James Somerville is a very fine pastor who tells the story about the time when he was in seminary and he a friend participated in a class exercise called “The Plunge” where they immersed themselves in an urban experience in which they were called upon to spend 24 hours on the streets as homeless guys. They panhandled, spent a night in a Salvation Army shelter, and in general just hung around looking destitute.
It was sometime that morning that I noticed people weren’t looking at me. I was sitting on a bench outside a big department store, enjoying the sunshine, when a mother and her daughter came walking toward me. I smiled and said hello but the mother at least looked right through me as if I had become invisible. And once I noticed it in her I noticed that everyone was doing it. They were looking around me, or past me, or through me, but they weren’t looking at me. If they had looked at me they might have seen me, and if they had seen me they might have had to acknowledge my presence, and if they acknowledged my presence then they might have had to do something for me. It was so much easier just to pretend they didn’t see, just to look around, or past, or through. Just to walk briskly by with their heads held high while I disappeared a little piece at a time.1
We may not have ever had the experience that Pastor Somerville had but we do know what it is like to be one of those people who are trying not to look.
Those of us who live in a large metropolitan area become very adapt at not seeing the people on street corners and at the bottom of expressway ramps. It’s difficult when they are outside of the ballpark, or theatres, or the symphony, or the opera and knowing how much we’ve spent for a ticket but not feeling like we can come up with the buck or two to buy a StreetWise.
These people are there every day. We are very proficient at not seeing the guy who is there, rain or shine, with his beat-up cup standing at the stop light. 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 at all, we’ll just stare straight ahead wanting the light to change as swiftly as possible.
People never saw the guy who Jesus sees in today’s gospel, yet the Good Book tells us that the guy at the gate has been coming to the same spot for thirty-eight years. For almost four decades, he made his way with all the others to this gathering place for the blind, the halt, and the lame, who have, because of their disabilities, been dislodged from their community of family, friends, and neighbours.
The unnamed man who Jesus sees in today’s gospel 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?”
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, “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, too! 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 Jesus will have none of it. He simply says: “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”3
And the man did just that.
The crazy thing about AI (artificial intelligence) is when I typed in Healing at the Pool of Bethzada looking for the perfect painting for our outside sign and the big screen in our lobby the question came up “Why did Jesus only heal the one man by the pool and not all the others?”
I thought about it for a while and then it dawned on me – maybe he did. Maybe all the others saw what had happened to this man who had laid there for almost a biblical generation get up and walk and it gave them the courage to do the same. Maybe they all got in the pool and stirred up the waters themselves. Maybe they had one giant splash party and in so doing not only made a new community but were now able to rejoin their old ones.
In Jesus day, when one was healed, one was restored to one’s former social network.
Whether he knew it or not what the man got was wholeness. He got up off his mat and received wholeness in the best sense of the world. He was restored, free now, to go back to his family, his friends, his community. And maybe all of the others gathered by the pool that day did too.
Jesus restored them so they could go home and, in the words of the King James’ Version of this story that I still like the best, “be made whole.”
This is the season for commencement speeches, and I must confess to you now that there are few things I enjoy more than a good commencement. The colours of the regalia and the hoods – the maroons, the purples and whites, the deep reds and the bright blues. Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance march. The speeches. Okay, so maybe not the speeches or what Dr. Hanna Grey of the University of Chicago famously said “whose main function is to prolong the ceremony ... and to keep this from happening too quickly.”4
But sometimes, sometimes, those addresses are different, worthwhile.
Like at this year’s ceremony of at the University of Maryland where, none other than a famous frog named Kermit gave the address in which he invited people to “find your people, take a leap, and make connections.”
The amphibian theologian perfectly summed up what Jesus did in today’s gospel.
He found his people and showed us in Kermit’s words: “Life is not a solo act; it’s a big messy delightful ensemble piece especially when you’re with your people.”
Then Kermit went on to talk about the person who he said, “literally had a hand in everything I did.” Jim Hensen, he said, “could always see the spark in someone. He saw the potential and he saw what was unique in each person. And he taught me what’s unique about you should always be shared. And that really stuck with me, which is why you’ll see me hanging out with a bear and a pig and a penguin and a prawn, and, uh, whatever Gonzo is.”
That is what Jesus did! He hung out with everybody. And, in today’s gospel, he saw a spark in the man by the pool, that for almost four decades no one else saw and reached out to him and made a connection. Jesus made a connection and made him whole.
Jesus saw what was unique in the man there by the pool and he took a leap, which was the frog’s final point as he told about his cousin Albert who when they were playing leapfrog “never actually leapt. He just stepped on your back and used your head like a lily pad. Sure. he got ahead, but it was only by stepping on you. We’ve been told that that’s how you succeed.” observed Kermit. “And some choose to believe it. But I know they’re wrong. Rather than jumping over someone to get what you want, consider reaching out your hand and taking the leap side by side. Because life is better when we leap together.”5
The man, sitting on his mat, by the pool, needed someone to reach out, invite him to take a leap, and make a connection with him, which is exactly what Jesus did and invites us to do too. Reach out! Take a leap! Make a connection! See the potential, the spark in everybody and in so doing be made whole enough to make our small corner of the world a better place.
If Kermit the frog can understand that maybe we can too.
________________
1. James Somerville, “I'd Have Baked a Cake,’” A Sermon For Every Sunday (ASermonforEverySunday.com, November 17, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/sermons/a53-christ-king-sunday-year/.
No comments:
Post a Comment