Do you want to be made well?

John 5:1-9, Revelation 21:10,22-22:5

I imagine that the area around the pool of Beth-zatha was a lot like the Emergency Room on a busy night:
Crowded.
Young and old, poor and well-off. Some people noisy, others so silent in their pain they seem to suck the sound out of the air around them.
Anxious.
Full of the distinct scents of illness.
And full of waiting. Patient, urgent, desperate, expectant waiting.

Because the pool at Beth-zatha, by the Sheep Gate (full of lanolin from the wool of all those sheep; soothing for those suffering from the various skin diseases known as leprosy) would be stirred up by the power of God – and when the water rolled, people went into the pool and came out healed.

Unlike (I hope) the ER, healing in that pool was only available for the first one in.
So you might imagine what it was like to come to a place where you know there’s healing to be had – and not receive it.
To put yourself in a holy place, certain to see a miracle,and to go home with the same problems, same pain, same old same old, knowing you’d be back the next day, because, after all, that's what you have to do if you want God to heal you.

This is a story for people who come to church every week.
Or for any of us who’ve gotten in a habit about our relationship with God.

It’s not that I think we’re disappointed all the time when we come to church. I certainly hope not!
But we do come here, many of us, because we know that it’s a place of healing – and we know we need healing.
We might have seen miracles here and want to renew those miracles in our own lives.
We might come because we know God is active here, because we know that there is love and acceptance, coffee and company, laughter, Kleenex, and folks who know us
– those things that soothe the roughness of our lives the way lotion soothes the skin.
And some days we go home, still sharp-edged and flaky.

If that’s ever happened to you,
you’ll have a pretty good chance of imagining how it felt for a man who’d been sick for 38 years to come to the pool of Beth-zatha:
the place where you’re supposed to come for healing,
and go home again,
for 38 years.

You can get used to it,
forget that you’ve come for healing, and go through the motions,
just in case.
(that's still an act of faith.)

You can focus on seeing God at work in other people’s healing;
that can feed your soul, too.

You can quit coming.
You can keep on reaching for healing, rushing toward the miracle as if for the first time,
without any serious expectation that this time will be different.

I suspect the sick man in the gospel had been through all of those options and more.

And then one day Jesus walks through the Temple gates,
looks directly at him and asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

What would you say??

I admit to just a wee bit of disappointment that the man doesn’t exclaim,
“Duh! Of course I want to be well!
(What do you think I’m doing here?)”

But he actually says something I suspect I’d be more likely to say under the circumstances.
He explains why he’s not well yet.
“I come for healing, but you know, other people have more help, and I can’t get in the pool by myself!”

If you get used to coming to a place of healing and going home without a miracle, you might stop thinking about how much you long for that miracle, and focus instead on what stands in your way.

It’s possible to get used to the reasons we’re not yet healed – not yet sure we’re whole and holy, until the reasons become excuses, and we let God and ourselves off the hook.

Did you expect a miracle when you came to church today?
Did you expect a revelation from God, a life-changing sense of the call and the power of God?
Did you come, expecting to be healed and made well?

If you didn’t come with those expectations,
why not???

That’s what Jesus asks the man, saying,
Do you want to be made well?
Jesus calls him back to his longing for a miracle, calls him out of the habit of going home unchanged,
and face-to-face with God, he stands up and walks away well.

The world is a wonderful place – full of the signs of God’s presence, not just healing, but all kinds of miracles: light, weather, food, and the people of God.
So’s the church.
And we can get used to coming to a place of miracles, and going home without one.
But I don’t think that’s how God wants us to live.

In the vision of God’s new creation in the Revelation to John we find that there’s no Temple in the city.
You can’t go to the Temple, the church, looking for God or waiting to be healed – because God is already face to face with us, calling us and supporting us to stand up and be well.

It’s a vision of a relationship in which it’s impossible to be distant, lost or disconnected.
A vision of relationship in which we can’t go home unchanged,
because we live every moment in the vivid, brilliant assurance of God’s care.
And from that miracle of living always face-to-face with God flows the water of life, and the tree whose growth is for the healing of the nations.

I believe that that’s how God wants us to live.
That’s how God promises we can live.

The promise and the expectation of this Revelation is that you and I should expect to be whole and holy,
to be healed not sometime or somewhere,
but here and now.

Because from that open longing and eager acceptance of the miracle of God’s love comes the river of life, not just for you and me,
but the healing of the world.

In the new creation,
you can’t get used to going home without a miracle.
So I hope you’re looking for one,
longing for one,
here, today.

May 9, 2010