Acts 16:9–15
Saint John 5:1–9
Even though you didn’t know it this was probably the first question you were ever asked in your life as a member of your family hovered over your crib when you were being fussy. “What do you want?” they might have said wondering whether you were hungry, or wet, or in some sort of discomfort.
The same question was probably asked as your linguistic skills lagged behind your ability to identify objects. You would point and someone would ask: “What do you want? Milk? Cereal? A Cookie? What?”
As you grew older you heard the inevitable question. “What do you want... to be when you grow up?” It was at if, at five, you had already picked a profession. So, you would dutifully say: A doctor. A nurse. Abus driver. A firefighter. Or, if you lived in Chicago, a ghost pay-roller. “What do you want ... to major in?”
Was the question asked in High School even before you picked your college and were probably still wrestling with the question you were wrestling with since you were six: “What do you want ... to be when you grow up.”
When you finally got to be what you wanted to be the questions still came. Only they were more troublesome or a personal and a global scale.
I want the promotion and eventually the corner office. I want my children to be happy. I want more money. I want more time to spend the money I have. I want to retire.
Then, as time passed there were personal wants. I want the pain in my shoulder to go away. I want the report from my doctor to be good. I want a positive prognosis from my loved one.
And wants for life in general. I want gun violence to end. I want an end to famine and war. I want to feel safe when I go out. I want reconciliation between the races. I want an end to “hate speech.” I want the time to come when I can stop worrying about whether I should wear a mask or not. I want people to have a better understanding of mathematics.
It seems we go through most of life with the “What do you want?” question rolling around somewhere in the back of our minds.
Jesus asked that very question to the guy sitting by the pool of Bethzaida.
We know this guy. He’s the guy we see every day, rain or shine, with his beat-up cup standing at the foot of the expressway ramp. Perhaps, if there is a dollar lying on the passenger seat from the change we got at Starbuck’s we’ll give it to him. Perhaps, if we have a voucher for food that we received from church that will help the poor soul at least get one meal. Or perhaps, because we pay everything with our credit cards and carry no cash with us, we’ll just stare straight ahead wanting the light to change as swiftly as possible.
The “Good Book” tells us that guy at the gate has been coming to the same spot for thirty-eight years. It was a gathering place for the blind, the halt, and the lame, who had, because of their disabilities have been dislodged from their community of family, friends, and neighbors.
He is probably used to not being seen by those who pass by. In fact, I have to think that the neighborhood around the sheep gate, porticos and pools, was one of those to be avoided by the regular rank- and-file. Like the freeway underpasses and homeless encampments of our day this must have been one of those places where only the bravest of souls go.
Which is why it is no surprise that Jesus is there. He sees the here-to-for unseen by everybody else man and asks him the age-old question. “What do you want?” “Do you want to be made well?”1
Now if Jesus would have asked me the question I would have said “Yes” in my big outside voice. I would have pumped my fist, gave Jesus my best “cow eyed” expression and said, “Please. Oh, please, oh please, oh please, make me well.”
Instead, this man offers a litany of excuses. “I can’t,” the sick man said [in The Living Bible paraphrase], “for I have no one to help me into the pool at the movement of the water. While I am trying to get there, someone else always gets in ahead of me.”2
We know this guy! He’s the friend with a million excuses. “I want to but...” “I’d like to but...” “I wish I could but...” For every simple solution put forth that is in their best interest, forty-four obstacles are placed in the way.
While we may throw up our hands and just give up on the person Jesús will have none of it. He simply says: “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”3
With Jesus there is no horsing around. With him there is no hemming and hawing. With Jesus it’s “Stand up! Walk! Get going! On your way! Be of use!”
Contrast the man at the pool’s reaction to St. Paul and his companion’s reaction to what is reported as “a vision.” I’m not so sure that if I was in Paul’s traveling party and he reported this kind of “vision thing” to me I wouldn’t have chalked it up to a severe case of dyspepsia, told him to watch what he ate today, and advised him to back to bed.
All Jesus asked of the man was to “take up his mat and walk” and he launched into an excuse as to why Jesus’ solution wouldn’t work. The unknown night visitor asked Paul and his gang to travel over 250 miles and they went. No questions. No conditions. No excuses. Just a “let’s go.”
And this trip wasn’t even on Paul’s list of “wants.” Two days earlier
if someone would have asked him if he wanted to go to Macedonia he might have replied: “Not on my agenda. Haven’t even thought about it.”
What both men received was not just a vision or a healing but a community.
In Jesus day, when one was healed one was restored to one’s former social network.
Whether he admitted it to himself or not what the man got was what he wanted – restoration to his family, his friends, his community.
Jesus restored him so he could go home and, in the words of the King James’ Version of this story that I still like the best, “be made whole.”
Saint Paul and his friends may have never wanted to go anywhere near Macedonia but when they got there, they received more than they might have ever wanted – a whole new community of friends who became sisters and brothers in Christ.
When God sneaks God’s way into the picture the question gets turned on its head. It is no longer what I want but what God wants.
God may not be asking us if we want to drive halfway across the country for the cause. God may not be asking us to leave our place of comfort for the last forty years.
All God may be asking us to do is turn what we want into what God wants.
For a Sabbath day, or any day, that’s more than enough.
Thanks for listening.
________________Se
1. St. John 5:6b. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
2. St. John 5:7. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible Carol Stream, IL: Tyndall House Foundation, 1971]
3. St. John 5:8. (NRSV)
Sermon preached at Trinity Lutheran Church - Foster Avenue
22 May 2022
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