Troon Old Parish Church

Sermon preached on 31 January 2010

St John 5 v 6  ‘When Jesus saw the man and knew he had been lying there a long time, He said to him: Do you want to be healed?’

That’s one of those seemingly throwaway questions that, in truth, digs deep into the heart of religion and of what people think of it. And especially so in our present times. So many of us are trying our best in a variety of ways to promote the faith which we’re still persuaded could change society and the world for the better. And so the message very often is of the variety – Gird up your loins and go out there from church to convert folk for Christ. I’ve given that sort of message and others do it too – and there’s a place for it.

But, in a sense, there’s a question to be asked first. A really serious question to be asked first – and it’s this: No matter how kind or nice or persuasive we may be, have we ever asked if people out there want what we’re offering. Have we, in other language, market researched our potential customers? Have we asked people who are outside the church, and even some inside, if they’re wanting any more from us than what they have now?

Have we enquired of people who only come here occasionally for christenings or weddings or funerals or candle light services if they have any desire at all for the church to do anything else to them or for them? Have we enquired of this aggressive and disturbed and yet also apparently confident society if it wants a week in and week out religion. And if not, then maybe we ought to do it first – and do it quickly.

One of the great spiritual poems of the English language was written by Francis Thomson who was a man, so scared of religion and of what it might do to him that he ran away from God and from religion for years on end. He describes how it felt in the poem called the Hound of Heaven….and here’s how he describes his
problem:

I fled Him down the nights and down the days,
I fled Him down the arches of the years,
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind
And, in the mist of tears, I hid from Him.

And then, a wee bit later, the reason for the flight:
Though I knew His love, yet I was sore adread
Lest having Him, I must have naught beside.

The problem – simple – he was scared that taking the hand of God and making faith part of his life would inhibit and restrict him – so he tried to run away.

And so when Jesus asked the cripple this little question, He was, in  fact, asking perhaps the most fundamentally important religious question of them all…Do you want to be healed? Honestly want it? Really want it with all the changes it’s going to bring you? And almost everyone listening in would shout out: Well, of course, he wants it. He’s been a cripple for 38 years, debilitated, a dependent beggar, day after day dragged out from his shack to plead for food by the roadside – you’d be crazy to think anything else – of course, the man would want to be healed.

And yet Jesus asked. And He asked because, I believe, He wasn’t as convinced as unthinkingly we might be. Sure, to be healed would be great. But at what cost? Lest having Him, I might have naught beside. Lest having Jesus and having healing, the cripple might suddenly need to stand on his two feet now – literally and also metaphorically. Lest having Christ’s gift of new life, he would need to do something with it – and give up, at the same time, a lot of the comfort zone security that was built up around him.

38 years is a long time, after all. He’d made lots of friends. He’d spent nearly four decades finding a particular sort of comfort zone – even if to the eyes of the fitter onlooker it seemed to be pretty meagre. But he’d come to live with it – and there might have been the tiniest question mark in his mind that, leaving the five porticoed gate at Bethzatha behind was going to be a major risk – and therefore, was it a risk worth taking?

And when you hear his answer then you know Jesus was right to ask him. For it’s a pretty inept answer, really. Think about it. You’re the man and you’re asked the question. You’ve suffered and there’s been endless deprivation and struggle. And you’re asked if you want to be healed. Yes, yes, for God’s sake yes. Heal me and do it now and let me be freed from this living nightmare.

But he didn’t say that. All he could say was that he had no one to put him in the pool. And even when he tried there were people who pushed him aside in the rush. I’ve never quite managed, he was saying. Never quite wanted to manage. Never had the tenacity to manage. And Jesus looked him in the eye and said: Friend, do you want to be healed.

One of religion’s deepest questions of all. And we should be asking it of ourselves, of our church, of our society. The immeasurable gifts of Jesus Christ, the glories of the Christian faith - are these really and truly what you want?
There was a time, years ago, when you could assume the answer would be yes. It was just what people knew and accepted. The assumption was that it was a person’s birthright to receive and to be transformed by the Gospel. It’s why Scotland was a centre of missionary activity. No one questioned it. What you have heard and received and seen in Jesus Christ, take it and tell it to others. And there was something gloriously naïve about it all.

But not so now, I suspect. And as Jesus asked the cripple, so the question’s there for today, My friend, do you want all this? Do you want the gifts of the Gospel? Do you want the Christian faith as a complete package for your life?

Take the church. It may sound odd even to think it – but I’m sure we need to do it. Does the church want to be healed? Does it want the gifts of Christ? Does it want to confront a provocative message? And we need to ask because the church – certainly the church as we can view it today – is scared. At a time in Scotland when we have our backs to the wall in an ever rampant secular society, the church’s response is too predictable.

It’s this. Remember these old films of cowboys and Indians and how the wagon trains formed a defensive circle to keep the attackers at bay. Ring fence what you have – and no more. That’s the church, my friends. Hang on to what we have and look out at a threatening and scary world from behind our barricades. Hope that things might change. Preach a liberal and wishy-washy message so as not to offend – and we might just hang on for a wee bit longer. OK – it’s a caricature, I suppose, but caricatures often tell the truth. We’ve always done things this way – we’ve never done things this way. It’s the very watchword of a church that doesn’t want to be healed – and the sooner we see it, acknowledge it and act on it, the better.

The cripple said he couldn’t get near the water and people kept pushing past him. And it was an excuse – just as we can be full of excuses too. Excuses for not taking risks and not trying something new and for not giving up on hankering after the good old days… and the same Jesus looks to us now and says: Church – do you want to be healed, renewed and restored?

But then it’s the same for us as individuals. He fixes each of us with a look – and asks us the selfsame thing. Not our friend or neighbour – not the ones we love to criticise or talk about – not the ones we would be quick to identify as non-churchy…but us.

Most of us are happy with life as it is today. We feel comfortable with our opinions and with our prejudices. We’ve made up our minds about people and we see no need to shift. And we’ll tell them. It’s brave to tell them – indeed a virtue not to be two-faced when that’s exactly what we’re being. And we like our lifestyles and enjoy our possessions and we don’t want something to come between us and what we’ve come to enjoy. We’ve earned it. Worked hard for it – and so we have a right to it and to do what we want with it. Christian people say that – not just the ones who don’t inhabit church buildings.

And all the while we know there’s a Gospel telling us about the poor and destitute – the widow and the orphan – telling us about befriending the lonely and sitting down with the outcast and loving the unloved and even the unlovable. And I’ve said it to myself – not you – you can ask it of yourself if you want: Do you want to be healed of your failings? Do you want that much of a Gospel or a bit less? But until we resolve it in ourselves, then there’s little we can actually achieve in the name of faith.

And so too for our society. These are troubled times – and I don’t just mean the war and the Chilcott Enquiry and the looming election. But these are troubled times with people worried about their future, their security, their families. We have a nation more deeply divided between rich and poor than for many years – once we were one nation – now you have to think we are steamrollering into fragmentation.

And the same wagon train is there too. We build social walls and hide behind them. And we need to face up to that. It’s no good for politicians to produce their wearisome platitudes – for we see through them now. We need a new courage to face the question – and facing it, to change as we have not done so in our lifetime. How to deal with unethical business practice: how to debate the real issues of life and death today: how to accept that talking about schools and hospitals and so on is useless unless we really mean to do something about them. And if we want to be healed and try a new and better way, then as a society we have to brace ourselves to face up to it and to face up also to its consequences.

Of all the questions Jesus asked – and He asked many – this is, in a sense, the most searching of all. New life waited. A real new life at the gate of Bethzatha – from being crippled there was a chance now for a man to dance his way into tomorrow…and Jesus asked him: Friend, is that what you want?

So in our church, in our lives and in our society – it asks a lot to give up old ways with their inbuilt securities. Jesus knew it better than most. But the healing – the healing offers no less than a new life.

There was a writer called Thomas de Quincy who wrote an essay once about the poet and author Samuel Taylor Coleridge, creator amongst other things of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. And de Quincy said of him that he always wanted better bread than can be made out of wheat.

I think that’s what Jesus wanted too. For His church and for us and for the world – better bread than can be made out of wheat. The impossible for us but the achievable for God. But like the cripple we often just lie around comfortable to live life within limitations. Scared to try something new. And out of the blue comes the question – do you want to be healed, made new, offered something different.

And perhaps you too want better bread than can be made out of wheat…..maybe we all do. But if so, don’t sit around waiting for it to happen by chance – go out, meet the Christ, and turn yourself and the world upside down.