Introduction
C. S. Lewis, the master
Christian apologist of the twentieth century, became an atheist as a teenager
after being raised in a Christian home. In his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy Lewis recalls the death
of his mother when he was nine years old:
My mother's death was the occasion of what some (but not I) might
regard as my first religious experience. When her case was pronounced hopeless
I remembered what I had been taught; that prayers offered in faith would be
granted. I accordingly set myself to produce by will power a firm belief that
my prayers for her recovery would be successful; and, as I thought, I achieved
it. When nevertheless she died I shifted my ground and worked myself into a
belief that there was to be a miracle. The interesting thing is that my
disappointment produced no results beyond itself. The thing hadn't worked, but
I was used to things not working, and I thought no more about it. I think the truth is that the belief into
which I had hypnotized myself was itself too irreligious for its failure to
cause any religious revolution. I had approached God, or my idea of God,
without love, without awe, even without fear. He was, in my mental picture of
this miracle, to appear neither as Savior nor as Judge, but merely as a
magician; and when He had done what was required of Him I supposed He would
simply---well, go away. It never crossed my mind that the tremendous contact
which I solicited should have any consequences beyond restoring the status quo.
What Lewis describes is excusable in
a child, but fatal in an adult, and it is my belief that much of Christianity,
as now preached and practice in pulpits and pews across America, rests on just
that unstable theological foundation. The story we have read this morning gives
us crucial insight into this false faith and its true alternative.
Text
This is a strange story, in some
ways the strangest in all the accounts of all the miracles performed by Our
Lord. The story falls into three distinct parts: We have the man's first
encounter with Jesus in v.1-9. We have his final encounter with Jesus in
v.14-17. In the center of the story, v.10-13, we have the pivot-point of the
narrative: this man's reaction to the healing action of the Savior.
Our first difficulties come in the
first part of the story. To begin with, there is this rather bizarre account of
the angelic Jacuzzi, the divine bubble-bath of Bethesda. Somehow, this rings
false in light of the way character of God is revealed elsewhere in the
Scripture. The healing is random, second-hand, and selective. It is random
because the water only moves "at certain seasons," It is second-hand
because, instead of doing the healing in person, God jobs it out to a
subcontracting angel. It is selective because only the person who enters the
water first receives the miracle! Of course, we can take some comfort in the
fact that the last part of v.3 and all of v.4 do not appear in the oldest and
best-attested copies of John's gospel. However, the man's remarks in v.7
certainly seem to express the same idea so we can reasonably conclude that
v.3b-4 were added by a later scribe, some disciple of the Apostle John, to
explain a custom no longer familiar after the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans in AD 70.
The other troubling aspect of this
part of the story is Jesus' question: "Do you wish to get well?" The
man is lying crippled by a pool that offers the merest chance of recovery from
his condition; he's been doing this for nearly forty years. Of course he wants to be made whole!
The other - and perhaps even more -
troubling part of the story comes in the final section where Jesus seems to
imply that the man's original illness came as a result of his personal sin.
While such an idea fit with much of the Jewish theology of the day, Jesus
himself refutes this idea in John 9.1-7, the story of the man born blind. Jesus
encounters this individual by the wayside and his disciples want to use the
occasion for a theological debate: "Who sinned? This man or his parents,
that he would be born blind?" Jesus, in essence, replies, "Neither,
and that's not the point: The question is not whether or why God did this to
him, but what, in God's name, we intend to do about it." If Jesus here
traces physical malady to spiritual malefaction, he contradicts himself.
As I say, these problems come in the
first and last parts of the story. The answer, I believe, lies in the center.
The key to this story is not how Jesus acts when he meets this man, but how this
man acts after meeting Jesus.
The religious authorities see him
carrying his pallet in obedience to Jesus' orders. Why does Jesus give this
rather unusual command? This was his begging-bed and he no longer needed it.
True, he gives the same command to the paralytic in Mark 2, but in that case
the bed was taking up space in Peter's already-crowded home. More importantly,
that was not a Sabbath-day healing as this one is. Jesus knew the Law; he also
knew the extra provisions the Jewish rulers had added. They had made the
mistake of confusing their interpretation with God's revelation to such an
extent that there was actually a rabbinical debate about whether one was
allowed to pray for someone's healing
on the Sabbath! In giving this command to this person in this city, Jesus
deliberately sets him up as a marked man!
Notice how the man reacts. When
rebuked, he shifts the blame: "He who made me well was the one who told me,
'Pick up your pallet and walk.'" When interrogated, he pleads ignorance:
"But the man who was healed did not know who it was." It is true, as
John notes, that the place was crowded and Jesus left quickly, but if someone
heals me after thirty-eight years, I think I would at least want to get his
name! The first chance he gets to bear witness to Jesus he blows it! In his
fear of religious rejection he passes the buck and plays dumb.
This, to me, explains why Jesus
asked him if he really wanted to be healed, and how Jesus corrects the false
idea of God implied by the impersonal miracle of the pool. Jesus says, in
effect, "Those impersonal waters of a distant and indifferent deity cannot
make you whole, but the personal God revealed to you in Me this moment can. But
while that impersonal theology offers and impersonal healing with no strings
attached, the problem is that if I heal you, I own you, and I require you to
bear witness of who I am."
It also explains Jesus' words to the
man in v.14. It does sound, on a first reading, as if Jesus blames the man for
his previous condition and warns him not to relapse. But the grammar of John's
original language corrects this misunderstanding. There were two ways to give a
command in Greek: One means not to start doing something and the other means to
stop something you are already doing. It is the difference between, "Don't
you dare do that!" and "Stop doing that!" Jesus command is of
the latter kind. A better translation would be, "Stop sinning, so that
nothing worse happens to you." This implies that, whatever sin Jesus has
in mind, the man was in the act of committing it. I can see only one option to
explain that.
Notice where Jesus finds this man:
in the Temple. Why go straight to the Temple? Probably to offer sacrifices and
seek reinstatement as a full member of the Jewish religious community. This
tells me that he dropped that pallet the second the religious authorities
ordered him to do so and is now in the process of fulfilling their religious
obligations. His very presence in the temple means that he has bowed to peer
pressure and chosen not to bear witness to Christ. Then notice what the man
does as soon as Jesus leaves: He hotfoots it back and rats Jesus out to his
enemies! Notice the result in v.16: Instead of condemning the healed man, they
turn their wrath toward the Healer! This man does not hesitate to lay the
action off on the Lord! What, then, is the "worse thing" that Jesus
warns him against? Not a return to paralysis, not even physical death, but
eternal judgment for denying Christ!
Indeed, we can contrast this story,
as I believe John means us to do, to the story of the man born blind in John 9.
THAT man bore faithful witness until they kicked him out of the synagogue. THIS
man sells Jesus out for acceptability in religious society.
This man had the same problem C. S.
Lewis described: He was the fool by the pool determined to play it cool. He
wanted the healing without the headaches! He wanted the powerful results
without the personal relationship! He wanted the water without the witness! He
wanted to take up his bed without risking his head! He didn't want a Master, he
just wanted a magician!
Application
So what does this have to do with
you and me, here at the St. Matthew Missionary Baptist Church on a Sunday
morning in November of 2014? Well, notice one more thing from this passage:
Jesus tells him, "Pick up your pallet." It is the same verb Jesus
uses in Matthew 16.24, Mark 8.34, and Luke 9.23 when he orders his followers to
"take up your cross and follow me." This man's pallet was his cross
for two reasons: first, it bore witness to his encounter with Christ, and
second, it got him into trouble!
And the question this text poses to
you today is this: Do you wish to get well? Now think before you answer!
Because Jesus is not a magician and the Christian faith is not some divine
bubble-bath and salvation is not a day spa to pamper the lusts of the flesh!
At the cost
of the cross, at the price of complete surrender, do you wish to get well?
Do you wish to get well?
Some of us want a mate but we don't
want to wait! Are you single and yearning for a spouse? a decent man to love
you as Christ loved the church and lay down his life for her? a loving wife to
love you with the love of the Lord? Then if you are single, take up the cross
of sexual purity and bear it as a witness to this sex-soaked, love-starved world
that our desires are not our deity and our glands are not our God!
Do you wish to get well?
Some of us husbands want to be boss
but we don't want the cross! If you are already married, take up the cross of
complete faithfulness in a world where promiscuity is a pastime and divorce is
a spectator sport! Men, you want your wife to treat you as the head of the
house? Then behave like the head of the church - set your own needs aside in
service to her! Take up that daily cross of dying to yourself! You lead your
wife as Christ leads the church and your wife will love you as she loves her
Lord!
Do you wish to get well?
For some of us, the problem isn't
that we can't get in the waters of Bethesda but that we won't get in the waters
of baptism! Some of us have claimed Christ as our Savior but have shamed him as
our Lord! If I have professed Christ but never been baptized, I am refusing to
take up my cross and walk. If I own Jesus as my Redeemer but to not commit
myself to his gathered body, the church, I disrespect Jesus with a de facto
denial and invite a worse thing to come up on me.
Do you wish to get well?
Some of us want to fall on our face
in church on Sunday but we won't stand up and face the world on Monday! When I
have an opportunity to bear witness to my saving faith but stay silent out of
fear of rejection from the world, I refuse to take up my cross and invite a
worse thing to come upon me.
Do you wish to get well?
Some of us want our bodies made
whole but don't want God to mess with our soul! Some of you are praying for
healing from bodily afflictions and there is everything right in doing that.
But let me ask you: When healing comes, will you use it as permission for sin
or a commission from the Savior? Will you go about your business or set out on
the King's business?
Do you wish to get well?
Do we want the results or do we want
a relationship? Do we want the healing or do we want the Healer? Do we want the
power or do we welcome the Person? Do we want the waters or do we want to bear
witness? Are we the church on the move or are we the fools by the pool? Make
your choice today: Do you wish to get well?
Conclusion
I referred earlier to C. S. Lewis and
his childhood idea of God as a magician. Some twenty-five years later, as an
Oxford scholar and a convinced atheist, Lewis came face to face with the
inescapable fact of God's existence. It did not make him happy, because he
realized that this was no magician, but a Master. In that same spiritual
autobiography Lewis confesses:
Remember I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered
with.” I had wanted. . .“to call my soul my own.” . . .I had pretty well known
that my ideal of virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything
intolerably painful; I would be “reasonable.” But now what had been an ideal
became a command; and what might not be expected of one? . . .Not the slightest
assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in
the dark, was demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon
me. The demand was not even “All or nothing.” The demand was simply, “All.”
And that is the same demand that
faces you today. Christ does not demand your best, he demands your all! Christ
does not require that you give him something but that you give him everything.
Christ does not demand that you do your duty but that you die to yourself.
Christ does not tell you, "Take up your cross for a while," but
"Take up your cross and walk. . .all the way. . .every day. . .in every
way, walk, walk WALK!"
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