A Healing Question

We are coming to the end of the Easter season. Jesus  has appeared to the disciples in a number of settings, including an appearance to Thomas, who doubted and then believed, and to the disciples at various times, at the lakeshore, for breakfast, and while fishing. He has declared that he will be leaving, again that these appearances, mysterious and elusive as they have been, will cease.  When he leaves he will send the comforter, the Holy Spirit.  At the tail end of all of these encounters we are given today’s  reading about healing, with its most pertinent of questions. Do you want to be made well? Today’s story cuts right to the quick—to the place where we feel and breathe and live. And this story leads us to consider how we are bound up and how we might participate in being set free. The Christ leaves the scene but leaves behind a challenge that we not cling even to him but take up our mats and walk into a new spirit filled life. 

Will you pray with me?

May these words and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our rock and our healer. Amen. 

Do you remember Jack Benny?  As a comedian, he played the role of cranky, miserly man. Benny made us laugh with his close to curmudgeon ways, his handy violin and a perfect sense of timing.  In one comic routine, a robber accosts him.  “Your money or your life,” says the thief. Benny, who was known to hang on to every last cent, hesitates and then responds, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking. “ 

JoAnne Taylor cites Jack Benny’s words in her newly published memoir, entitled Knit Together; An orphan’s spiritual journey. JoAnne is a spiritual director and Christian educator, who worked in the Hartford area for many years. She is now retired and in her 80’s. Full disclosure: I met JoAnne in 1997 and she has been my spiritual director since then.  And I did check with her to get permission to share her story with you. In her book, JoAnne tells about  her childhood. She and her sister were sent to an orphanage at an early age, and then adopted by two separate families who never had any contact with each other. So the sisters lost both their parents, and then each other. The legal records were sealed ad so it was impossible for JoAnne and her sister to trace each other. 

Through a serendipitous series of events and encounters, JoAnne was able to connect with her sister Geanne, after 49 years of separation.  This was before the Internet and such searches relied on ancient technologies like face- to- face contacts and telephone inquiries, looking things up in libraries, or newspaper archives or town halls. It was quite a miracle that the two women found each other. 

It is a wonderful story of grace and grit, and yet even the happy ending did not mean that the suffering of the two sisters was stilled by their reuniting. Before they found each other, JoAnne experienced  deep feelings of abandonment, and these could not be ignored, even as she went on to have five children of her own and now eleven grandchildren. And with remarkable candor, she discusses how she sought help in psychotherapy, theological training and through her own developing relationship with God. Even so, she found that it wasn’t so easy to let go of the sadness and vulnerability of the early loss that she had suffered. 

As she tells it, she can relate to this Jack Benny joke.

So when faced with her own defenses, her own fears of loss, she wasn’t sure that she could give them up. At critical junctures in her life, the issue became, “ My losses or my life?  My fears of abandonment, or my life? My past life or my future life?

Like so many of us faced with our fears, her first response was  “I’m thinking I’m thinking.”

Probably everyone in this room can relate to her dilemma. Anytime we seem to have a situation which defines our life or which limits our life, we are faced with that very pertinent choice:

Your fear, or your life.

My pride or my life?

Your anger..

My resentment.

Your shame,

Fear of intimacy,

Worry,

Focus on the past,

Mistakes

My  self-imposed limitations—or my life. 
Any or all of these emotions and ways of being which bind you and bind me and stops us from taking up our mats and walking.

And how often do we respond, when given the choice to change, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

In today’s story, when we meet the paralyzed man, we find a person whose life has been defined by handicap. Thirty-eight years waiting for a chance to enter the water of Beth-Zatha. This was a place in Jerusalem, known for healing. From time to time the waters of this pool would move, perhaps by the force of an underground spring. The legend held that an angel was stirring the waters and one could be cured, if he or she were the first to enter. This man had no one to help him in and so had never been able to regain his health.

And then Jesus appears. 

Jesus can see the man’s situation, and perceives the difficulties this man has had living and trying to get well. And Jesus cuts through all of that and says, Do you want to get well? Do you want to be healed?

We can almost hear the wheels turning in the man’s head:

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking”

He’s not so sure that anything can change for him. His story of illness stands in the way of the chance for healing. And so he hesitates, but Jesus doesn’t. 

What happens in that encounter between Jesus and the man so that healing does take place ?

First, the man is seen for who he is. He is seen by Jesus who understands hardship and yet challenges him. 

Jesus does not ask a question with a moralizing tone. Isn’t it time that you got your act together? 

Jesus does not judge:  you really have been too long here waiting for help. 

Jesus does not condemn: you will never get better, give it up.

Jesus treats him as an adult, and as a person who is not limited by the obvious barriers, which seem to be insurmountable. Jesus treats him like a person who has something to say about his own life. Jesus treats him like a human being, one who is responsible for his own choices. And Jesus treats him with compassion, feeling his need but not his limits. 

These are no small matters, since often in our collective human history those with physical challenges have been shunted aside and made to feel less than equal to the able bodied. Just as all the marginalized people whom Jesus brings into the center of his ministry: women, tax collectors, the poor and all who are considered unclean. We always will find this message in scripture: go beyond the categories of tribe or clan or group think.  Let go of prejudice, and open to the other person in his or her full humanity.

And let’s be clear, some people have been so victimized by oppression that we in our relative freedom must not blame these persons for their situations, be it economic insecurity or discrimination based on race or gender or sexual orientation.

But we can notice that power of Jesus question. It takes us beyond limiting categories into the personal motivation of this man and by extension, ourselves.

It is as if, in this story, Jesus addresses each of us directly:  do you want to be healed? do I want to be healed?

Saying yes to this question requires giving up the status quo. It requires being willing to be open and to forgive. It requires putting the past in its place and going forward into the future with hope. It can mean bringing a beginners mind to our lives so that we are no so caught up in our own story of what happened to us that we can’t see what is happening right now.

In order to understand this story, I think it is important to watch the specific language of Jesus’ question.   It turns on the word “want”.

So often we say we want things to change, but when given the opportunity, we find that we don’t take it. We may want to be physically fit but find that want turns to can’t or won’t when it comes time to take a walk or get on the treadmill.

A person might say they want to get along better with a spouse or partner but when stressed fall back into patterns of anger and blame.  Or make a resolve to spend less and save more but then go shopping and blow the budget.

And it is so easy to let ourselves off the hook.  I couldn’t resist. It just happened. She provoked me. He started it.  I can’t change. I’ve always been this way. 

This is why Jesus question is so powerful. It helps us look directly into the gap between our talk and our walk. Jesus goes right to that place and calls us to truth.  And to change.

Sometimes, I wish he were not so incisive. Not so clear in his challenge. Not so right all the time. This challenge of the gospel, this question  that Jesus speaks directly to me, I’d rather ignore it. I’d prefer he ask someone else. It seems that my neighbor could use some healing too. Why don’t you deal with him or her first ?

But it doesn’t seem to work that way.

I can confess someone else’s sins but God isn’t interested in my version of her life or his life.  I can compare myself to others and think that I’m not doing so badly, but that is irrelevant. I can turn away but I have learned that while I can turn, or run, I can’t hide. 

And what is so poignant in the story, for both the man who needs healing, and ourselves, is that we want to be free. We want to be challenged to live with a whole heart and we want to be healed. Even if when the question is asked of us, and we respond, like Jack Benny did, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” what we really want is life, the abundant life that comes from answering yes and taking up our mat to walk.

When I read JoAnne’s memoir, I am inspired. She had a rough beginning in life, but she was able to find grace and is ever healing from early wounds. Even  through tumultuous times, she found the God’s love. A touchstone for her was the theology of Paul Tillich , and his timeless message of acceptance.

“Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience, we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. Nothing is demanded of this experience…nothing but acceptance.” 

Like JoAnne, and like the paralyzed man, may we meet Jesus by the healing waters and know that we are accepted, and understood. That he speaks to our deepest fears and answers our deepest longings. The question he asks is meant to heal. And in response,  may we take up our mats, and walk into the new life Christ brings.   Amen.