takes a long time to be made well. I love this story by Portia Nelson. It’s called Autobiography In Five Short Chapters Chapter I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost... I am hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Chapter II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in this same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. Chapter III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in... it's a habit... but, my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. Chapter IV I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Chapter V I walk down another street We all have holes in our sidewalks, but we can always walk down another street. Because God who is a God of Grace heals us whether we want it or not, regardless of how often we fall in our holes. That’s why we come to this place—because we believe, at least on some level, that we are still capable of transformation. Of opening our eyes a little wider. Of putting down the bottle or the grudge. Of forgiving ourselves. Of being in community again, even though it hurts sometimes. Of exposing our wounds to the air, and letting them scab over until only the scar remains. That’s what it looks like to pick up our mats and walk. Brene Brown says that she went back to church, like so many of us do, following a crisis that she had in her life, looking for comfort; an anesthesia for her pain. Instead, she found challenge. “Church wasn’t an epidural, it was a midwife. It just stood next to me and said ‘Push, it’s supposed to hurt a bit…” “I thought faith would take away the pain and discomfort, but what it ended up saying was that I’ll sit with you in it.” She said. We sit with each other in this. We cannot be made well alone. God does not help those who helps themselves, God helps those who help one another. Because it is through other people that Christ heals us. God gives us companions to steer us around the holes, angels on earth to pull us out if we fall in, and the ability to choose another street when we are ready to. Push. It’s supposed to hurt a bit. Amen.
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AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
February 2021
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