A Scary Moment

Text: John 5:1-9

We might ask: what is wrong with this man? Why is he such a whiner? Why has he been so patient, waiting—it seems—for thirty-eight years? Why has he let more aggressive others cut in front of him? Why has he not asked for help? Our compassion is sadly mixed with disdain. Would we, we think, have acted as this man has? We think not, or perhaps we hope not. We have more gumption.

We might ask also: what is wrong with those other people? Why have none of them given this man a hand? Why have they time after time crowded him out, denying him a chance to be healed? Our disdain is thankfully tempered by compassion. Would we have acted as these people have? We think not, or perhaps we hope not. We are kinder.

What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do? He berates neither the crowd nor the man. This is not, evidently, a moral tale. Not a commentary on the character of the man nor of the crowd. Not a teaching about ethical behavior, self-reliance, or the energetic pursuit of progress in the face of difficulties.

Jesus asks the man: Do you want to be made well? The man has been ill for thirty-eight years. Though maybe not for all those years, he has been sitting by the pool for a long time, and Jesus knew that, it says. Do you want to be made well? This is often a trick question that implies some kind of disapproval, as if the man were ill by his own fault, laziness, or ambivalence. But Jesus is not judging him. He is warning the man that something might happen if the man agrees. If you want to be made well, Jesus seems to say, I can do that, but I want to make sure that that is what you wish.

The man realizes in this moment, I’m convinced, that Jesus has the power to heal him. Jesus has a tendency to elicit from us our true desires. (Confronted with pure compassion, we feel things clarify.)

This is the moment of the miracle in this story. It is a thrilling moment. It is a scary moment. Scary to be in the face of such life-changing power. Scary to think what that change might entail.

The man’s answer, in spite of what must have been a lifetime of longing by the man, is slow in coming. Instead, he tells a story about his past life, about obstacles and setbacks, and about the wrongs done him. He never answers the question that Jesus has put to him.

What is he thinking? Why does he hesitate?

Maybe the man was afraid of hoping. Of getting his hopes up, only to have them sink again. Maybe he had become cynical, tired of making plans that never worked out, or believing in others who were not trustworthy. Maybe he was exhausted by disappointment.

Or maybe the man did not trust his own ability to survive in a future different from the past he had known. What skills did he have? A resume that reads Experience: 38 years of frustration on a porch by a pool. When we are called to unknown journeys, there is no guarantee that we will have the abilities we need; we might not be good at what a new future requires of us. It might be confusing, or shocking, or dangerous. We might not be able to cope. Perhaps we will fail.

Maybe the man was ready to say Yes. But he hesitated to answer because he was overwhelmed by grief. His life’s work, the focus of his day, the preponderance of his thoughts must have been—seem to have been—how to be the ill person he was. Now, that would be gone. Freed from it, you might say, but maybe he would say instead taken from him. No one leaves the past without looking back. There is no dark life so black that there is no light in it. We cannot simply set aside years and memories as if they never were. There is sadness in every leaving.

The man grieves, perhaps, that his identity will be lost. We confuse who we are with what we have and what happens to us. I am the athletic person, the artistic person, the wealthy benefactor person. I am the responsible person, the socially adept person, the good-looking person. I am the struggling person, the person who acts out, the unlucky person. I am the sick person. Who will this man be once he can stand up and walk? How will others see him? How will he know himself? He will be a stranger to his friends and to himself.

And maybe the man did not answer because he was uncertain whether all this real loss would be worth some undefined gain. Even if he trusted Jesus to heal him, and even if he was able, how could he know that his new life would be better than his old one? Maybe this was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Better the devil you know. Counting chickens. And so forth. This situation is ripe for proverbial advice. We cannot know the future for certain. And just because our hopes are fond does not mean that they are right. What we think will fulfill us may not.

It is not helpful for us to judge this man as being of poor moral character. His fault is timidity and fear of the unknown, characteristics we all share with him. We are all timid in some way. We all shun adventure sometime—or most of the time. Change is hard. Transitions are hard. Even the ones we have sought. Even at the brink of the most longed-for changes in our lives, we balance joyful anticipation with secret dread and with real grief.

Jesus knows the man. He speaks without hearing the man’s answer. These imperatives—stand up! walk!—act more like offers. Which the man accepts. The man, it says, is made whole. What was broken is restored.

Today after coffee hour we—those who wish to—are going to talk about baptism. Central to baptism is that God has both the interest and the power to bring us to new life. This new life is not a thing of the moment, any more than the man’s healing was. It is ongoing, continuous. Even in our anxiety and grief, the uncertain future becomes a new future as the man—as we—live daily in new ways. God makes the promise of baptism to us constantly and also the power to accept this promise.

We are not able to nor are we required to live the same moment over and over. Jesus makes us an offer of new life. Stand up, walk.

Something might happen.