Stand up! - Easter 6

John 5: 1 - 9

One of the greatest curses today is the view held by many that the status quo is for ever. The inability to believe that things can be different freezes many lives, acts as an obstacle to desirable social change and at present threatens the very survival of the church.

Thank God, God is in the business of change and the creation of new opportunities. After all this is the God who gives a message to a political prisoner on the island of Patmos, St John, saying;

“See, I am making al things new.”

The signs of God making all things new are clearly to be seen in the life and ministry of Jesus. And today’s episode from the life of Jesus is just such an example.

It is an episode based on a paralysed man. The scene is a pool called Bethesda which means “House of Mercy.” This pool seems to have been something of a healing shrine. What made it special was that it was fed by a spring which would from time to time bubble, disturbing the waters. Local tradition attributed such disturbances to the touch of an angel and from this came an understanding that when this happened the first person into the water would be healed.

Amongst the large number of people at what might be seen as a Palestinian equivalent in many ways to the likes of Lourdes today, were people who suffered from all types of infirmities. They were united by a simple longing to be healed of their ailments. And for some the wait must have seemed like an eternity. Amongst them was our paralysed man. He had been an invalid for thirty eight years. How much of that time he had been at the pool we do not know. But evidently, he was feeling somewhat discouraged. Others were continually beating him into the water and he lacked the necessary help. As he puts it to 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, somebody else steps down ahead of me.”

Words of a man who is beginning to feel somewhat trapped in his predicament. Words of a man who is beginning to lose hope. And of course, without hope, we can effectively be paralysed into the limitations of the present. We can all too easily accept a miserable status quo.

But Jesus challenges the status quo. His first action is to ask the man what might seem to some to be a strange question;

“Do you want to be made well?”

Our reaction to that question might be to shout back, “Of course!” And yet there is a serious point in the question. Are there not times when we cling to a flawed present rather than embrace change? After all, change however reasonable it might seem to be at a distance, brings an element of risk. We all know the saying;

“Always keep a hold on nurse for fear of finding something worse.”

And in a situation such as this, however much a part of the man longs to be healed that he might be mobile, surely there is also a note of apprehension to be sounded. If thirty eight years of paralysis will have taught the man one thing, it will have been how to beg. Knowing that people will respond to his need, will have provided him with a form of security. Be healed and that income will dry up! And what other means does he know to support himself financially?

Indeed, there is a touch of ambivalence about the man’s answer. A simple “Yes, I want to be mad well” is lacking. But this is an encounter in which the note of ambivalence in the paralysed man, does not stop Jesus from acting. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus will say;

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

And this man his going to have life to the full whether he wants it or not. He may be prepared to wallow in his misfortune. He may be prepared to live with a situation in which someone else always beats him to the waters. He may be well and truly resigned to the status quo. But Jesus is emphatically not resigned to the status quo. Indeed he challenges it:

“Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

Yes, Jesus is telling him that it is time to embrace a new reality. That new reality may well present its won difficulties. So what! Jesus doesn’t offer the easy way out. But the new reality to which Jesus calls this paralysed man is a reality that is infinitely more pregnant with possibilities than the stifling reality that preceded it. For he becomes well, takes up his mat and begins to walk. And with that off he goes on his new life, telling others what has happened to him but beyond that we do not know whether in later years he rejoiced at his healing or regretted it, whether he used it as a springboard fro new life or failed to adjust the all the possibilities of his new reality.

All of this episode in the ministry of Jesus goes back nearly two thousand years. And yet it remains relevant. We meet as an Easter people for we are the other side of the Resurrection, that decisive Yes to all the doings and teachings of Jesus. We are a community who celebrate the incredibly good news that this life giving Jesus is well and truly alive and unleashed within our world. And that Jesus challenges our life denying realities by offering new life enhancing realities.

This speaks deeply into our own lives. We may well feel battered and worthless. Yet Jesus speaks to us of our being the precious children of God. All the marks that threaten our sense of value are as nothing compared to the value given to us as those made in the Divine Image, as those for whom Jesus died in the full knowledge that we have marred the Image. We need to embrace the reality of being precious to God and of seeing the preciousness of others including those who are very much other than us and our preconceptions.

It speaks also into the life of our world. Too often, we are prepared to accept and live with the huge injustices around us as if there can be no other way. And yet with God we can embrace new realities. Think for a moment of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. When William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and a number of others began their campaign, they were thought of as crazies. After all slavery had always been around. Most of the church supported it. The prosperity of the nation along with national security were held to depend on this trade. To oppose it was little short of treason. But thank God, a group of people including some who were inspired by their faith, dared to confront this monstrous trade. And the result was a new reality. So today, rather than accept life denying realities, we need to embrace new life enhancing possibilities. And if you want a couple of examples, here they are. The case made for the arms trade is almost a complete replica of that for the slave trade. If we don’t do it someone else will. Well, it is time to confront such a deathly realism and begin the work to create a new and healthier reality than a trade which is the commerce of death. And if that one isn’t for you, how about daring not just to oppose the proposed expansion of gambling which will wreck the lives of many a loser and devastate families but to roll back the frontiers of this vile exploitation of the weak, the gullible and the desperate.

And finally, it speaks to the church. I am as comfortable as anyone here with the current reality of what church is. I have grown up with it and to be honest I rather like it. Yet, if we do not look at new ways of doing church which engage with today’s world, church will be pushed to the margins and in the case of Methodism I might well live to see the last lights turned out. “Fresh Expressions” and “Emerging Church” are movements within our churches to create new realities. They involve risk and uncertainty but to play safe would be like a paralysed man by that pool, happy to just go on missing out on the waters that would change reality.

So today, in the season of Resurrection, may we be open to the living Christ who offers now as he did by that pool, the possibilities of new realities that offer so much rather than tired, stifling realities that we have grown used to. Rather than just accepting what is at most second best, may we respond the Gospel by embracing the new possibilities that God loving offers.

The choice is to meekly lie down or

“Stand up, take your mat and walk!”


This sermon is being preached at Alwington Methodist Church on Sunday May 13th 2007