Stirred Up - May 13, 2007
John 5: 1-9Today is one of those grand days in the story of a church—a day in which we take in five new members. Following right after a Sunday in which we added six new confirmands—children of the church—it almost seems an embarrassment of riches. But we’ll take it, thank you God. We’ll take it. It’s a tremendous blessing, and we are grateful for it. May it happen again.
When I was a girl growing up in an evangelical, non-denominational (most of the time), Pentecostal tradition, we weren’t that big on church membership. People seldom stood before the gathered assembly and answered questions. Joining the church was pretty simple in those days, in those churches: to join you showed up. And then you kept on showing up. And as soon as you were showing up consistently you were considered part of the church, and pretty soon you were given a job in the church.
Un-joining the church was a similar process. To leave the church you simply stopped showing up. Maybe you told your friends that you had left the church, and depending on the circumstance, you might have told the preacher in no uncertain terms exactly why you were leaving the church but the sign for leaving the church was failing to show up on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night.
The matter of a church roll was much looser in that tradition. There were no letters of transfer, mostly because there were no hard and fast records—and no church secretaries, or office administrators.
Once we left a church because the preacher left. He went to start his own fellowship in a storefront in a tiny little town, and, because my parents liked his style, and had faith in him, we went with him. So, early on Sunday mornings, we would go to the storefront, help him take folding chairs off his truck, arrange them in a semi-circle, pull an old piano out of a storage room in the back, and when the appointed time came, we would have church.
After a year or so of this, when the preacher found out that he could not support his family on the offerings of a handful of faithful storefront worshippers in a tiny town, he left with out much fanfare, and we started out on our search to find a new church. The caveat of that story is this: don’t follow the preacher. The preacher is not the church.
It took some getting used to in my adult years to be in churches where people had some longevity—where generations of families had been a part of a church, where somebody’s grandfather had helped build the church building, where records were kept, where to join involved a process. “Profession of Faith” we call it in our tradition. Even if you are coming in by way of a letter from your old church, you still profess your faith on a Sunday morning, with the gathered faithful of your new church family. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s clear, its something we celebrate together, it’s something we all have done at one point or another in our lives. It creates a common bond among church family.
If there is a downside to this, let me suggest that this might be it: People might be tempted, after such a ritual, to ease up on the showing up. Once the ink is dry on the records, and people have a bonafide paper trail documenting their church membership, sometimes the showing up to say “I’m still here!” becomes less important.
The Biblical story of the pool of Bethsaida is a strange little story full of holes. What’s wrong with this guy? Why does he lie by the pool for 38 years, day in and day out? Who stirs up the waters? How does that make the waters restorative? Why doesn’t anybody help him? Why doesn’t he seem very excited to see Jesus? Why doesn’t faith seem to play any role at all in this man’s healing?
Lest we make an idol of “showing up”, remember that this man showed up every day for 38 years. For 38 years he laid beside the pool, for 38 years he watched as whatever phenomenon it was that happened with the water, happened. (Scholars believe this detail is a late addition—an attempt to explain the healing powers of the water.) For 38 years he watched somebody else get his or her healing, while nobody helped him.
Perhaps some of us have been in that position—watching while somebody else gets what we want or need so badly—the job, the child, true love, a restored relationship, financial security, physical health, forgiveness, an end to sadness, or loneliness, or pain. Imagine seeing that for 38 years. I imagine after that long watching somebody else get in the water before us, we might just give up trying. We might build up a pretty thick skin, until it becomes no longer very important what our troubles are, or why we can’t get to the water fast enough. But we’re in this habit of showing up by the pool every day—in fact there’s a spot that’s all ours, right there under that portico.
When Jesus shows up the man appears to not know who he is—or care. Jesus asks the man, “Do you want to be made well?” which, when you think about it, was a pretty insulting question. The man does not reply enthusiastically, or hopefully, or even beg for healing. Instead he begins his litany of why he doesn’t really believe he can be healed. I must admit, to a preacher, this is not a very satisfying way for the man to answer. I can’t hang some sermon about faithfulness on this text—it simply isn’t there. The formula faith=healing gets busted wide open with this story. Same thing goes for gratitude. After the man gets what he needs, he walks away, without even so much as a thank you, and if we read the next several verses, we will see that he even sells Jesus out for healing him on the Sabbath. Maybe I’ve spent too much time already on this man, eh? He’s no bargain—nothing he ever did really worked out. He didn’t even have a hand in his own healing. (Pause)
So…if we are trying to locate where the miracle comes from, and it cannot come from the special water, or the faith of the man, or the gratitude of the man, or even the persistence of the man, that leaves, what…Jesus?
It turns out that sitting by the water for 38 years, waiting for help, watching everyone else get there first, building up a defense mechanism, constructing the story of his inability to be healed didn’t get him healed. But Jesus did. He was not very impressed by Jesus, but still he was healed. He was not very thankful, but still able to finally walk away from the side of that pool after 38 years. Maybe it’s less about us than we want to think. Maybe it’s more about God.
All those years of chasing preachers across county lines, trying this church and that church, and faithfully showing up no matter what finally took its toll on my family. There was a kind of disillusionment in preachers for a while, I’m afraid. Finding out that this preacher had a problem with sexual indiscretion, or that one left town under cover of night with all the church’s money left a bad taste in our mouths when it came to organized church. I became a little like that man by the side of the pool—I wasn’t really going to get up, move towards the water, or ask for healing because I had seen it all before.
Imagine my surprise when Jesus showed up one day, in the form of a stranger, and asked me if I’d like to get up and get about the business of carrying my mat. It wasn’t about church paperwork you see—I had already done that. It was about the Healer, about consistently showing up to be in the presence of the One who seeks us out.
Whether we are faithful members of the same church for generations, visitors, seekers, those about to make a public profession of faith, or those who sincerely doubt or question every sermon they’ve ever heard, God has only one question for us this morning: Is there something you want?
If the answer is yes, we should be prepared. Something will get stirred up, and it won’t be water in a pool somewhere. Every time somebody makes the commitment to follow Jesus in the life of a particular congregation, that congregation is stirred up, too, and changed forever. New life is scary, so much so that we might be tempted to watch it from the sidelines. Jesus invites us instead to stir things up.
Thanks be to God.
