For Crying Out Loud
Pastor Mathew Magera – 4/24/16 – Sermon 162
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace
and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our Gospel reading this
morning covers the healing story of a man who, from our perspective, seems less
than likely to be on Jesus' top ten list of favorite healings. The man appears
so negative and ungrateful. When Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, he
literally is crying out loud expressing his impatience and irritation with the
fact that there is no possible way for him to be healed. Then Jesus does the
unthinkable and heals him.
Before I get into the story,
I want to give you a bit of a background on what's going on here to help us
understand. If you open your Bible to John 5, I want you to take a look at
verse 4. What I want you to notice when you look there is that verse 4 does not
exist. There is no verse 4. Instead, you'll see a note that directs you to the
bottom of the page. What you are seeing here is a decision made by translators
to omit the verse from the Gospel of John. If you are looking in the pew Bible,
the reason given doesn't go into much detail. Verse 4, if it were included,
would describe the Pool of Bethesda and what its purpose was. People would come
to this pool to seek healing. It is said that an angel of the Lord would stir
up the waters and that the first person to enter the water after the waters
were stirred up would be healed. So, these people were gathering at this pool
seeking healing. If they were going to find it, it was going to be at this
place. Questions that we might ask at this point might include: Does this
actually work? How often are the waters stirred up? The reason this verse is not
in many modern Bibles is because it is thought to have not originally been
within the original manuscripts of the Gospel. It is said that this verse was
added later and not written by John. If you have a King James Bible at home,
that's one of the few translations that actually include verse 4. So, to be as
true to John as we can be, verse 4 is omitted in most versions because he must
have intended to not give a description of the pool and perhaps rightly so
because if we were to hear this supposed folklore we might focus ourselves on
those questions and the pool as the source of healing rather than focusing on
Jesus as our main source of healing. So, the Pool of Bethesda was a source of
healing, a place that even a man who had been unwell for 38 years was still
waiting for his shot to be healed.
I want to place us into the
story through the eyes of two different people. First, I want us to become one
of the onlookers of this healing, watching it take place. Just go ahead and
picture that, if you would. Maybe you haven't been here for 38 years like the
main character has been, but you know who he is. You know who you are. You know
who everyone else is. You know why you are all here. You are at the pool of
Bethesda. You're seeking the same thing. You want to be made well. You are
competing against one another for one special moment, a moment that you have no
idea when it will take place. You are eyeing each person judging them in your
mind, trying to determine who has the best chance of getting to the water first.
You fasten your eyes on your strongest competition and you are determined to
take them down. You think to yourself, they will NOT receive any healing
because I am going to get to that water first. No one has a chance but me to
receive healing when that water gets stirred, no one but me.
You see, as an onlooker to
the miracle story, you are focused only on yourself. You have a goal in mind,
you have a vision of being set free from your ailment. If you consider the
needs of others you will miss your opportunity. If you consider the needs of
others you will most assuredly lengthen the amount of time you are waiting for
relief and shorten the amount of time you had visioned to be well. So, it's no
wonder this one man, our main character, is upset and saying no one will help
him into the pool. Everyone, including you, is focused on themselves.
Then, all of a sudden, Jesus
appears on the scene and approaches this man who has been around this pool for
so long and without much effort heals the man of his problem. Well, that's not
fair, is it? Jesus comes on the scene and messes things up. Everyone is at this
pool waiting just like they were supposed to. Only the strongest would get
healed but now Jesus comes in and destroys the system, healing this one man who
has been unable to find relief for 38 years, probably a majority of his life.
Why does Jesus help them but not me? I'm still here too. For crying out loud,
Jesus, what's so important about him? As the onlooker, you are so focused on
your abilities and the rules of the game, that you reject the grace that takes
place right in front of you.
Now, let's switch roles and
step inside of the main character in the story, the one who is healed. You've
been there 38 years, you've had to have lost hope a long time ago. You're
angry, discouraged. There's a chance you've seen others get into the water and
find healing but not you. You're too weak. You need help but of course no one
will give it. Why bother asking for help if you know it's not even possible.
There is no hope. This much is pretty clear.
Then, Jesus appears on the
scene and approaches you. He asks if you want to be healed but you've already
lost hope. You couldn't find hope if you had a flashlight and a map. So, when
Jesus asks you if you want to be made well, all you do is focus on the
impossible. "For crying out loud, Jesus, there's no way for me to get into
the water. There's no one to help me. Each time the water is stirred up and I
try to get to it, someone else cuts in front of me. If I can't get to the pool,
then I won't be healed. I can't get to the pool, so I am SOL." You're so
focused on your lost hope that you can't even think of two things to do at this
point. If you happened to know this was Jesus, you could have answered his
question by saying "Yes I want to be made well" knowing he could do
it. If you didn't realize it was Jesus you could have asked him to help you. He
could be your greatest asset to getting healed. He could work on your behalf,
clearing the way or carrying you to the water. But, you are so focused on your
inability that you fail to see the mercy that is about to take place when Jesus
says to you, "Take up your mat and walk."
Isn't it interesting how the
same act, the same story, takes on two different meanings depending on the character
that you are? As the onlooker, while you can't see it, the healing of this man
is an act of grace. He doesn't deserve it. He's not strong enough to make it to
the water. Yet, Jesus gives him something he doesn't deserve. As the man who is
healed, you are looking at your inabilities, your hurts, your pains and you can
clearly see the impossibility of being made well. As the one who is healed,
while you can't see it, your healing is an act of mercy. You are destined to be
at that pool for the remainder of your life. By your weakness, you deserve to
die there. But, Jesus takes away something you deserve, which is death.
God is all about grace and
mercy, right? Then why do we fail so terribly when God displays these qualities
and why do we fail so terribly when we are asked to display these qualities in
Jesus' name? We've all been the onlooker at one point in our lives. If you
haven't, there will be a time when you will feel just like them. There will be
a time when you look around and you are feeling that you are competing with
others. There are unwritten rules to follow and you better not break them. Yet,
just like the onlooker saw Jesus heal this one man, when we see rules being
broken we cry foul! You can't cut in line, that's the rule. Jesus, you can't
help this person before you help me, that's the rule. From your perspective,
God is showering grace onto somebody who doesn't deserve it and you don't like
it. Grace offends us because grace breaks the rules.
Have you ever been the one
in the story who has received mercy? Have you ever been given your health after
being terribly sick? Have you ever received a donation to help you float
financially? Sometimes the situations we find ourselves in where our hope is
sucked out of us cause us to lose sight of mercy because we are so focused on
the impossible that we can't see even the tiniest improvement. When things
happen to us, we are so focused on our inabilities that we fail to see the
mercy that God has placed in our midst. We sit and talk about how there's no
one to help us yet when someone is put in our path we fail to ask for help.
From your perspective, God is showering mercy upon you and you can't even see
it. For crying out loud, we can't even see the mercy that is right in front of
our face, that is sitting right next to us this morning, or in front of us or
behind us.
God is all about grace and
mercy and if we find ourselves in this story of healing, on either side of it
and can't release ourselves to see the grace and mercy in our everyday lives,
it will be that much harder to see the grace and mercy that came to us in the
cross and the resurrection. Easter is all about grace and mercy. Yes, Jesus
died for that one person you just can't stand. The one who seems to be getting
special treatment for one thing or another. But, yes, also, Jesus died for you
too, especially in those times when you feel so inadequate, so unable, so
immobile, so useless, so hopeless. Jesus walked up to you and even though you
can't quite put your finger on his intentions or think straight, Jesus healed
you anyway. He took away something you deserved and gave you something that you
didn't deserve.
The last thing I want to say
about this story is that none of the characters in this story found grace or
mercy. Rather, grace and mercy found them. This is important to us as we are
sent out this week, to realize that we can't seek grace. It comes to us. We
can't seek mercy. It comes to us. Then it is our mission to give that grace and
mercy to others. Having received grace and mercy from the cross, in our
Baptism, in the hearing of God's Word, we have become vessels of grace and
mercy to bring to others. Grace and mercy continue to flow through us as we
talk about our faith in God with others. We need to bring it to where they are and
not expect them to come here to find it.
Think about it this way.
It's Water Sunday. We're receiving donations today and this month to be sent
out to Water Missions International and to help our brothers and sisters in
Flint so that the whole world would be able to have access to safe, clean
water. We don't drive over to Flint or fly to Central America and say,
"hey, we've got clean water in Trufant, why don't you come with me
sometime and you can have some with me?" Sounds rather pointless, right? A
better action would be to go to Flint and hand out water or special
lead-removing filters and say, "Hey, I see you are in need of safe, clean
water and I've brought you some. Let me share it with you." That seems
much more purposeful. The same goes with the Gospel message. If you have an
encounter with someone tomorrow you might say "Hey, I see you are in need
of a little hope today. Well, when I am in need of hope I turn to this verse or
I think of this song or I think of something that my Pastor said about Jesus
and I wonder if that might give you a little hope today." It sounds a lot
better than seeing someone tomorrow and saying, "Hey, I see you are in
need of a little hope today. Why don't you come to church with me on Sunday.
You'll find some hope there." Six days away is a mighty big risk for
someone who needs hope right now.
So, perhaps this gives you a
reason to understand why verse 4 is not included in many translations. If we
think that the true healing the world needs comes from somewhere that we have
to physically go and wait and hope, then our focus will be taken off of Jesus
and our experience of grace and mercy will be flawed. True life and hope come
from Christ himself. We may have our pools of Bethesda that we can think of
that just aren’t helping for whatever reason. But we still have Jesus who gives
us the healing we really need, the healing of our souls. This is the same
healing we can provide in His name. So, just as Jesus meets us, let's be like
Jesus and meet the lives of those who are waiting to find healing at their pool
of Bethesda. Some have been waiting for hope for much more than 38 years. So,
for crying out loud, by the grace of God, let's get moving. Let’s show grace and mercy for the sake of Christ
who offered that same grace and mercy to us out of pure love, who on his
resurrection from the dead healed our sinful souls, gave us hope and said to
us, as he took away our sin, “Pick up your mat and walk.” To God be the glory,
now and always. Amen.