Sermons

Sermon, The Rev. Christopher McLaren, May 9

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St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday May 9, 2010 Easter 6C
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Text: John 5: 1-9
Title: The Patron Saint of Choosing Life

We are never told his name, this helpless, lame man who sat along a major traffic hub watching the world go by day after day on his smelly bed. If we did know his name, what would he be the patron saint of? The lame? The chronically ill? or might it be a bit more colorful, like the patron saint of “I like things just the way they are?” or The Patron Saint of Excuses?

The man had been at this cross-roads for a long time. For 38 years this man has sat amidst the hustle and bustle of the city near the main gates crowed with pedestrian traffic, wagons and traders, street performers, artisans, women going to market and soldiers patrolling. It was an interesting place full of life and commerce and action. And he was not alone, but rather surrounded by a community of others down on their luck, invalids, beggars and con-artists all waiting around, waiting for a miracle, an opening, a stirring of the waters from some mysterious intermittent underground spring said to have healing powers.

The site of this healing act of Jesus is one of the few biblical sites that is secure beyond the general location. For this site we know its exact location. You can visit the excavation of The Jerusalem Sheep Pool in the northeast section of Jerusalem where it has been excavated near the Medieval Church of St. Anna, that was built by the Crusaders. The Excavation of this site was accomplished by the missionaries of Africa or “White Fathers” as they are called for the color of the habit they wear. Herod the Great, an active builder, is most likely responsible for the 5 porticoes that have been excavated which surrounded the two pools with another portico between them. The stone work found there lies very low and suggests that these pools collected rain water as well as being fed by underground springs. Several early sources of writing Eusebius (ca 325) and the anonymous Bordeaux pilgrim (ca 333) speak of the pool’s waters being periodically disturbed.

In biblical times 38 years was nearly a lifetime for almost anyone, and is probably meant as a symbolic number. It is a lot of life to waste. Though it is difficult to comprehend, it is instructive to consider what kind of life this helpless man had? What went on in his head? Surely he felt that his life would have been infinitely richer had he been able to walk and not afflicted with this lameness. Oh, the things he could have done, he could have been a successful business person, he could have been important like so many that hurried past the pallet where he lay everyday. If only his body was not bent and useless he could really have partied, really have celebrated life with wine and food and dance with so many others.

Yet at the same time he had over time gotten comfortable with his known misery. There were advantages to being an invalid, no? He could observe the world at a distance, enjoying the whole variety of life that passed by him, clothing, beauty, privilege, status, power, wealth, ordinary humanity. There was a seemingly endless show of commerce with customers haggling vendors and traders and merchants mixing it up. What could be better than lying on his mat observing the world go by? The News of the day was always delicious whether from the farmers coming from the fields, the gossiping prostitutes, the bellowing merchants, or the well-traveled caravan leaders. Yes, maybe being an invalid wasn’t that bad? He didn’t pay taxes and he didn’t feel the weight of any responsibility save for his own self-pity.

So, here this pathetic man sat, day after day alternating between self-pity and a certain kind of comfort and security. The only problem was that after embracing this way of life, this way of partly living he found that it had become comfortable, easy, safe, and altogether agreeable to him. He rather liked being inert by the gate, safe in his lack of responsibility, comfortable in his rut of an unremarkable life.

All of that changed one day, a young man, named Jesus whom the invalid did not know and had never met shocked him out of his complacency. Jesus took in the scene as he made his way through Jerusalem for one of the yearly festivals. He saw the lame man and I mean saw him- took in his life at glance and evidently made some rather astute assumptions about what kind a person he was. Jesus walked up to him and asked a question I imagine many of us have wanted to ask any number of people in our lives. “Do you want to be made well?’ In other words do you want your life to be better than it is? Do you really like your life just the way it is? Do you enjoy the misery you share with so many? Do you like being the negative, complaining, hard to take, its always someone-else’s-fault person that you are?

The lame man is stunned by such a direct query, but he is a quick-witted street-wise person and the train of excuse begins to leave the station. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and besides that other people have a lot of helpers and I never quite make into the healing waters.” It is a speech I’m sure you’ve heard or given a million times. It’s not my fault, there are a lot of extenuating circumstances and besides…. blah, blah, blah.

I’m not sure what Jesus had for breakfast that day but he was certainly in no mood for complainers or the Great Litany of Excuses. This is Jesus at his most direct and most challenging. As one theologian said, this is the hard-hitting Jesus who says simply, “Stand up, take your mat and walk!”

This is not a mild, tame Jesus, who listens patiently and says, “You know I think you really are the best person to know what you need,” or “Don’t be too hard on yourself, there are really a lot of challenges in your life that make being happy almost unreachable, but hang in there.” No, Jesus basically says, “No more excuses. Are you really satisfied with living and partly living?”

What does it mean to have Jesus tell someone who is stuck that you don’t need to blame anyone else, you don’t need to wait around for some miracle to happen, you don’t need anyone else to do it for you, you have all you need. Grace is already present. The Kingdom of God is right in front of you all you need to do is “Get up and walk” into the new reality that God is holding out in front of you. It doesn’t mean that everything will be perfect or easy or exciting but it does mean that life is to be lived not wasted and that God has given you something beautiful to be a steward of, don’t sit there in a pool of pity wasting the gift of God. The alchemy of grace and effort requires your truthful and active participation.

Faith, if it is about anything is about wanting more from life than we are tempted to settle for, more than toys and stuff, more than cheap escapes and mindless temptations, more than sex and sweets, more than the right car or the image of success, more than being a victim, more than just observing. Faith is about wanting a depth of life, a depth of relationship, a meaningful integration of who God made you to be and a joy in how you invest that life and skill. If faith is going to be real it has to say that life is worth living, really living, that the way you live your life really matters. No, you may not change the world, but by choosing life, eternal life, the kind of life that continues to grow and expand and redouble on itself, you will change and with and because of you others will choose life as well and something beautiful may begin to happen in your midst, something called the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.

Get up Jesus says, what you really need is God’s grace that is actually within your grasp, but you must stand up to take hold of it. The sent of hope is in the air. Salvation, release from your own captivity is at hand, Get up and walk into the Kingdom of God, walk into the freedom that comes from knowing that you are loved and known and desired, walk into the joy of no more excuses, no more need to live in your past fears and known failures.

In T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket the chorus of the women from Canterbury utter this line, “meanwhile we have gone on living, living and partly living,” several times during the play. This line has always seemed like an invitation into a deeper life of faith for me just as this story of the helpless man at the pool is an invitation into life for us. The life of faith is meant to be so much more than “living and partly living.” It may be hard for you to think of Jesus as tough enough to say, “No more excuses, Get up and walk.” Walk into newness of life, into the powerful grace of God, remember the waters of your baptism, for you have died to sin and death and been raised to newness of life. This is what this passage is telling you today, and only you know how paralyzed you have been, only you know the area of atrophy you suffer, only you know the excuses that have become so comfortable. It’s a shame we never learned the paralytics’ name, for if we had, we might have a patron saint for “Choosing Life”. For us hearing Jesus’ invitation to life will just have to do.