The Pool of Bethesda

Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 5:1-9

The Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

The man has sat by that pool at Bethesda for thirty-eight years. Bethesda means “house of mercy” but it has been not so merciful to him.

When the healing angel stirs the waters, he has no way to get into the pool because of all the crowds rushing in ahead of him. After 38 years it’s safe to say he’s gotten used to it, that he could not imagine the future being any different. He’s resigned himself to a diminished life, given up on his own dreams and his own heart. He can no longer even imagine what it would be like to stand up, feel his full weight on his feet, take one step and then another, gain his stride, pick up the pace, maybe even--imagine!--begin to run. No. After 38 long years, such dreams have long since faded.

He lies there, face down in a half inch of life and drowning.

This is not what God intended for him or for any of us, this diminished life, this despair, this resignation.

Along comes Jesus, a prophet who knows that the only God there is the the one who works 24/7 so we can thrive, live abundantly. And Jesus, who is close to the heart of God, sees a very different future, one full of possibility and hope.

So he says to the man, “Do you want to be made well?” He’s trying to reawaken the man’s own deepest desire. “Do you want to be made well?” Over all those years, the man has lost touch with that deep desire, and Jesus now calls him back to it. The vague outline of new possibilities, a new future is beginning to emerge.

At first the man doesn’t get it. He can’t imagine anything other than his own dismal present experience. He doesn’t answer the question; instead, he simply laments his own helplessness before a cruel fate. "There is no one to put me into the pool."

But Jesus brushes his lament aside and simply says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

Now comes the hard part, the crux of the story, the decisive moment. Will he or won’t he? Will this man give in to those voices of resignation that tell him it’s better to stay put, not take the risk. “You might fall, get hurt, humiliated.” Or will he resist those voices, believe the vision, stand up, pick up the mat, put one foot in front of the other and slowly, perhaps hesitantly at first but then with greater and greater confidence, learn to walk again?

This brief story has a happy ending. John says, “At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.” It’s a triumphant moment of courage and defiance and determination. He breaks through all the resignation and despair that had overtaken him through the years. Now he is a new creation.

This story is echoed down through the ages. People find the spiritual resources to resist the voices that diminish them. Addicts begin the journey of recovery. People after years of abuse regain a sense of their own dignity and beauty. Married couples working through some hard times find each other again.

It happens on other levels. Women break out of the shackles tradition has imposed on them to flourish as individuals and great artists and thinkers and leaders. Gay people burst out of the closet. Elders refuse to simply sit back and watch TV when there’s still so much wrong with the world, so much left to fight for. People of color keep putting one foot in front of the other in that long journey to freedom and equality. Today is International Workers Day and we remember the stories of workers refusing to be exploited, demanding a fair wage and safe working conditions.

Just a few blocks from here, five hunger strikers called the Frisco5 are resisting the loud and powerful voices telling them and their families to simply move on to make room for the one percent, to simply resign themselves to being harassed by the police and and shot down in the street. Despite how dismal things have gotten for so many of us in this City, these strikers have not resigned themselves, have not lost their capacity to dream. They can still imagine a new creation where there’s room for everyone including their families and the elderly and the Alex Nietos, Amilcars, Marios, and Luises.

San Francisco poet Tony Robles talks about the impact the strike has had on him, how it has re-ignited his own imagination and given him a burst of hope.

It took a hunger strike to make me feel alive in a city that feels dead. I'm sorry but I'm new to the snow. I grew up with colors sprouting from my skin and the color of poetry stained on my tongue. It took a hunger strike to fill my belly with feelings of Frisco, songs of Frisco, the Frisco that is soaked in my bones and blood. It took a hunger strike to bring back that down home feeling and black laughter and fire and tears that flow so deep. It took a hunger strike to clear my veins of digital cholesterol. It took a hunger strike to show we can be tender without legal tender. It took a hunger strike to bring back my city on one piece, one corner of city block. It took a hunger strike to see the Frisco I know--again.

Some theologians say there are a couple of ways to break the human spirit. One involves blatantly visiting poverty and violence on people, the other involves seducing them.

The first strategy can be seen in poor countries run by dictators--like Honduras, and Syria--but also in neighborhoods like ours where many families and elders are forced out of their homes, and police imprison and kill people who are black and brown, and sweep unhoused people from the only shelters they have left. Such relentless assaults can over time break people’s spirits and cause them to lose hope.

The second strategy operates by manipulation and seduction. It first afflicts you with anxiety, convincing you there’s something wrong with the way God made you. You’re too old or too young, too skinny or too fat, the wrong color, the wrong gender or sexual orientation. Then it tries to sell you the cure. And somewhere in the desperate effort to assuage that contrived anxiety, somewhere in the frantic pursuit of skin creams that promise to remove those aging wrinkles, spa treatments to calm your nerves and give you the perfect body, the latest technological gadgets, and cars that put you in control, somewhere along this treadmill you lose your way, lose passion and purpose, your zest for life. A consumer society has disconnected you from your own heart and your own deepest desires and dreams.

Both strategies crush the human spirit. The first does it by violence and brute force and economic exploitation, the second by manipulation and seduction. Both deaden our passion for life. Both leave us in despair, depriving us of the ability to imagine that things could be different, that something new could emerge, that we could be whole.

To thrive as God would want us to do, we have first to consciously resist the voices, however powerful and intimidating they can seem at times, in order to give our imaginations room to envision something new and beautiful and powerful.

I believe Mary Oliver may have been thinking of this when she wrote this poem that I will now close with.

The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save.

"...if you have love for one another"

THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

April 24, 2016   Year C

The Rev. Dr. Jack Eastwood

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

Two weeks ago Richard began his sermon on the theme of love in this way: It takes years and years to marry a man, years and years to marry a woman. Sometimes love comes easy, other times it’s damn hard. For most of us mortals, real, genuine love doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a matter of years, a matter of a lifetime. For many of us married folks, no matter how long we’ve been married, we’re always beginners.

I remember this not just because today’s lessons present us with the same theme, the commandment to love one another, but also because those words echoed in me on a deep level where I know that love is hard work, and indeed takes a lifetime.

With that said I want to offer this story. Bruce Larsen, a Presbyterian minister, tells the story of a young woman who joined his congregation in America having moved from Angola in West Africa. Her name was Maria, and Larsen says, "she was always laughing." She sparkled with her faith. Love leapt from her to others. One day she went to a meeting on evangelism that the presbytery was sponsoring. All kinds of pamphlets, mission strategies, campaigns, and statistics were distributed to the participants. Lots of furrowed brows put lots of brain power into figuring out the best way to get the unchurched churched.

At one point, toward the end of the day, someone turned to Maria and asked her what they did in her church in Angola to evangelize the unchurched. Knowing how rapidly Christianity had grown in her country, they were curious to know more of the African "methodology". Maria, slightly intimidated by the spotlight, stood up, and, after a moment's thought, said, "We don't give pamphlets to people or have missions. We just send one or two Christian families to live in a village. And when people see what Christians are like, then they want to be Christians themselves."

For me, this story poses a very important question. What is the special character of Christian love that can be so compelling or so attractive? What does it look like? How does it feel?

When we think about what Jesus said and the context in which he said it in today’s gospel ­ we know that his love for us was a sacrificial kind, and the love that we should have for each other, too, in some sense is also sacrificial. He tells us to lay down our lives for each other. And that is a great challenge. It seems an impossible command! But I'd like to wrestle with that this morning because I wonder if it is, after all, that impossible.

I remember being at an inter­faith conference on civil rights and hearing a rabbi tell this story about the meaning of love. He said, "One day the son of a rabbi came to his father and said, "My father, I love you." "Oh?" the old rabbi said and he said nothing more.

The next day the son came again to his father and he said more loudly, "My father, I love you." "Oh?" he said, and nothing more.

On the third day, the son came again to his father and said in the loudest voice, "I love you". "My son," the old rabbi began, "do you know what hurts me?" "No, I don't", the boy said quietly. "I am too young to know what hurts you." His father replied, "when you know what hurts me, then you will know how to love me."

The night was murky with darkness looming not only in Jesus’ life but also the lives of his disciples. Issues of status and power, envy and resentment, jealousy and fear filled the atmosphere. Chief among these barrier­-creating emotions was betrayal. Jesus was “troubled in spirit” the text says; “one of you will betray me.” They are set to wondering and asking who is this traitor? Here John, unlike the other gospel writers, presents us with an important picture about God and God’s table fellowship. Jesus responds to the question of identity by dipping bread into the dish in the middle of the table and giving it to Judas. Separation from God’s love will never come from God’s side.

The message of inclusion is given eternally, even under the threat of darkness and betrayal. Loving all in washing their feet, including all in table fellowship, Jesus is the beginning of what makes new the commandment of love. Jesus is glorified in his giving himself away. Love is glorified when it is given away. It is the new meaning of what is fair.

Yesterday I heard a mother, her name is Mary, tell her story of her son’s loving. Several weeks ago he went into a coma and was in the hospital. He had tried to commit suicide by hanging. He had struggled too much of his young life with alcohol and drugs. Mary and her family had gathered at the hospital to be with her son at his bedside during his final hours of life support. A nurse came into the room and asked Mary to step outside to speak to someone. Puzzled and distressed at being pulled away, Mary went to the hall. A representative of the organ donor program was waiting outside the room. She had come to inform Mary that her son had registered as an organ donor. Mary respected her son’s wishes. She now lives not only with the loss of her son in the way he died, but in the way he gave himself for others.

And so it is for folks like you and me, who gather around the Lord’s table, living with our Lord’s death in the way he died, and gives himself to us so that we may give ourselves to others. AMEN