THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS
John 5:1-9
Thirty-eight years. What does 38 years represent to you? It might be how long you've been married. It could be the age of your mother or your daughter. Maybe it's the length of a career that you loved. Or hated. Or both. Some of you mothers may have had to go on bed rest during part of a pregnancy. That may have felt like 38 years!
I realize a number of you weren't even born 38 years ago! For those who were, you might remember that in 1969 big radio tunes included Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" and "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Richard Nixon was president. Andy Warhol was on the cover of Esquire magazine. And in the summer of 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out onto the surface of the moon. I was two years old that summer. My very first, very fuzzy memory is of watching those live, grainy black and white images televised from the moon. I'm sure I didn't really grasp the meaning of humans walking on the moon, but I can remember exactly where I was on that day.
So for me 38 years represents my whole life. At least the span of all the memories I have. That's one reason this text from John's gospel really grabs my attention. There's this man who's been ill for 38 years. That's probably his whole life, too. We don't know exactly what's wrong with him but it sounds like he has trouble getting up and moving around. So he's likely paralyzed in some way. He's hanging out at the pool of Beth-zatha in Jerusalem, a place where the water is rumored to have healing properties if you jump into it at exactly the right time. I wonder how many of those years this paralyzed guy has been trying to get into the water.
Then one Sabbath day a stranger kneels down beside him, a man he's never seen, doesn't know anything about. This stranger looks straight at him with a powerful, knowing gaze. "Do you want to be made well?" The paralyzed man says it's not likely: "I don't have anyone to help me get in the water, the one place I could float free of my pain." Then the stranger says the most preposterous thing. It's even offensive. He tells the disabled man, "Stand up!" Thirty-eight years. That's how long the man knew he couldn't stand up. How does he know now, instantaneously, that he can unfold his legs and trust them to support his weight, to balance him? Why now? Why here? Why believe this stranger's words?
I think the man stood up because there was life-giving power in those words from Jesus, power the man had never encountered before. This story witnesses to the good news that God can and does work this way in the world, bringing startlingly vivid new life where we don't expect it. That truth utterly disrupts our reality, our expectations. We think we know how healing works. The body knits itself back together, doctors treat our ailments, researchers search for cures, therapists help us heal our minds and hearts, time acts as a mild palliative for grief. Those are all good blessings, gifts from God. But this story doesn't fit that pattern! It's really hard to take in.
One reason it's hard is the timing. Healing now is great, but what a long time to wait for it. What was God up to for the previous 38 years?! Well, it strikes me that this man was ill before Jesus was even born. So one answer is that God spent that time incarnating God's word into the human being Jesus, the living word who was able to speak new life to this paralyzed man.
Another hard thing about this good news is the particularity. Sure, being healed is really great for the healed person. But what if you're not he? What if you were one of the many other hurting people hanging around the pool for years? The good news about your neighbor might actually feel irritating, painful. What about the disconcerting stories we occasionally hear, like someone with metastasized cancer who goes into remission against all odds? Or a survivor of abuse who in a burst of grace seems truly to be given the power of forgiveness. Or a paralyzed man who stands up after 38 years. If we can identify the work of Jesus Christ in those miracles, what is the good news for other hurting people who are not the ones healed? Will God ever heal me?
I've spent this past year, just one short year, having the privilege of doing pastoral ministry among this congregation. I have encountered people at all different stages of life. I have heard many joyful stories. I've celebrated with you over births, marriages, reconciliations. And many of you have shared with me the ways in which you want to be made well. Some of you are physically ill, or feeling your bodies weakening in that way. Some struggle with depression or other mental illnesses. Some have chronic sicknesses that last for years or decades, sometimes with great pain. Some of you feel little freedom from guilt, failure, past choices, identity crises. Some are children run ragged by a lot of pressure to excel. Some of you face grief as a daily companion. Some are hurting from divorce or tough partnerships or loneliness or rejection.
Not all of us are in these states all the time, but that's one way to look at the church. We are a community of invalids. That's us. We're the people gathered around the pool, going to the place where healing is rumored to happen. We gravitate here, around the word of God. And when we do we encounter stories like this one. Jesus took the initiative and sought out a long-hurting person. Jesus healed him with a word, and before he believed anything about Jesus. The man didn't earn his healing by having faith, or by living righteously, or even by asking for it. It was purely a gift from Jesus. None of us can earn healing either. But it's faithful for us to gather around the pool, waiting for healing. Our experience of waiting is itself an act of beauty and faith. Powerful things may happen to us in that waiting process. We can hear each other's healing stories and take hope from them. We can be changed in this community, maybe even made well. We can offer compassion to others, like in a few minutes when we give money for children orphaned by AIDS. On a day when we expect nothing, we may hear the words from Jesus Christ that heal our bodies, bind up our hearts, free our souls. That certainly happened for the paralyzed man who waited by the pool. His story reminds us that amazing surprises can happen in those long years of waiting.
Thirty-eight years. That's about how long physicist Stephen Hawking has been stuck in a wheelchair, unable to move most of his body. And he can't speak or even use sign language, but Stephen Hawking is a great communicator. His research into black holes and theoretical physics makes him perhaps the world's preeminent cosmologist. He also wrote A Brief History of Time, a book that lets regular people like you and me understand how the universe might work.
A couple weeks ago Stephen Hawking got a tiny foreshadowing of what healing might feel like. After being held immobile for decades by gravity and his own deadened limbs, on April 26 Hawking got to fly. I don't mean just sitting in an airline seat--he's done that many times. No, he got to float free for a while in zero gravity! Accompanied by friends and doctors, Hawking traveled in a special plane that flies arcs through the sky, perfectly executed so that people in the back can experience 30 or 40 seconds of weightlessness at a time. The idea was to do it once and let Hawking see what it felt like on his body. He demanded that they do it eight times. The photos of him during weightlessness are spectacular. He's grinning so huge. After he got back to the ground he slowly typed out on his special speech synthesizer: "IT WAS AWESOME!"
Floating free after being paralyzed for 38 years is a little bit like healing. A little bit like standing up again. It's a little bit like resurrection.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
May 13, 2007
C. Nolan Huizenga
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