We had a choice in gospel readings last week. I so like this passage from John, that I decided to push it into this week, the scene may need a bit of background. It appears that people gathered to pray for healing at a pool of water. A legend grew up that if an angel of healing flew by, the water would be disturbed. the first one in would be healed. It would be a Lourdes of extra anxiety. Day after day people would peer at the water, searching its calm surface for a break in the sheen.
We may have archaeological evidence of the posts near this pool of water.In osme manuscripts We have a story that the water getsdisturbed when an angel disturbed the water, first one in gets healed.Think of the frustration, year after year knowing that you will not be able to bethe firs tone in, yet going out of hope anyway. The physical paralysis had to have threatened the poor man with a paralysis of hope. After a while, it became the routine of his life-back and forth to the pool with a community of sufferers.To be so close ot a potential souorce of healing and to find it out of reach, we are in the territory of the myths of Tantalus or Sisyphus.
Paul and Silas meet a slave who was possessed and was seen as a fortune teller.when they heal her, the owners lose their meal ticket. Paul and Silas are flogged and thrown in prison. the paralytic, the slave, and now Paul and Silas are all imprisoned in different ways. Paul and Silas free the girl of her prison and get prison for it, but they are too released, freed, set at liberty from captivity also through an earthquake, often a sign of divine presence and energy. For me, one of the great tragedies is the self-imposed barriers we maintain, even with an open door.
Jesus asks one of the great therapist's question-do you want to be well? At one level this is one of the stupidest questions imaginable. Of course I want ot get well. That’s why I have been dragged over here, year after year. .At a deeper level, it pushes us, do you want to be healed? A young man calls me from indiana routinely. he loves to complain about everything, but especially his shrew of a wife.For years, i have told him to go to therapy or couples counselling, but no. Why? In part, this is what he knows, better the devil he does than the shadow of the future. a therapist once told me that we seek insight into the source of our issues. Even if we get that insight, it matters not until we get the willingness to change or attitudes or behavior. in other words, even when healing is right in front of us, we will sit immobilized. We may resist being healed physically due to some of the side effects, actual, potential, or imagined.
Do you want to be healed? It is a deep question, worthy of the best therapists. last week at the meal we retold the old joke of many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb:none, the light bulb really needs to want to change. I was working with someone last week who has come to the conclusion that forty years of dating and marrying addictive personalities may be enough.
We have a Bethsaida pool within because the prayer of Jesus is being answered even now. The glory, the presence of God is here in the church and in each other as temples of the Spirit.God has made a home with us. There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.
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