Praise the Lord
for this good day the Lord has given us as His gift to us that we might get up
and walk in the newness of His life, loving and serving Him. We will gather
this evening at 6 PM with a special meal, followed by cleaning and scrubbing the
floors and doing some manual work in the new addition of the
church.
In his
book, "Questions God Asks Us", Trevor
Hudson relates one of his favorite stories, one told by Carlos Valles, a Spanish
priest who works in India. The story first appeared in Father Valles’ book,
"Let Go Of Fear: Tackling Our Worst Emotion". Once, while cycling
through the warm Indian countryside, Carlos Valles describes how he became aware
of a strange stillness in the air. Nature seemed to have stopped, as if waiting
for something to happen. Sensing danger, he stopped pedaling, got off his
bicycle, and looked around. Suddenly he understood the reason for the eerie
silence. In the low grass a cobra stood up with its hood spread and its tongue
flicking. Carlos followed the snake’s gaze. It was fixed on the branch of a
bush just ahead. On the branch sat a little bird, completely paralyzed. Carlos
comments: "I had heard that snakes do that to birds. Now I was seeing it. The
bird had wings, but could not fly. It had a voice, but could not sing. It was
frozen, stiff, mesmerized. The snake knew its own power and had cast its
spell. The prey could not escape, though it had the whole sky for its
range.
Carlos decided to do something. He stirred the breeze with his presence. He tried to break the snake’s hypnotic hold on the bird by waving his arms. He shouted human sounds. Eventually his efforts were successful. Reluctantly, the cobra lowered itself to the ground and slid off into the grass. The countryside came alive again with its surrounding sounds. And the bird, freed from its paralysis, found its wings and flew. It discovered its voice and began to sing once more."
Carlos decided to do something. He stirred the breeze with his presence. He tried to break the snake’s hypnotic hold on the bird by waving his arms. He shouted human sounds. Eventually his efforts were successful. Reluctantly, the cobra lowered itself to the ground and slid off into the grass. The countryside came alive again with its surrounding sounds. And the bird, freed from its paralysis, found its wings and flew. It discovered its voice and began to sing once more."
Hudson states
that this story is a powerful parable. “Many people today,” he writes, “find
themselves caught in the hypnotic gaze of the snake. Some are immobilized by
fear or depression or despair or by some other dark feeling. Some are trapped
in destructive and addictive patterns of behavior."
I love the
miracle that recorded in John 5. Jesus, our Lord, was coming to the pool of
Bethesda in Jerusalem on a Sabbath day. This pool had a long interfaith
reputation of being a place where people went to find healing in its waters.
However, the pool had a dismal record of providing healing for many people. It
is still in Jerusalem today, but it stands there as a symbol of all the
so-called self-help promises that are made today in the form of books, dvd’s,
do-it-yourself programs, self-appointed gurus, New Age philosophies, political
theories, and the like. There are many stores with pools of these types of
resources. Unfortunately, they usually fail to deliver the expected results of
healing and help.
As we look at
the passage in John 5, Jesus noticed a paralyzed man who had been lying beside
the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years. Note that Jesus never told him to
get in the pool. This is an important observation because Jesus was about to
demonstrate His. We also observe that, instead of healing the paralyzed man
immediately, as he had done with so many others, Jesus asked him: “Do you want
to get well?”
Our Lord asks
us the same question whenever we find ourselves paralyzed in one way or
another. Believe it or not, there are people with a variety of ailments or
afflictions of body, mind, spirit, or relationships who prefer the familiarity
of the old sickness rather than the unknown and sometimes scary prospect of a
new and healthy beginning to their lives. A sad fact is that some people grow
so accustomed to being sick, depending on the good will of others, and receiving
sympathy and attention that they might become anxious about regaining their
health and independence. A kind of “comfort zone” is created around the
sickness or affliction that helps to prop up an individual and to spare that
person from having to be entirely self-sustaining. It could be argued that
today there can be certain “benefits” that come with being sick. There are
people who have begun to rely on and be comfortable with benefits in the form of
welfare programs, subsidized medical and civic programs, grants, charitable
gifts, the sympathy and compassion of friends, the emotional support of family
and professional caregivers, to name just a few.
The new freedom
that Jesus Christ offers to those who are paralyzed in some way or another is
not a freedom that the world can give, but it is a freedom that can bring
release from whatever holds us captive. It bursts with new possibilities and
potential for living. For those of us who may be paralyzed or hypnotized by
some negative force within or without our lives …who feel stiffened and frozen
in the gaze of whatever it is that has got us in its grip …there is amazing Good
News in John chapter 5. Jesus comes walking along to meet us at our Bethesda
pool, at the place where we live out our paralysis. Jesus makes a new freedom
available to us – to live, to love, and to serve him.
Today, in the
power of His risen presence He continues to come to those of us who are
paralyzed in our different ways. His question, “Do you want to get well?”
brings with it the hope that we can live beyond paralysis, that we will get up,
and pick up our mat and walk. He offers the hope that we can be set free from
whatever holds us captive, that we can fly again, that we will find our voice
and sing once more. May we hear Jesus’ command : Get up! Pick up your mat, and
walk!
In Jesus our
Lord.
Brown
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