Do You Want to Be Well?

Scripture:John 5: 1-9
October 21, 2007

Last Sunday we began looking at the healing stories in the gospels by reviewing the story of the blind man by the side of the road, and the question that Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you? From that story we learned:
The importance of taking responsibility for our health even if the crowd seems against us;
That healing begins when we accurately name where it is that we are in need of healing.
We also learned that there is a connection between a healthy community and a healthy self. A healthy community is in which people feel safe to share what is going on with them, good or bad, without blame or judgement.
In this story of the blind man by the side of the road we saw not only a healing of the man we also saw a transformation of the community. When the blind man first called to Jesus for help the crowd told him to shut up. When Jesus responded to the blind man’s cries, the community changed their approach to the blind man. They became part of his support team, saying, take heart, rise up he is calling you.
Part of the meaning of this story, for me, is to see that Jesus is not just wanting to heal individuals, he is wants to heal communities.
Now, I want to pause here for a moment, before considering the man who had been lying by the pool waiting for the waters to stir. He’s been waiting 38 years, he can wait another couple of minutes.
Several of us, about 20 in all, are studying a book by former Oregon State University professor, Marcus Borg, entitled, The Heart of Christianity. In this book we are introduced to a way of taking the Bible seriously, but not literally. We are invited to see the Bible as a product of historical communities communicating their response to God. In some portions of the Bible we find history remembered, in other portions we find history interpreted through story. Though these stories are not factually true, there is truth in them. The question that Marcus Borg wants us to consider is not whether or not they happened, but instead what do they mean?
So, with the story of the blind beggar by the side of the road and the man lying by the pool of healing waters, we can look at these verses as we would literature. We can place ourselves in the narrative imagining that we are the blind man, and asking such questions as, “What does it feel like to blind, to be cut off from what everyone else is able to do?” We can also ask, “What does it feel like to call out for help and be told to keep quiet?” And we can ask what gave the man courage to call out to Jesus and what on earth did Jesus mean when he said the man’s faith had healed him?’
Now, if you are still with me, are you still with me? I want you to try something else on with this way of exploring the Bible as metaphor, as story. This is an approach I am learning in a class that I am taking from two retired Jesuit priests over in Sonora.
We have the story of the blind man and the crowd and Jesus. Imagine for a moment that the crowd is not other people, but is in fact, the voices in the blind man’s mind that say to himself, don’t speak up, don’t say what’s going on, don’t call attention to yourself, don’t pay attention to what you are actually feeling.
The two Jesuits, Fr. Pete Campbell and Fr. Ed MacMahon, have a simple and graphic way of portraying this.
Oftentimes, when something is going wrong with us, we are hurting somewhere, we are tired, or angry, or our stomach hurts or our heart is racing, we push it away from ourselves. We deny it. We ignore it. We blame ourselves or someone else for the pain and we push it away.
And there are many ways that we push it away. In the class we are learning ways of creating a new habit in our lives that enables us to embrace lovingly that which is causing us pain, discomfort, illness.
How do we do that? That is where Jesus comes into the story. Not as a knight on a shiny white stallion come to take all of our cares away, but instead as a caring companion, an affection teacher who will sit beside us without judgment or blame.
The presence of this caring companion who offers us love unconditionally breaks through the habit we have built up over the years of not truly listening to ourselves, trusting ourselves, seeing ourselves as perfectly imperfect children of God.
Let me give you a little example of this practice of working with a caring companion or affection teacher. One morning I woke up really early, too early, my mind filled with a long list of things I needed to do. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I wondered if I should put on some coffee and just get working. I tossed and turned some more kind of willing myself to be awake. But then I remembered this practice of just simply noticing what I was feeling without judgment or blame, without pushing it away, but instead imagining accepting, noticing, what I was feeling and embracing it like a loving parent might hold a child who has fallen and scraped her knee.
When I did this that way too early in the morning, morning, I realized, I am tired.
And suddenly my body became very heavy. My mind stopped racing with a thousand to do’s and I just let myself relax.
Jesus as healer, as caring companion, as affection teacher, wants us to really feel what is going on inside of us because he knows what is there past on the other side of exhaustion, pain, anxiety. Jesus knows that on the other side of fear there is trust, there is clarity, there is wholeness. Jesus wants the goodness that is within us to become real. He wants to be present with us so that our faith, our trust, our faithfulness, our vision of our essential goodness to heal us.
Pause………..
Are you still with me?
Can you hear me now?

What can we learn about healing from the story of the man by the pool at Bethesda. In Jerusalem there was a pool by one of the gates. By this pool lay people with all sorts of physical disabilities. They believed that whenever the watered stirred, it was stirred by an angel, and the first person who stepped in the waters after it had been stirred would be healed.
This man had been by the pool for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and he knew that he had been lying there for a long time he said to him, "Do you want to be healed? Do you want to be well? The man responds by saying, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I trying to get into the water another steps down before me.
Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk."
Now what strikes me about this passage is the question that Jesus asks the man. "Do you want to be healed?" "Do you want to be well?" It’s like the question Jesus asked in the story of last week’s sermon, why did Jesus ask a blind man, “what do you want me to do for you?”
Why does Jesus ask this man, “Do you want to be well?”
The man had lost his power, had lost his faith. Had for so long been unable to move that he forgot what it felt like.
One of the steps of healing that is required is the desire to be well. And that desire needs to be so strong that it breaks through all our years of excuses, fears, laziness, pain that we would rather not face. Jesus as caring companion, as affection teacher in asking, “Do you want to be well? is giving the man an invitation to heal.
This question, "Do you want to be healed” is an invitation to health. It also makes us have to look at what stops us from achieving health.
Healing means change. Healing requires a recognition that the present path isn't working. We have been going in the wrong direction? Who likes to acknowledge that? Healing means giving ourselves to trust rather than to fear or judgement. It is what the experience of grace is all about. When the time is right to get up on out of that pool, Jesus is ready to call us out.
A few summers ago I went on a rafting trip with some middle school kids. It was organized by a Christian rafting group and so we had a lot of lessons while going down the river. None of us would admit it but we were all a bit frightened going over the rapids. This fear made us very attentive to our guide. We knew that he knew more than we did. He knew the raft, he knew the river, and we believed that he had our lives in his hands. I have never witnessed such an obedient group of middle school students before. Our need for his guidance, our ability to learn quickly, and his ability to teach turned the fear into fun.
As we approached one set of rapids he asked us to close our eyes. And even though we got knocked about we kept our eyes closed and for three of us the most amazing thing happened - we were not as frightened going through the rough water with our eyes closed as we had been going through them with our eyes open. In other words, we were making the situation more frightening than it actually was.
We gave ourselves to trust rather than to fear, and our fears went away. It's enough to make you believe that what Jesus says is true, is worth trying.
It is important to remember that it is God who does the healing, we can place ourselves in the light of God but we are not the healers. When I was on the raft trip I needed to learn that I would be OK if I trusted the guide and the water and that I would enjoy myself much more if I loosened my muscles instead of tightening them for the entire ride.
Do you want to be well? Do you want to trust God? Do you want to be healed?
After Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be well and heard that the man had no one help him get into the healing pool, Jesus said, “ Rise, take up your bed and walk.”
This man had lived with this illness for 38 years. He had believed that healing would come from the stirring waters. Instead healing was being offered freely by this many who was just walking by. This man walking in the light of God.
No sign of faith other than incredible patience. Do you want to be well?
Rise, take up your bed and walk.
Did he feel something change in his legs? Or was the change in his heart?

Every Sunday we come to this pool of potential healing that we call worship.
Did you come for a healing this morning? Did you come to increase your sense of well-being and trust in God? We come to worship and Jesus asks us, Do you want to be well? If you do there are some things that you can do. Rise, take up your pallet, let what was your sign of weakness now be your sign of strength.
What was your sign of weakness will become a source of strength and knowledge and healing for others.
Health becomes a new habit and the body resists change even when we know it needs it. Our image of ourselves can actually be like a prison. Our habitual way of doing things can be like the prison but our caring companion is ready to bust us out of jail.
But there is a voice that the man by the pool heard, “Rise, take up your stretcher and walk.”
There was a voice that the blind man by the road heard, “Rise up, he is calling you.”
Health means taking responsibility for the next step of your life.
First Congregational Church Murphys UCC is being asked the same question that this crippled man in the pool was asking. Do you want to be well? Do you want to be a healthy church walking in the light of God?
If so, there are going to have be some changes. No more lying around the pool for one thing.
The other one is a little trickier I think. Can we clearly assess what needs to be done to enable this church to grow, each of us offering the little piece that we can.
Then rise, take up your pallet and walk
Say Yes, I have the skills and the vision that will help this church share its extravagant welcome to a wider circle of people seeking a progressive Christian community. Yes I believe that this church can be a part of the healing of the fractures of this world. Yes I believe that this church can be a place of celebration, and teaching, and worship and the arts, and stewards of this acre of God’s grace. Yes I believe, like Carroll Lang did that we need a new delivery system to get the message of an earth-loving, peace-loving, people-loving church out into the community.


And yes, we will stop beating ourselves up for being who we are, and will instead, with the help of our caring companion, Jesus, embrace ourselves with kindness and compassion, knowing that his unconditional love will enable us to see with a clearer vision and walk with renewed strength in the direction of peace and well-being.
First Congregational Murphys, United Church of Christ, Do you want to be well? I am hearing YES!
And may each of us hear God’s voice calling us to speak, to lead, to love, and then to walk in the grace of world.
Let the people say. Amen