We may be dressed to jump. We may have all the facts about the security of the bungee cord. We may even have complete confidence in the operators. But we won't jump until we are ready and willing, entirely ready and completely willing.
THE OBVIOUS BUT NECESSARY QUESTION
For the past 6 weeks we’ve been talking about the healing virtues of the soul. Our major premise of has been that in order to find healing for life’s hurts in your soul, you’ve got to have or develop certain dispositions or virtues; honesty, hope, faith, courage, and integrity. There are more to come than these, but today, right in the middle of this ongoing discussion on healing, I’m about to ask what could appear to be the most stupid question. Are you willing to do what it takes to receive God’s healing in your life?
I wouldn’t ask this question it raises at all (because I don’t like to look stupid), unless it wasn’t one of most important questions Jesus ever asked anybody. Let’s look straight into it from our text in John 5 and discover this obvious but necessary question of healing at the pool of Bethesda.
What we find at this legendary pool of healing is a man who has been sick for 38 years. All this time, he’s been hanging out at a place people believed to have healing properties, which was something like a healing mineral springs that used to be in many areas of the world. Our text says that when Jesus saw him and realized he had been waiting there for a long, long time, he asked him this very obvious question: “Do you want to be made well?”
Well, who wouldn’t want to get well? Is there anybody in this world who likes being sick?
When I was doing clinical care studies at Baptist hospital, part of the hard part of the work was working as a chaplain with critically ill patients, many who would die right when you were getting to know them. The other challenge of the work was being in a small group with other chaplains who all had different styles of care than you did and also came from different backgrounds. In those small group meetings we would have to share our various discussions with patients, as we made reports and shared evaluations. The hard part was having your peers not only take apart how you worked with others, but sometimes they would take you apart, piece by piece, analyzing, questioning or even being critical of your approach. It was a humbling, but also a growing experience, which I cherish to this day.
What I remember most however, was the final evaluation I received from my supervisor, who in making his final words of encouragement to me in my ministry, told me that one thing he appreciated about my reaction to the very difficult process of pastoral training was that he never saw me play the psychological game, “wooden-leg”.
What I remember most however, was the final evaluation I received from my supervisor, who in making his final words of encouragement to me in my ministry, told me that one thing he appreciated about my reaction to the very difficult process of pastoral training was that he never saw me play the psychological game, “wooden-leg”.
When he first told me that, I didn’t fully know what he meant. I knew I did have a leg injury which didn’t really limit me, but what he was talking about was more than simply dealing with a leg injury. “Wooden leg” is a psychological game which some people learn to play as a way to deal with their hurts, pains, illnesses or limitations. Instead of making recognition of their limits and accepting them, what people sometimes do is use their weaknesses, hurts or illnesses as excuses for all kinds of things they say they can’t do.
When I realized what ‘wooden leg’ was, I knew exactly why I never played that game. One of my mother’s sisters, who I loved very much, used to play “wooden leg” and sometimes it drove me crazy. When, as a little boy, after my grandfather died and we visited her home every other Sunday, I sometimes dreaded it because her life was made mostly of what she couldn’t do, didn’t have, or the pains she did have. In reality, I thought my aunt was very resourceful in many ways. As an unmarried female, with my mother’s help, she had taken care of my bed-ridden grandfather after his stroke. She also was very good at cooking, chopping wood, gardening and doing farm work. She made the best stewed apples in the world. There were many things she could do, but she seemed locked in the game of acting sickly, complaining, needing a doctor, staying at home, never getting out, having a social life, learning a job, even when you really couldn’t see much wrong with her. What I learned later was that her “complaining” about this or that ailment and her excuses for what she didn’t know or couldn’t do was her way coping and dealing, that is, even “gaming” with some “hard” parts of her life that she believed she could not change. Rather than try to change or accept the challenge of getting better, or taking steps to try to make things better, it had become easier for her to express the pain, expect sympathy and accept the pity.
I remember one time, hearing her talk about how lonely things were for her at Christmas—since she had no husband and no children. Hearing this every year as far back as I could remember, I decided to invite her to come and stay with us over Christmas. Of course she first refused to come. It took me weeks and weeks of begging, until finally she was willing to come at least for one night and one day. But no sooner did Christmas morning come, she was ready to go back home. To me it seemed she loved her loneliness better than the company and attention we tried to give her. Her being alone and not feeling well enough to go much of anywhere, except the grocery store or the doctor, was her “wooden leg”.
Do you have a “wooden leg” or do you know somebody, like this poor fellow by the pool of Bethesda, who finds themselves in the same predictable situation, ending up the same predictable way over and over again---going nowhere in their life very fast? Illness and debilitation can sometimes work on us this way. It can make us feel as if we have no real choices or options left. Grief can also make a person feel this way. Poverty too can cause person to develop such a defeatist attitude; so can lack of a certain opportunity or lack of education. An unresolved problem, a sense of failure, low self-esteem, guilt and some kinds of depression, can give occasion to people living their lives in the same predictable way, as if they are frozen in time, fear, dread, defeat or sorrow.
Carl Rogers, one of the most innovative therapists in the past century, once said that he considered only one kind of counselee relatively hopeless: namely that person who blames other people for his or her problems. Writes Rogers: "If you take ownership of the mess you are in, help is available for you. But to the degree you continue to blame others, you will be a victim for the rest of your life." For this man “the blame game” had gone on just about that long…38 years.
This “blame game” people get locked can sometimes get dirty, so the attempt is not just to get people to see into our own pain, but to make someone have and share the same pain so we don’t have to be accountable, responsible or so we don’t have to be in pain all alone. This blame game goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam blamed the woman, the woman blamed the snake, and where the devil is the only one left who has no one to blame and he simply has to eat dirt. Because the devil’s has been the easiest and most obvious to blame, comedian Flip Wilson used to say, “The Devil Made me Do it!”
Today, people don’t blame the devil as much, but have gone further back, blaming Adam through their genes---or blaming their parents because of a fatal flaw in their upbringing. Since parents can blame their parents, and we call can blame Adam, maybe it is, after all, ultimately God’s fault because he made Adam in the first place? I’m convinced that the reason some negative people say they believe in God, though their sickly behavior points otherwise, is because as long as they’ve got God, the devil, and the evil world, they’ve still got someone to blame besides themselves.
Today, people don’t blame the devil as much, but have gone further back, blaming Adam through their genes---or blaming their parents because of a fatal flaw in their upbringing. Since parents can blame their parents, and we call can blame Adam, maybe it is, after all, ultimately God’s fault because he made Adam in the first place? I’m convinced that the reason some negative people say they believe in God, though their sickly behavior points otherwise, is because as long as they’ve got God, the devil, and the evil world, they’ve still got someone to blame besides themselves.
Whose fault is it ultimately, that we don’t get to live in paradise on this earth--- that your life or my life has to face challenges, troubles, weakness, illness, disease and eventually death? It is not until Jesus appears on the scene that we find someone who doesn’t take part in the blame game, but takes the all the blame on himself, saying “Father Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Because Jesus doesn’t place blame, even as he dies unjustly, and even though he had every right to blame, you and I can be given a new power, just like this man at the pool of Bethesdia was given power to find healing. We can start to heal, even from the worst hurts, because there is sense, that through Jesus Christ, God has said to the world: “Stop all this blaming: I’ll take all the blame and all the sin upon myself.
So, now, the only question left, since there’s no one left to blame, do you want to be healed? Are you willing to stop the blame game, and take up your cross and be responsible for your life? Whether your life is fair or not, whether there is a reason or not, the most obvious question---in my pain---in your pain---in the world’s pain---is do you want to get well? Do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem? Do you want to be on the side of the healer or on the side of the sick maker? Are you willing to take up your cross of personal responsiblity, just like he took up his cross? If you are willing, then you need to do, what I told one person, “you need to decide to stop standing by the river of pain and starting ‘building a bridge to get over it, rise above it, and get on with your life and do something with the life you’ve been given. One thing for sure, there will be no health, no opportunity for healing, no overcoming any negative in our lives, until you and I, want to be better and rise above the ‘wooden leg’ and get beyond and move away from our own pool of brokenness and pain.
So, now, the only question left, since there’s no one left to blame, do you want to be healed? Are you willing to stop the blame game, and take up your cross and be responsible for your life? Whether your life is fair or not, whether there is a reason or not, the most obvious question---in my pain---in your pain---in the world’s pain---is do you want to get well? Do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem? Do you want to be on the side of the healer or on the side of the sick maker? Are you willing to take up your cross of personal responsiblity, just like he took up his cross? If you are willing, then you need to do, what I told one person, “you need to decide to stop standing by the river of pain and starting ‘building a bridge to get over it, rise above it, and get on with your life and do something with the life you’ve been given. One thing for sure, there will be no health, no opportunity for healing, no overcoming any negative in our lives, until you and I, want to be better and rise above the ‘wooden leg’ and get beyond and move away from our own pool of brokenness and pain.
LIVING ABOVE YOUR POOL OF PAIN
While any of us can be shaken by illness, adversity or grief, the promise of the gospel is we can have be given power to move beyond the shame game, the lame game or the blame game. What is most amazing, and even inspiring, is to see how some people do conquer what is going on around them to rise above their lives, their situations and difficulties from within the disposition of their own soul.
Have you heard the popular story about parent who had a child who was an eternal optimist and a child who was an eternal pessimist and he wanted desperately to help become a little more balanced in their perspective? At Christmas he got the pessimist a new bicycle, but when the boy saw it, he immediately thought of how easily he could get hurt. To the optimist child he brought only a bag of horse manure. When the boy opened it up, he started smiling and looking around, saying I know there’s got to be a horse around here somewhere.
One person who found a horse in his “manure pile” was Martha Mason. According to the Shelby Star Newspaper, Martha Mason was Cleveland County’s most unusual world record setter. When she was 11 years old, Martha contracted polio, and was told she wouldn't live to see her teen years. On May 4th, 2009, she died at her home in the little town of Lattimore, one month shy of 72 years of age. She had "lived above" her disease flat on her back for more than 61 years, and 60 of those years in an “iron lung” which did her breathing for her.
Mason had always said that she would not let polio beat her. Martha wrote in 2002, "As a youngster, in pre-polio days, I enjoyed sports and considered myself an athlete .... proud of my physical strength ... unusually self-reliant. Suddenly, I was a 11-year-old quadriplegic, I was not strong and I was completely reliant on others .... I would not be a whiner, but what would I be? ..."
What Martha Mason became, instead of a whiner, was a person who never met a stranger, someone who overcame any obstacle set in front of her, and she was the “kind of person you wanted everyone to meet." This amazing woman and her iron lung completed high school and attended Gardner-Webb College. She came to Wake Forest University the same way. She graduated first in her class and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors. Most of her life she was a member of the Rotary Club, which has as its international goal to eradicate Polio in the world. Using a voice-activated computer at home in Lattimore, she wrote her memoir, "Breath, Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung."
Just before her 71st birthday, about a year ago, Martha wrote: "My story's been one of joy, one of wonderful experiences. It has not been perfect. But that's what people need to understand - that I have had a good life."
Martha Mason was 12 and in an Asheville hospital when she was told, "You'll never walk again. You'll never bathe or feed yourself again. You're basically an excellent mind and an exuberant spirit locked in an inert body - a prison. Can you live with that?" "No," came the answer, "but I can live above it." And she did. (http://www.shelbystar.com/news/lung-38872-iron-mason.html)
What is the difference? Does it have to do with how we are born, what resources we have, or what have to live with? Does only what is on going on the outside determine our disposition? Or can our inner disposition, even our soul, be strong enough to bring shape to how we experience and interpret our lives and our situation, even our pain and sadness? Can we learn to live---not from the outside in, but from the inside out? By the way, what kind of power do you think Jesus was pointing to when he asked the sick man, Do you want to get well? Could he have been also asking us in our own situations we face: What do you really want? Does your willingness to be part of solution also have part in the outcome?
WILL THE REAL SICKNESS PLEASE STAND UP?
Jesus believed that our “willinginess”, our desire, and our “want to” get better has much to do with the ability to heal, get better and even overcome our weaknesses, our hurts, and our pains in life. That’s why, when Holman Hunt painted that famous picture of Jesus standing at the door knocking, depicted the Scripture Revelation 3: 20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock…”, he did not paint a door knob on the outside. Jesus would only knock until the person was ready to open the door. Nothing happens until we are willing.
In the end, Jesus gives this man at the pool the hope of a power to heal that he cannot find within himself. But instead of picking him up and putting him in the water, Jesus heals him by telling him, to “stand up (on his own two feet) and “take up his mat and walk” (5:8). The Scripture then tells us that “at once the man was made well.” Well, not so fast, there is one problem that still remained. Do you see it in the text?
It was the Sabbath. The Sabbath was called the day of rest, but Jesus never got to rest and Jewish leaders made sure he couldn’t rest. Right after the man gets up and starts walking around those who oppose Jesus come to question him and tell him there is a problem, “It is the Sabbath, it’s not lawful for you to be carrying your mat.” Being put on the point, what does this man do, but he immediately falls back to his old way of seeing and doing things, and probably without thinking, he returns to the real illness---his soul weakness---not his body weakness and starts making excuses and he places blame---(or gives credit, it all depends on you viewpoint) and he tells the Jewish leaders what he’s doing is somebody else’s fault. He says it’s that guy over there who told me to “take up my mat and walk!”
As they look to see who “that man” is, Jesus is already gone, having disappeared in the crowd. But you are left seeing what still isn’t gone? There’s a different kind of sickness in this man’s heart and mind left lingering in his soul that even Jesus hasn’t cured: His unwillingness to take responsibility for himself. Jesus has “left the building” so to speak, and has left final result of healing up to him, just like he leaves it up to us.
The word “salvation” comes from the word “wholeness.” This word “wholeness” basically means salvation works best from the inside out rather than from the outside in. You might put the surprising, lingering issue, this way: Jesus can heal us. He has healing power. But his power doesn’t really help us fully, completely, unless we really want to be helped.
Are you willing to give Jesus your heart as well as your body for his healing? So, now the healing question doesn’t get smaller, but it gets larger. Healing is never simply a matter of getting better in your body. Sometimes we get better, but one day we won’t. That’s why the greatest healing question is not what does your body need, but what does your soul want? Amen.
© 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, BA; MDiv; DMin.
© 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, BA; MDiv; DMin.
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