Part of me feels a little judgmental of the man in the Gospel who’d been ill for 38 years. He’d just been lying by the healing pool all that time, and complained nobody would put him in the water at the right time…like they just cut in front of him and took their turn, apparently ignoring him. In saying that, he sounds helpless and blaming. He seems to be playing “the victim”, and in doing that, he makes the others “the oppressors.”
Why didn’t he assert himself—boldly say, “I’m next” and then ask someone to help him? Why didn’t he have any friends/family to help him? Maybe he really didn’t want to get better. Maybe he got some payoff from being the “poor man, who always sat at the pool.”
Yes, (I hate to admit it, but) there’s a part of me that initially “blamed the victim” in this story. But to really understand this story, it’s important to know that (for whatever reasons) Verse 4 was actually left out of the NRSV translation we heard today. Fortunately the translators did include Verse 4 in a footnote. It says:
(He was waiting for the stirring of the water;) “for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.” (Helps to know that, doesn’t it?)
From this we can see there was only a small, infrequent, window of time in which someone might get into the water and be made well. Knowing that, I can start to see how competitive it must have been to get into the pool, and how, human beings being what we are, (even if the man had aggressively asked for help) he might well have been ignored because everyone was looking out for themselves. And then I remember as well that in that First Century people who were ill were ostracized from their communities: Not only was the man physically sick for 38 years, he also suffered the wound to his soul of being out of community for all that time. His friends and family, as they might have once been, had fallen away.
Now Jesus knows all these things about human nature and the way communities work. So what he does in this story—and really what God does, one way or another, in all of today’s stories—is call someone out of their ordinary life into a new place.
In the case of the man at the pool, Jesus calls him back to physical health, and consequently back into the community. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Jesus does this in a radical way: He does not perpetuate the Victim-Oppressor cycle that had kept the man there, unhealed, for years. In Jesus’ way of coming about things “sideways”, he circumvents the pool and the issues of competition, human selfishness, need for being assertive, and all that. After he establishes the fact that the man is willing to change and really does want to be well, Jesus simply says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Amazingly, the man JUST DID IT!
Now we don’t know just why the man trusted Jesus enough to even try such a thing. (Just imagine how atrophied his muscles must have been after all those years!) We don’t know the reason for his faith or why he obeyed. Maybe he’d heard of Jesus’ healing powers. Maybe Jesus was so charismatic, the man just “knew” to trust him. Maybe he was just so desperate he’d try anything. But he was willing to do something different: To break out of the cycle that had kept him down. To leave his ordinary life behind. To leave his way of thinking about his life as a sick man and to stand up and enter into the New Life Jesus gave him as a whole man…That’s what God is about! (Making us whole.) And in one way or another, that’s what all of today’s scriptures are about. They’re about how God intervenes in people’s lives, if we are open to the Spirit’s voice. And if we are willing to let go of our old life, plans, and the way we’ve always done it, then New Life will follow.
Today’s story from the Acts of the Apostles comes after a wrenching debate, in which the Christians finally decided that not only Jews but Gentiles should be included in the faith. Paul is traveling with Silas and Timothy, and they plan to go back (to all the cities where Paul had preached) and teach the young churches about including the Gentiles in the faith. They’d been a lot of places already and thought they’d go into Asia next. “But the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” So they went down to Troas. That’s where Paul has today’s vision about going to Macedonia, in Europe. Not for the first time, God called Paul & Co. out of their ordinary lives (In this case, their plan to go to Asia) and into a new place.
In Macedonia Paul met Lydia and her family. Lydia, a cloth merchant with some wealth, and a Jewish woman of faith already, was probably comfortable and content with her life. ‘Probably thought she’d continue as she was. But after hearing Paul, her whole life changed, and she and her family became the first Europeans we know about to be baptized as Christians. Lydia’s response was to invite these strangers/now friends into her home…Probably not something she’d planned to do that morning when she woke up!
God called her out of her ordinary life to a New Life. And because Paul was willing to let go of his initial plan to go to Asia, the new church in Europe got a major base of operation (Lydia’s home) and a major benefactress.
In a similar but cosmic way, the reading from Revelation, gives us the vision of a “New City”. It’s not a place where it’s business as usual, but a place where God is the light. Where noting is unclean. Where there’s no abomination or falsehood. It’s a place where “the nations are healed”. (Sounds good, doesn’t it?) The “New City” is a vision of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom is where we hope we are heading, and it’s not just our ultimate destination, in “the life of the world to come”. It’s also what we’re called by God to help bring in NOW, even in this life. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth (as in heaven).
The thing is, we’ve got to be shaken out of our accustomed way of life. Let go of it. Like the man at the pool. Like Lydia. Like Paul. We, like they, have got to accept the New Life, the new path, Jesus offers before we can really be on the Way to that New City. And before we can really help bring in the New Vision…So that the Kingdom of God is indeed both now on earth and yet to come in heaven. Amen.
