The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 9th, 2010

Acts: 16:9-15

Psalm 67

Rev 21:10, 22-22:5

John 5:1-9

Queen of Heaven, be joyful, for the Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia. AMEN.

This morning's Gospel is both straightforward and dramatic. Among the many invalids waiting around the healing pool, was one who'd been waiting there for help for 38 years. Jesus asked him, whether he wanted to be made well. (Jesus didn't ask him whether he wanted to BE well, but whether to be MADE well.) The man explained, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, some one steps ahead of me." "No one helps me." (He implies it's their fault.) "What can I do? No one helps me. I've been waiting here nearly 40 years, 38 to be exact, and here I lie, wenh, wenh wenh." 

Jesus asked him, "Do you want to be made well?" The man's answer gave some of the reasons it was some else's fault that he wasn't well. Somehow it was someone else's fault for not making him well. So Jesus challenged him, asking him whether he wanted to be made well. "Cut to the chase. Stand up; take up your mat and walk." Note, since it was the Sabbath, the story says the man was made well, not that Jesus healed him. A healing would have counted as work and described Jesus as violating Sabbath laws. Jesus wanted to effect the healing, to make it happen, but the man was waiting for someone, some one else to do the healing.

When Jesus told him to stand, and the man stood up, he was taking ownership for himself. Rather than waiting longer for someone else to help him, when Jesus told him to move, he did. Acting for himself, in this particular case, enabled the man to be made well, and so to be well.

The water the man stayed by was a pool, with five porticoes. If the man had been lying near it for 38 years and people kept getting in his way, there must have been many, many people there, waiting, hoping, being sick, coming and going, and so it must have been a hard-used place. The pool must have been grubby, crowded, and a far cry from pristine- certainly not bright, clear, living water, and yet people went to it with optimistic expectations of healing. It promised the hope of healing, and Jesus went there and, in fact, the man was made well near that muddy water.

Consider the image of the person touristing with an angel around the holy city Jerusalem. Then the angel showed me, the person describing this wondrous image, the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Here is another place of water with healing. Every detail in the Revelation account is clearly metaphorical. Since it's an image of the holy city Jerusalem, it's both an imaginary time and place, or at least a distant, future one. The twelve trees produced fruit for the twelve months of the year, but I would guess also, for the twelve tribes of Israel. The healing would come from there being nothing unclean there, no need for healing near that bright river. "And there will be no more night."

These are two images of healing. Jesus showed the man how to be healed, while the Revelation suggests a time and place when there will be healing for the world. The more visionary the Revelation image seems, the more ordinary, real, and possible the one at Beth-zatha is. The two waters of healing demonstrate the importance of healing for all, both in a utopian future holy city, and in the here and now.

Jesus' role in the man's healing was in his ordinary behavior. Similarly, after hearing Paul's preaching in the name of the Lord, in the Acts reading, Lydia and her household, all, were baptized and became part of the hospitable new church. Lydia must have been the person of importance in her family, because her household was named for her, not for any of the men in the household. She heard Paul's preaching and story telling about Jesus, and she made a decision for her family. There was a kind of ordinary, matter-of-fact action in her leading her family, not visionary or future centered imagination. She was a wealthy responsible businessperson and she apparently was used to making sound, quick decisions. because her whole family followed her lead. She heard, knew, and acted-and has been remembered for all these centuries for her immediate response of faith.

These three small readings then hold a pair of water scenes and a pair of people responding faithfully to a situation that required their personal judgment for action. Jesus is at the heart of each pair. Can we enter these pairs? The wonderful image of the holy city of Jerusalem is for us such an even more distant light at the end of life's dark tunnel. A place and time with nothing unclean and all bright light with healing for all seems almost more elusive in our day. While we've healed many illnesses and solved many technical problems, more follow, some even a result of the good solutions found. That fewer people die of childhood and simple illnesses has made starvation all the more likely. We've gotten to understand better both the psychology and chemistry of human nature, but the human heart still is a profound mystery. Why did the man lie there for so very long? Why nearly two score years? Is it really possible that no one would help him in all those years? What was it about their offers to help that he couldn't or wouldn't hear or accept? Jesus didn't really offer; he ordered or told the man just to stand. Did it take the man exercising his own will that enabled him to be healed or did Jesus heal him as he stood up? Would not that have been against his understanding of the Sabbath? True the Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath, but I doubt he would have either avoided doing the healing himself or would have broken the Sabbath prohibitions of work. By telling the man to get up, he could effect the healing, give genuine new life to the man which he could sustain with his will, and not approach disrespecting his own formative rules.

Like Jesus, Lydia caught the heavenly vision, and acted with simple practicality. Near eastern hospitality is a genuine way of life, but Lydia's must have gone far beyond the regular understanding of host to guest or it wouldn't have been named and valued as outstanding, especially from a woman.

Acting on what people believe shows both what they believe and the strength of that belief. Lydia understood Paul's encounters with Jesus and wanted to join his vision, understanding, and mission.  Jesus understood the weariness, even depression, of the sick man by the pool. He understood clearly God's hope for all people: that they love God and neighbor as self. Jesus understood God's caring for each and every human that they be well and able to love God reciprocally as well as self and other humans. He was not testing out his skills, nor showing them off. Jesus only told the man to stand. Healing occurred. Lydia made and supported a community, demonstrating the way to build a community; it still endures.

The practical feeds the vision, but the vision is just pie-in-the-sky without real life action in behalf of humans in need. This mutual interchange dynamic between doing and believing is the hallmark of our strand of Christianity from Judaism. We have been formed by a tradition of doing work. If some of us here aren't booked for Mother's Day treats, we can help out at Saturday/Sunday's Bread today. Being part of an honoring of fathers or mothers is also part of our understanding of our whole community's life, that we do honor our parents, that our days may be long. No guilt if we don't/can't work on the feeding program today, we do have two possibly conflicting kinds of actions to do today, honoring parents, and helping the poor. As long as within a community we get to each action, it's good for all without assigning guili for not doing the other of two worthy commandments.

These lessons show both. Lydia could have heard about the in-breaking of the reign of God in Jesus, and gone looking for the holy mountain to sit on, to give thanks, or gone out to preach, and some people surely made those responses. Her choice was to help sustain the visionaries themselves. Jesus was reaching to make the heavenly vision, while doing the ordinary needed humane action, divine in success. Lydia's work and Jesus' would have been ordinary housekeeping of a kind, without the vision to be working towards.

Jesus lived in that double place all the time, and continues that work. Reaching towards the reign of God, we invest belief in ordinary actions. Doing seemingly divine tasks gives us strength to understand better how to walk towards the holy city. Jesus focuses us on the doing and believing, believing and doing, showing us how to live into the holy city where he waits with a place for us. Good News.

© Katharine C. Black, 9 May 2010