Do You Want to Be Made Well?

Do You Want to Be Made Well?

John 5: 1-9

Sermon preached by Chuck Swann, Faith Presbyterian Church, May 9, 2010

The pool at Bethzatha (or Bethesda or Bethsaida, as it has been variously called) had been made as comfortable a place as possible. It has been rediscovered and excavated by archaeologists. Shady porches surrounded it. It was a pleasant place. The Crusaders had built some buildings over it during their reign over Jerusalem, but when the rubble of these old buildings was cleared away, the pool was found beneath the structures, still being stirred occasionally by surges in the springs that fed it. In Jesus’ day, the people believed that this troubling of the waters was caused by an angel, and the first sick or crippled person to get into the pool after the troubling of the water would be cured.

I.

This was the scene that Jesus came walking into--and he still does so. Then and now, he comes walking into people’s lives and asks, “Do you want to be healed? Made well? Do you want life more abundantly? Or do you want to settle for something less, because you have found less to be right comfortable, like an old pair of shoes?”

Now, some bodies cannot be put back together again and some people get things wrong with them that we cannot cure. I know that the arthritis in my back and hip is not going to go away, and I am not going to have youthful, supple joints again, and my artificial knee joint is going to continue to set off the metal detectors every time I go to catch a plane. But the body is not the person inside that body--and it is that person inside the body who is the ultimate concern of Christ.

So…what about the person inside your body? Does it ache and hurt and wish for something better? Is the real you happy and healthy all the time? Most of us are not. We may be able to be cheerful some of the time--even to think we are happy and having a good time…mostly. But in our unguarded moments, we know we are not the persons we want to be.

Into the midst of our life and times, Jesus comes asking, “Do you want to be made well? Do you want to be healed?” It is necessary that this question be asked of us, and that we consider it carefully. For we must realize and face the fact that we do not always want what we say we want

It must have seemed like a cruel, callous question to that poor fellow at the pool. Yet, it was necessary that the question be asked of him. He had become a victim, waiting for someone else to rescue him. If the man wanted to be healed, he had to quit focusing on waiting for someone else to help him and hoping for a miracle cure and direct his heart and mind to go in a different direction. He had to be led away from the thing that was giving him false hope.

But we have been conditioned to believe that a pill exists for every ailment and too many people remain fixed on the miracle cure. They are the natural prey of such predators as Oral Roberts, who is now retired and succeeded by his son Robert. Oral once offered his TV viewers a vial of “healing oil.” They were very careful not to make any claims for it that would result in prosecution or a lawsuit, but it could be yours for the asking--and by the way, please help us by sending a donation.

Jesus is saddened by all this charlatanism. He is saying to us that we need to quit focusing on the things in life that give us false hope and a false sense of security. He says to us, “Stand up.” And, too often, we reply, “But I can’t.”

We believe we mean what we say. But as Blaise Pascal said, we often mistake the imagination for the heart. Because, while leaving some aspects of our lives behind and moving on to some new way of being does seem attractive when we are a little distance from doing so, on a nearer view we are not so sure. The imitation of Christ would overturn some of our dearest habits and most pleasant comforts and, frankly, be something of a bore. And so we do not extend our hands to take what Christ is offering.

II.

When pastoral counselors are alert, they sometimes hear surprising answers to the questions they ask. It is many times the answer you did not expect that gives insight into the counselee’s real problem. By real problem, I mean the deep-down concern that is really hurting that person, but which he or she can’t name because people very often, unconsciously, keep the deepest, darkest, most painful parts of themselves obscured by something more respectable.

Jesus asked this man by the pool if he wanted to be healed. He didn’t reply either “yes” or “no.” He said instead, “Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool.”

This could have meant either of two things.

It could have been a politely phrased, softly spoken scream for help. It might have been a quiet mask for the desperation being felt by a man who had lain helplessly for 38 years and watched the world go by him. It might have been the final flicker of the flame of hope that was about to die in a crushed personality.

Or…it could have been something much more insidious. It might have been the well-disguised confession of a man who had long ago stopped wishing to be well and had begun to enjoy his poor health. He could have been saying, “Well, it’s not bad here. This is a pleasant place. I’ve made quite a few friends among the regulars here. Several of the town’s leading citizens pass by and give me a coin or two from time to time. My family brings me here in the morning, brings me lunch, and takes me home at night. I don’t have to work and I have no responsibilities to worry about. All in all, this is not a bad life.”

There was something to be said for the porches at Bethzatha. In time, one could grow quite accustomed to that way of putting in the days. It was not unpleasant to lie there in the shade while others were toiling in the sun.

We--you and I--can see clearly that wholeness and fullness of being is the gallant mode of life. But to get it, we have to give up some things that we have come to value. Selfishness is a disease; yet it does bring us a bigger share of things than we could get without it. Temper is a childish ailment; but we know how to make it pay. Folks give us what we want to escape from our noise and disagreeableness. Self-pity is a horrid kind of self-crippling, but it does relieve us of some of the responsibilities of life.

So…Jesus asks, do we want to be healed? In theory, yes. But in reality, we often decide that the price is too high.

III.

We cannot know what this cripple at the pool was saying in his heart, in the recesses of his mind. What we do know is that Jesus saw something worth saving. And Jesus suddenly thrust the responsibility of the whole matter onto the crippled man’s shoulders.

“Stand up! And walk!”

This is not a command to heal oneself. We cannot heal ourselves. But we can decide to release our white-knuckled grip on our brokenness, on our ill health, and reach out for and grasp for something new.

Christianity and medicine have made a joint rediscovery about the healing of mind and body and how they are inextricably linked, joined together. We cannot heal ourselves, but we can be willing to plug ourselves into the forces that do heal.

Medical doctors have always known the value of an outside stimulus to the healing process. Those who to get well are the most likely to respond to treatment; those who don’t want to get well usually don’t.

One of our preacher jokes asks the question, “How many pastoral counselors does it take to change a light bulb?” The answer is only one, but the light bulb has got to really want to change.

At this point I could share with you the sense of utter waste and tragedy I have experienced at the bedside of people who never got well because they had no intention of getting well--and for no other reason. They were saying “no” to life and accepting in its place the shallow substitutes of self-pity and sympathy.

I have had the same experience with people whose illnesses were not of the body, but of the emotions, the spirit, the heart. They did not want to give up the hot water bottles of their self-pity. They wanted the world to give them a long, continuous pity party.

On the other hand, I have known and admired people who overcame tremendous adversity in their physical bodies: the loss of limbs, paralysis, life sentences of immobility and confinement to wheel chairs--but whose leaping, laughing, blazing spirits lifted mine and inspired me to push aside my own petty aches and pains.

“Stand up and walk.” In this command is the outside stimulus so many of us need so often, but from which we shrink back. For this is the command to stand up and be counted, to take upon one’s shoulders the responsibility of a new life. Jesus always--always--calls us into responsible relationships, not into some lifelong spiritual retreat. He calls us to stand up and be men and women in the world in which God has placed us…to have the courage to rise again when we are knocked down. And if we are knocked down again--to rise again, and again, and again.

Wherever you are, you are there because God has placed you there. In that situation, your situation, Christ says to you, “Stand up and walk.” Be a responsible, whole person, with an upright spirit, serving God and humankind right there where you are.

The man at the pool had two alternatives. He could have just continued to lie there, staring in disbelief at this man who had just told him to do the impossible. And he would have remained a cripple. We, too, have that option. We can say, “No, it’s not for me. It does sound good, but, no, it’s not for me. Someday, perhaps, but not now.”

As a matter of fact, it is hard to give up being a cripple. It is hard to give up being waited on and catered to. It is hard to give up all that delicious self-pity and tender sympathy. It is hard to give up the rewards of selfishness, temper and self-centeredness.

The other option, of course, is to believe. To accept the offer of new life. To have the courage, if you will, to assume responsibility for our selves insofar as it is possible. To be willing to be totally new persons in the eyes of God, and in our relationships with our families and our fellow human beings.

I cannot promise you healing for your body. That is not really what is offered in the gospel. But in the name of Jesus Christ, I can promise you healing and wholeness in your innermost being. You can have a new life. You can literally be born again into a different kind of life and new kinds of personal relationships

Your case has not been closed. The issue of your life has not been definitely decided. You do not have to sink into the lethargy of a dull, crushed acceptance of what you are--if you don’t like what you are. You can plug yourself into resources of which you may have only dreamed.

Jesus says to all of us, “Stand up. Take up the bed of your uselessness and personal futility, and walk.” More importantly, he says to those who want to stand up, who decide that they will, “Give me your hand.”