While this sermon shares the same name as my last sermon, the spelling, text, and message is different. This sermon was heard at Broadmoor Presbyterian Church on Sunday May 15, 2016, Pentecost Sunday.
Genesis 11:1-9
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, or rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There’s an ancient hymn of the church, “Old Time Religion.” There are almost as many different authors listed of this hymn as there are versions. Depending on the source, we learn that the song is an old Negro Spiritual. Then checking the authorship of the Jim Reeves version and it credits Reeves, Tommy Hill, Leo Jackson, Ken Hill, and Gordon Stoker with no mention of the spiritual. Then there’s the Tennessee Ernie Ford version and the Buck Owens version with their fingerprints in the credit line. The version recorded by The Blind Boys of Alabama is attributed to someone named J. Baird.
You know me by now, of course I wouldn’t mention this song unless I meant to say something about it. And here goes, check out these choruses:
It was good for the Hebrew children.
It was good for dad and mother.
Makes me love everybody.
It was good for our mothers.
It has saved our fathers.
It will do when I am dyin’. (I love that, It'll do when I'm dyin')
It will take us all to heaven.
Give me that old time religion, it’s good enough for me.
Let me throw a wet blanket here, but the religion of the Hebrew children was not the “old time religion” of my father and mother. It’s a wonderful chorus, but good for the Hebrew Children isn’t in my experience. It was a classic of Twentieth Century Protestant hymnals, but “Old Time Religion” isn’t found in the new Presbyterian Hymnal.
Now here’s the fly in the ointment, as a Negro Spiritual, the faith of the Hebrew children is very important. The stories of the Exodus, the stories of people whose freedom was denied for hundreds of years by the Pharaohs in Egypt until the coming of Moses, were and continue to be very important. These stories are important for the men and women whose freedom was taken and continues to be in peril.
This was important to the slaves who originated this hymn. It was important to the Blind Boys of Alabama. But I can’t imagine Jim Reeves or Tennessee Ernie Ford or even Buck Owens catching the theological subtext because like me, it’s not their experience.
It may not be in our hymnal, but let’s go down Southfield Drive until it becomes Hollywood and see if it’s in the hymnbooks at Hollywood Presbyterian, a historically black congregation just down the road. Something old, something new.
Something old, something new. Pentecost has been a part of the celebration of the Church since before the Church was Christian. Pentecost is a part of the old time religion, but in Christ it became something new. Jews from every nation were living in Jerusalem on that first Christian Pentecost. When it began, it began with a sound like the rush of a violent wind.
Being people of the New Millennium, children of the Information age, we tend to look at scripture like we’ve seen it a hundred times. This is one of those times. We hear “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and tend to think “whoosh” when we should think Hurricane Camille, Andrew, or Katrina. We should think about the tornadoes that blew through town a couple of weekends ago. We should think about a “Mike Bettis from the Weather Channel doing a remote from your front porch” kind of violent wind sound. This isn’t something soft and pretty, this is a “change your life” event.
With this comes fire that licks like tongues and those tongues are speaking in the native languages of a world full of new believers and old skeptics. The world of Judaism was living in Jerusalem and the world was hearing the Gospel in their native languages. Not the angelic tongues we often think of when we hear of Pentecost, but languages with known words and grammar and these were used so people could hear the Word of God and understand it so they can share it.
Of course the old skeptics would say they sounded like a bunch of drunks. Then again the words of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, non-Jewish Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontians (is that what you call a resident of Pontus?), Asians (folks from what we call Turkey), Phrygians, Pamphylians, and Egyptians with Galilean accents might sound drunkish.
Peter stands up for the Apostles declaring, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.”
Then being this close to Mardi Gras “only nine o'clock in the morning” is meaningless when it comes to day drunk, but that’s not the point.
Peter was sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ as fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. The Spirit of God is being poured out upon all flesh. Sons and daughters prophesy. Young men see visions. Old men dream dreams. Slaves, even the male and female slaves, receive his Spirit and they prophesy.
In the name of God, by the work of Christ, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord is saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord is saved. Christ does not replace the Law; Christ fulfills the law.
This brings us to an interesting part of our reading from John, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” You will hear a lot of people who quote this invoke all sorts of things out of Leviticus. As for me, if we invoke too much Leviticus we won’t be able to eat the Red Beans and Rice I brought for today’s potluck and that would be a pity. So what does Jesus mean?
Some scholars say that the Ten Commandments serve three purposes. They give instruction on how to relate to God, to creation, and to each other. Christ knew how well we had done with this since the days of Moses so he knew the Advocate was a must to help us carry out these commandments.
As for the Levitical laws, they served all sorts of purposes. Some of them helped the people keep the commandments. Some of them helped keep family relationships in a semblance of order. Some were necessary to keep the people from getting trichinosis. We’ve been through this before, there were 613 mitzvoth, 613 laws; 248 thou shall’s and 365 thou shall not’s. Some became passé like the dietary restrictions. Peter would even argue with God, argue with God about dietary restrictions. He wouldn’t dare touch shrimp, lobster, bacon, or crawfish. But after a vision from the Lord God, the “mudbug,” a critter whose name makes its inclusion on the dietary restriction list self-explanatory, is now good eating.
So what did Jesus mean when he told the people to keep his commandments? The 613 seem to be in a state of flux since Peter saw his first catfish. What did Jesus mean? I believe the answer lies in the end of our reading from John’s gospel:
"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid."
What exactly does the Holy Spirit remind us? What has Jesus taught us? Jesus has taught us that even though he did not replace the law, he has fulfilled it. Fulfilling it he has done so in a new and glorious way, a way we could not expect or imagine. The scribes and Pharisees expected one thing and Jesus showed them something else.
They tried to trick him into blasphemy and he could not be tricked by their worldly games. They fawned over him, ingratiated themselves, then tried to spring a trap only to find that their traps had no power over Jesus. They complained he ate with whores and other women. He ate with tax collectors. He ate with zealots. He ate when he should have fasted, but these same temple leaders complained when the Baptist fasted when they would have rather he had a sandwich. Jesus tells his people the world will never be happy with them.
The world will never be happy with them, so why bother?
Jesus gives his people something better, something the world cannot offer, his peace. Peace we extend to each other during this very service! Let’s do it again!
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all!
And also with you!
Jesus says “My peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let your hearts be afraid."
On this Pentecost Sunday this is the commandment Jesus wants us to remember. If it doesn’t bring his peace, is it really his commandment?
The Civil Wars were Joy Williams and John Paul White, an Alternative-Country musical duo who from 2008 until 2014 recorded two CD’s a couple of EP’s and won four Grammy awards. The second single released from the first disc was the title track “Barton Hollow.”
Ain't going back to Barton Hollow
Devil gonna follow me e'er I go
Won't do me no good washing in the river
Can't no preacher man save my soul
It only took a few minutes of research on line for me to decide that there are more opinions about what this song means than copies sold, I bring up this song for this chorus.
If there is one thing every pastor, minister, and evangelist should want you to know it’s this, “Can’t no preacher man save my soul.” Absolutely not. We are saved by faith though grace in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who was born to live to die and rise again. Today we celebrate the coming of the day he promised until he comes again in victory, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, His Spirit.
Friends, there is a difference between religion and faith. Let me say this again, there is a difference between religion and faith. Straight out of John Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” we receive this definition of faith:
Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
So if this is faith what’s religion? Religion is how we celebrate that faith. If faith is the fabric of our lives, then religion is the hanger we put it on. Religion is a framework. We are the theological heirs of the Reformation; Calvin, Knox, Hus, Zwingli and many others. Our Jewish brothers have their scripture and authoritative writing as do our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. There are many old time religions, many theological hangers on which people hang the fabric of faith.
Ain't going back to Barton Hollow
Devil gonna follow me e'er I go
Won't do me no good washing in the river
Can't no preacher man save my soul
It only took a few minutes to find dozens of interpretations to this song. It doesn’t take as long to find even more meanings to the Pentecost. But on this Pentecost Sunday I want us to remember these things:
That hymn, it may not be ours to sing.
That whooshing sound, if you find it deafening, could be that’s as it should be.
If what you hear makes perfect sense coming from one pastor but another pastor makes no sense at all, that’s alright too. Remember that first Pentecost had one Apostle speaking your language and the others speaking goobledy-gook.
Yes, when we love Jesus we keep his commandments, yes those commandments are found in scripture, and yes, those commands are found in the life of Christ.
Finally, we are saved by grace through faith. It’s not our religion but our Lord who saves.
Barton Hollow says it won’t do us any good to wash in the river. That’s true as far as it goes. No words of a preacher will save our souls either. The power is that Jesus shared our baptism. There was no need, he didn’t need the cleansing we need. Yet through baptism he identifies with us. That’s the power. No preacher man will save our souls. The words are Christ’s not mine. It is grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone.
It has been an honor and a pleasure to share the word of God with you these past three years. Of course it wouldn’t seem like I preached a sermon if I didn’t play with the Greek would it? Jesus called the Spirit the Advocate. Used this way, Advocate means one who walks beside. What a wonderful image. What a glorious truth. Let us rejoice in his Holy comfort, God in Spirit who walks beside us.
Marie and I thank you for walking beside us too.
Amen.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Sunday, May 01, 2016
Something Olde, Something New
This sermon was heard at The Federated Church in Weatherford, Oklahoma on May 1, 2016, the Sixth Sunday in Easter.
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 21:22-22:5
John 5:1-9
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, or rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Words, they are such imprecise things. What I mean is that when I use a word it may not mean the same thing to you it means to me. Still, we are people of the Word, the Word of God. No matter how imprecise words are, the Lord used them to communicate with the prophets, priests, and kings. Jesus used words with his apostles and disciples, but it is still no wonder that we get confused by them.
My favorite Hebrew word is ruach. I love to hear it, I love to say it. I love what it means, both its simple definition and all of the wonderful meanings it carries. In Genesis 1:2, this is the word our bibles translate as “Spirit” [1] or “wind.”[2] Listen to the word again, ruach. It sounds like wind and spirit. There is a breathy, otherworldly quality to this word that mystifies me. Say it with me, ruach.
In Genesis, this breath of God, this is the spirit imparted just before light is created. It is the breath that blows across the chaos, the darkness, the void. This is the breath that precedes life. This is the breath that gives life to all creation.
This is the wind that comes off the water in the morning. It’s the cool breeze that brings the dew that falls on the grass. It’s the summer breeze that rustles the leaves in the trees and tells us that all is right in the world. It is the Spirit that reminds us that God is in charge regardless of the chaos of the world around us. It is the Spirit that says Emmanuel, God with us. This is the wind, the Spirit we read about a couple of weeks ago from John’s gospel when the disciples received the breath of Jesus. It’s the wind that will blow in two weeks on Pentecost.
Our gospel reading begins during a Jewish festival and Jesus is walking past the Sheep Gate by a pool the New Revised Standard Version called Beth-zatha. In Hebrew this could mean House of Shame or House of Disgrace. There are five porticoes in this pool, five porches reaching into the waters. These porches were loaded, overloaded with sick men and women; blind, lame, and paralyzed. They came to the pools to be healed.
Legend said that when the pool was stirred, its healing power was activated, and the first person in the waters would be healed. Angels bathing in the waters were said to cause those ripples. Since the pool was surrounded on all sides by the city walls or the slope of the hills, breezes in the pool would be infrequent. The pool was fed irregularly by an underground spring which would cause rippling. So the waiting game had to be played with patience.
In chapter nine of John’s gospel the disciples will ask “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Their understanding of disease was based on first century traditions. They had no understanding of germs and viruses. Illness was caused by sin, and maybe not even the sin of the ailing. Illness could be due to someone else’s sin. The sick were literally “sin sick.”
Further, the blind, lame, and paralyzed on the porticoes probably didn’t have much opportunity for wound care or basic hygiene. We have already established that because of location and architecture the pool had poor air circulation, so there would have been a stench that only a hospital worker with hazardous waste experience or a butcher whose power has been off all weekend can truly appreciate.
Remember too that this pool was used to wash the sheep prior to their sacrifice in the Temple. This use of the pool gave the water a halo of sanctity,[3] and I imagine it gave the pool a another distinct set of aromas.
The point I want to make is that our gospel reading is happening at a place where we would least expect to find a King. It’s loaded with the sick and infirm. It smells like infection and people who have been sitting in their filth because they have been waiting on healing. It smells like a sheep pen which would be a combination of barnyard and wet wool. While we don't know whether the spring had a harsh odor or not, we know there's a reason Glade doesn't make "Hot Spring." Oh, I forgot the flies. It would be safe to say Beth-zatha would not have been on the Chamber of Commerce tour.
So Jesus arrives at the pool seeing the sick: the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. There, Jesus spotted a man he wanted to know. He learned that this man had been lying there for a long time, thirty eight years to be exact. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”
Oh what a wonderful question! “Do you want to be made well?” How would you answer this question? “Oh my Lord, yes, I want to be made well!” Imagine people being asked this question all over the world? Imagine people crying from the roof tops, “Oh yes Lord, I want to be made well!” But you know, this isn’t the answer Jesus gets.
The man tells Jesus, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”
So, is that a yes or a no?
Really, I’m asking. This isn't rhetorical.
Is this a yes or a no?
It really isn’t an answer as much as it’s an explanation. The man explains that he is unable to reach the healing waters. He tries. He really tries to make it on his own, but he cannot because there is no one there to help him. Alas, woe is he. He is unable to make it to the waters first.
So Jesus says to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
This man has waited thirty-eight years for the wind to blow across the pool. He has waited so very long for the wind to blow and for the healing power of the water to be activated for him. He waited to be caressed by the ripples in the pool caused by angels bathing.
Instead, he got something new. He got what he expected least in this world. He didn’t feel the wind blow causing the pool to ripple. He met the wind.
He met the wind. He met the living God. He met the one who causes the healing wind to blow. He didn’t meet an angel, he met God incarnate. He was waiting to feel the breeze so that he could race to the pool. Instead he met the one who is the wind. In the most real and least expected way, he met God with him; he had a personal encounter with Emmanuel.
This passage in the New International Version does not call the pool Beth-zatha. It says Bethesda. Bethesda means “House of Mercy” or “House of Grace.” That name is fitting for a group of invalids who seek the unmerited favor of healing by the restorative powers of the waters. Is it any wonder that a Presbyterian Church founded near the sight of a bubbling spring in rural Maryland in 1820 would be called Bethesda? Is it any wonder one-hundred-and-twenty years later a Naval Medical Center built nearby would come to be called Bethesda?[4] A place named for the House of Grace would be the place to receive special treatment, both medical and spiritual.
For this man, there was no more “House of Shame.” He has met the one who brings the living waters of the “House of Grace.” In a glorious new way, he was baptized not in water, but in the Spirit of the Lord, by which he took his mat and walked. That day, that Sabbath day, Jesus showed that he is come to reconcile all creation into right relationship with himself. As the wind blew across the water in Genesis beginning all creation, Jesus blew across this man who was not able to get himself to the pool, not even able to say he wanted to get himself to the pool, and gave him new life.
I love words, and in one act, Jesus changes Beth-zatha to Bethesda. He takes the House of Disgrace and makes it a House of Grace. He makes this House of Shame a House of Mercy. This is the wind that blows across the healing waters. This is ruach.
Jesus has taken something old, the ancient myths and legends of the healing waters of a pool of water. A pool called the House of Shame and Disgrace because these afflictions were considered shameful and disgraceful. The Messiah, Jesus the Christ instead offers something new, grace and mercy, where neither existed before. He takes the stench of what kept them unclean and gives new life. Gone is the old, in Christ new life has come in abundance.
Our Lord, our Messiah is the one who is able to do more than we could ever hope or imagine. He is able to do the unexpected. We read this in Acts. Acts 16:13 tells us that on the Sabbath, Paul and his traveling party went down to the river, down to the place of prayer, and spoke to the women who had gathered there. I am not going to go into the big explanation about why the women are the people we would least expect Paul to speak with on that day, we know about the subordinate roles women played in ancient times. Paul had crossed into Europe to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Roman Empire and first shared it with women.
One of the women in the group, a believer in God named Lydia, was listening to Paul at the river. She was a dealer in purple cloth. To decode this phrase, she was in her way rich and powerful. Her clients were rich and powerful because only the rich could afford to purchase purple and only the powerful were allowed to wear it.
This woman, rich and powerful in her own right, brought her household to Paul for baptism. In effect, her household is the first toehold of Christianity in Europe. A woman’s home in Thyatira becomes the site of the first European Christian church. This easily qualifies something new. [5]
This gives us hope in Christ. This bit of Bethesda, this slice of the “House of Grace” comes again to the water and the wind blows across it bringing something new, the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ to the world where it is least expected. By the grace and mercy of God, these women are reconciled to all creation.
Even more unexpected is the vision of New Jerusalem found in our reading from Revelation. The winds of change, the winds of reconciliation, the winds of life blow across the river of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. If you noticed, there is no temple in the city because there is no need. There is no need for a temple because all of New Jerusalem, the city where nothing accursed will be found, becomes the new temple.[6]
This is the wonder and the glory of new life in Christ. The most glorious things we could never expect are just the beginning. The wind of new life blows across Bethesda lifting a man who had not walked in thirty-eight years. The wind blows across the river where the women pray and opens Europe to the gospel. The Gospel Incarnate, the Lamb of God will be seen again on the day of the New Jerusalem when there will be no more night.
Pope John Paul II took the opportunity to “put Bob Dylan right” when the two headlined a gig together in Bologna, Italy in 1997.[7] Dylan met His Holiness on stage during a Catholic youth event before playing three of his best-known songs. After the two men had shaken hands and exchanged a few words, the Pope stepped up to the microphone and took the singer to the theological cleaners.
“You say the answer is blowing in the wind, my friend,” he observed. “So it is. But it is not the wind that blows things away, it is the wind that is the breath and life of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, ‘Come!’”
Clearly enjoying the thunderous applause that greeted these words, the Pope continued in a style that would not have disgraced a television evangelist: “You ask me, how many roads must a man walk down before he becomes a man? I answer: One! There is only one road for man, and it is the road of Jesus Christ, who said I am the Way and the Life.”
Rejoice! The wind that blows over the creation of creation blows today. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, God in Christ is doing something new. It is up to the Body of Christ to listen for the word. It’s time to feel the wind, stand up, take up our mat, and walk.
Amen.
[1] Jerusalem Publication Society, New American Standard Bible, New International Version, New Living translations
[2] New Revised Standard Version
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Bethesda, accessed May 12, 2007
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda%2C_Maryland and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Naval_Medical_Center accessed on May 12, 2007
[5] Cousar, Charles B, Gaventa, Beverly R., McCann, Jr., J. Clinton, Newsome, James D. “Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, Year C.” Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994, pages 314-316.
[6] Ibid, pages 318-320.
[7] Ship of Fools Magazine Online, September 29, 1997 as found at HomileticsOnline.com, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=1887, May 7, 2010.
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 21:22-22:5
John 5:1-9
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, or rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Words, they are such imprecise things. What I mean is that when I use a word it may not mean the same thing to you it means to me. Still, we are people of the Word, the Word of God. No matter how imprecise words are, the Lord used them to communicate with the prophets, priests, and kings. Jesus used words with his apostles and disciples, but it is still no wonder that we get confused by them.
My favorite Hebrew word is ruach. I love to hear it, I love to say it. I love what it means, both its simple definition and all of the wonderful meanings it carries. In Genesis 1:2, this is the word our bibles translate as “Spirit” [1] or “wind.”[2] Listen to the word again, ruach. It sounds like wind and spirit. There is a breathy, otherworldly quality to this word that mystifies me. Say it with me, ruach.
In Genesis, this breath of God, this is the spirit imparted just before light is created. It is the breath that blows across the chaos, the darkness, the void. This is the breath that precedes life. This is the breath that gives life to all creation.
This is the wind that comes off the water in the morning. It’s the cool breeze that brings the dew that falls on the grass. It’s the summer breeze that rustles the leaves in the trees and tells us that all is right in the world. It is the Spirit that reminds us that God is in charge regardless of the chaos of the world around us. It is the Spirit that says Emmanuel, God with us. This is the wind, the Spirit we read about a couple of weeks ago from John’s gospel when the disciples received the breath of Jesus. It’s the wind that will blow in two weeks on Pentecost.
Our gospel reading begins during a Jewish festival and Jesus is walking past the Sheep Gate by a pool the New Revised Standard Version called Beth-zatha. In Hebrew this could mean House of Shame or House of Disgrace. There are five porticoes in this pool, five porches reaching into the waters. These porches were loaded, overloaded with sick men and women; blind, lame, and paralyzed. They came to the pools to be healed.
Legend said that when the pool was stirred, its healing power was activated, and the first person in the waters would be healed. Angels bathing in the waters were said to cause those ripples. Since the pool was surrounded on all sides by the city walls or the slope of the hills, breezes in the pool would be infrequent. The pool was fed irregularly by an underground spring which would cause rippling. So the waiting game had to be played with patience.
In chapter nine of John’s gospel the disciples will ask “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Their understanding of disease was based on first century traditions. They had no understanding of germs and viruses. Illness was caused by sin, and maybe not even the sin of the ailing. Illness could be due to someone else’s sin. The sick were literally “sin sick.”
Further, the blind, lame, and paralyzed on the porticoes probably didn’t have much opportunity for wound care or basic hygiene. We have already established that because of location and architecture the pool had poor air circulation, so there would have been a stench that only a hospital worker with hazardous waste experience or a butcher whose power has been off all weekend can truly appreciate.
Remember too that this pool was used to wash the sheep prior to their sacrifice in the Temple. This use of the pool gave the water a halo of sanctity,[3] and I imagine it gave the pool a another distinct set of aromas.
The point I want to make is that our gospel reading is happening at a place where we would least expect to find a King. It’s loaded with the sick and infirm. It smells like infection and people who have been sitting in their filth because they have been waiting on healing. It smells like a sheep pen which would be a combination of barnyard and wet wool. While we don't know whether the spring had a harsh odor or not, we know there's a reason Glade doesn't make "Hot Spring." Oh, I forgot the flies. It would be safe to say Beth-zatha would not have been on the Chamber of Commerce tour.
So Jesus arrives at the pool seeing the sick: the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. There, Jesus spotted a man he wanted to know. He learned that this man had been lying there for a long time, thirty eight years to be exact. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”
Oh what a wonderful question! “Do you want to be made well?” How would you answer this question? “Oh my Lord, yes, I want to be made well!” Imagine people being asked this question all over the world? Imagine people crying from the roof tops, “Oh yes Lord, I want to be made well!” But you know, this isn’t the answer Jesus gets.
The man tells Jesus, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”
So, is that a yes or a no?
Really, I’m asking. This isn't rhetorical.
Is this a yes or a no?
It really isn’t an answer as much as it’s an explanation. The man explains that he is unable to reach the healing waters. He tries. He really tries to make it on his own, but he cannot because there is no one there to help him. Alas, woe is he. He is unable to make it to the waters first.
So Jesus says to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
This man has waited thirty-eight years for the wind to blow across the pool. He has waited so very long for the wind to blow and for the healing power of the water to be activated for him. He waited to be caressed by the ripples in the pool caused by angels bathing.
Instead, he got something new. He got what he expected least in this world. He didn’t feel the wind blow causing the pool to ripple. He met the wind.
He met the wind. He met the living God. He met the one who causes the healing wind to blow. He didn’t meet an angel, he met God incarnate. He was waiting to feel the breeze so that he could race to the pool. Instead he met the one who is the wind. In the most real and least expected way, he met God with him; he had a personal encounter with Emmanuel.
This passage in the New International Version does not call the pool Beth-zatha. It says Bethesda. Bethesda means “House of Mercy” or “House of Grace.” That name is fitting for a group of invalids who seek the unmerited favor of healing by the restorative powers of the waters. Is it any wonder that a Presbyterian Church founded near the sight of a bubbling spring in rural Maryland in 1820 would be called Bethesda? Is it any wonder one-hundred-and-twenty years later a Naval Medical Center built nearby would come to be called Bethesda?[4] A place named for the House of Grace would be the place to receive special treatment, both medical and spiritual.
For this man, there was no more “House of Shame.” He has met the one who brings the living waters of the “House of Grace.” In a glorious new way, he was baptized not in water, but in the Spirit of the Lord, by which he took his mat and walked. That day, that Sabbath day, Jesus showed that he is come to reconcile all creation into right relationship with himself. As the wind blew across the water in Genesis beginning all creation, Jesus blew across this man who was not able to get himself to the pool, not even able to say he wanted to get himself to the pool, and gave him new life.
I love words, and in one act, Jesus changes Beth-zatha to Bethesda. He takes the House of Disgrace and makes it a House of Grace. He makes this House of Shame a House of Mercy. This is the wind that blows across the healing waters. This is ruach.
Jesus has taken something old, the ancient myths and legends of the healing waters of a pool of water. A pool called the House of Shame and Disgrace because these afflictions were considered shameful and disgraceful. The Messiah, Jesus the Christ instead offers something new, grace and mercy, where neither existed before. He takes the stench of what kept them unclean and gives new life. Gone is the old, in Christ new life has come in abundance.
Our Lord, our Messiah is the one who is able to do more than we could ever hope or imagine. He is able to do the unexpected. We read this in Acts. Acts 16:13 tells us that on the Sabbath, Paul and his traveling party went down to the river, down to the place of prayer, and spoke to the women who had gathered there. I am not going to go into the big explanation about why the women are the people we would least expect Paul to speak with on that day, we know about the subordinate roles women played in ancient times. Paul had crossed into Europe to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Roman Empire and first shared it with women.
One of the women in the group, a believer in God named Lydia, was listening to Paul at the river. She was a dealer in purple cloth. To decode this phrase, she was in her way rich and powerful. Her clients were rich and powerful because only the rich could afford to purchase purple and only the powerful were allowed to wear it.
This woman, rich and powerful in her own right, brought her household to Paul for baptism. In effect, her household is the first toehold of Christianity in Europe. A woman’s home in Thyatira becomes the site of the first European Christian church. This easily qualifies something new. [5]
This gives us hope in Christ. This bit of Bethesda, this slice of the “House of Grace” comes again to the water and the wind blows across it bringing something new, the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ to the world where it is least expected. By the grace and mercy of God, these women are reconciled to all creation.
Even more unexpected is the vision of New Jerusalem found in our reading from Revelation. The winds of change, the winds of reconciliation, the winds of life blow across the river of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. If you noticed, there is no temple in the city because there is no need. There is no need for a temple because all of New Jerusalem, the city where nothing accursed will be found, becomes the new temple.[6]
This is the wonder and the glory of new life in Christ. The most glorious things we could never expect are just the beginning. The wind of new life blows across Bethesda lifting a man who had not walked in thirty-eight years. The wind blows across the river where the women pray and opens Europe to the gospel. The Gospel Incarnate, the Lamb of God will be seen again on the day of the New Jerusalem when there will be no more night.
Pope John Paul II took the opportunity to “put Bob Dylan right” when the two headlined a gig together in Bologna, Italy in 1997.[7] Dylan met His Holiness on stage during a Catholic youth event before playing three of his best-known songs. After the two men had shaken hands and exchanged a few words, the Pope stepped up to the microphone and took the singer to the theological cleaners.
“You say the answer is blowing in the wind, my friend,” he observed. “So it is. But it is not the wind that blows things away, it is the wind that is the breath and life of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, ‘Come!’”
Clearly enjoying the thunderous applause that greeted these words, the Pope continued in a style that would not have disgraced a television evangelist: “You ask me, how many roads must a man walk down before he becomes a man? I answer: One! There is only one road for man, and it is the road of Jesus Christ, who said I am the Way and the Life.”
Rejoice! The wind that blows over the creation of creation blows today. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, God in Christ is doing something new. It is up to the Body of Christ to listen for the word. It’s time to feel the wind, stand up, take up our mat, and walk.
Amen.
[1] Jerusalem Publication Society, New American Standard Bible, New International Version, New Living translations
[2] New Revised Standard Version
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Bethesda, accessed May 12, 2007
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda%2C_Maryland and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Naval_Medical_Center accessed on May 12, 2007
[5] Cousar, Charles B, Gaventa, Beverly R., McCann, Jr., J. Clinton, Newsome, James D. “Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, Year C.” Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994, pages 314-316.
[6] Ibid, pages 318-320.
[7] Ship of Fools Magazine Online, September 29, 1997 as found at HomileticsOnline.com, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=1887, May 7, 2010.
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