God's Questions - "Do You Want To Get Well?"

I began the sermon with some images on the projector. The first was of a Clootie Well in the Black Isle (a place where people since celtic times would go to look for healing from the 'gods'). I then followed it up with the covers of three books by hypnotist Paul McKenna - "I Can Make You Thin", "I Can Make You Rich" and "I Can Make You Sleep". I pointed out that the last was no great shakes as I seem to manage it with my congregation most Sundays..... 

I show you these as a wee reminder that it wasn’t just folk in the first century who pinned their hopes on things that aren't entirely rational!

We find Jesus this morning walking around, between and over a group of people who have pinned their hopes on the strange goings- on at the pool of Bethzatha.

What he’s picking his way through is an open plan doctors’ waiting room: scores of sick folk waiting under five colonnades with their friends. And all the focus is on this central pool where every now and again, completely unpredictably, some kind of healing is said to take place,

How did it happen, if it happened at all? Well, some ancient Biblical manuscripts said that the waters were troubled by the Angel of the Lord and when folk went down into the pool, the first one in would get healed. That explanation made it into the King James Version of the Bible, but since then older and more reliable copies of the New Testament documents have been found and they don’t have that verse in the text, and it seems likely that this explanation was a later insertion put in by someone other than the gospel writer, John. That’s why most of the new translations don’t include it, other than as a footnote.

Archaeological work in the area suggests that it wasn’t just Jews who thought of this as a sacred place. Pagan artifacts have been found nearby, and at one stage in the pool’s history it seems to have been dedicated to the healing god Asclepius. Perhaps folk felt that what was going on here in this corner of Jerusalem wasn’t strictly kosher, but they were ready to forego their Jewish principles if it meant they could find some healing.

So whether this was a natural phenomeon given divine significance , or a genuine miracle of some sorts, it’s hard to be sure. But judging by the number of folk sprawled around the courtyard we can be pretty sure that whatever it was, it didn’t happen very often.

But on those rare occasions when the first microbubbles started to turn the water cloudy and the surface began to splash and foam, those who’d been paying attention, or were lucky enough to be glancing in the right direction at the right time, launched themselves towards the pool in a desperate bid to be the first one in.

Try and imagine the chaos of that for a moment. The pathos of it. When I tried to get that image in my mind’s eye, it reminded me of the TV pictures you see when a relief truck arrives at a refugee camp and within seconds it’s surrounded by a heaving mass of people trying to get what they need.

But the thing was, at the pool of Bethzatha, it was only ever one person at a time who got what they needed. The rest of the hopeful would retreat, disconsolately, back to the shade of the porches until the next troubling of the waters.

But there was one person there who didn’t even have the comfort of being a nearly man. He never even got close to the poolside.

John tells us:

A man was there who had been ill for 38 years. Jesus saw him lying there and he knew that the man had been ill for such a long time, so he asked him “Do you want to get well”?

I’ve always been intrigued by that question: in the context of this story, but also in the context of our own lives.

Do you want to get well?

On the face of things it’s a crazy question to ask this man. Almost insulting, in fact. For thirty eight years this man had watched, frustrated as others had gone down into the pool before him.

Thirty eight years. What were you doing back in 1973? It’s that long ago.

And in that time, different people would have come and gone from the community of the broken who gathered around that pool; loyalties and enmities would have been formed; the little dramas of everyday life would have been played out among the colonnades and made all the more stressful because the protagonists – the sick and infirm – were all chasing the same prize. But only one could win.

It would have been like living in a Soap Opera you couldn’t escape from. And for this man it had lasted thirty eight years. It was practically all that he knew.

And I guess that’s why Jesus had to ask the question. Do you want to get well? Could he even imagine any other kind of life after all that time?

Did you notice that when Jesus asks him a straight question, he doesn’t get a straight answer? ‘Do you want to get well’ invites a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ in response. But instead the man drops into a well worn groove about how hard it is for him to get into the water and how he doesn’t have anyone to help him. It’s almost like he isn’t even able hear Jesus’ question.

The truth was, he’d constructed his life around his ailment. That pool and those colonnades were his whole world. He had been defined by his limitations and they became the story that he lived out of.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the part of him that needed healed, even more than his legs. The part that was hopeless and stuck.

“Do you want to get well?”. said Jesus.

I wonder how you hear those words this morning.

I’d guess that they’re painful to hear for some of you. Of course you want to get well. There’s nothing more pressing in your life just now. And what gets you is that it all seems so easy in these Bible stories. If it’s that simple, why doesn’t God help you, or that person you love, to get better?

Well I’ve spoken about this before, and I don’t want to go over that ground in the same way again today, but it’s worth remembering that these healing stories we have in the Bible were never meant to be the norm. What we’re seeing in Jesus’ healing ministry is what happened at a particular time and place in history when God entered our world in a particular way. It’s exceptional.

In John’s gospel, Jesus’ miracles are always called ‘signs’ and what they signify is that God the Father is working in a powerful and unique way through his Son. If I come and say I’m the Messiah, why should you believe me? But if I come, and heal someone you know has been paralysed for years, and say I’m the Messiah, then it’s a safe bet that I’ll have your attention.

When we read stories like this, it might help if we realise that Jesus’ miracles are like a foretaste of what things will be like when sickness and sin and death are finally defeated, as they will be when the kingdom finally comes. But for now, that battle is still being fought; and we need to pray and hope, seek treatment and take courage from our friends when we find ourselves facing illness or disease.

But setting aside the issue of sickness for a moment, there’s another way we can hear Jesus’ question, because the well-ness he invites the man to receive is more than physical healing.

The wellness Jesus offers touches the mind, the emotions and the spirit too. And perhaps that’s the level at which Jesus addresses us this morning:

Do you want to get well? he says

And those are life giving words if we hear them correctly, because at times, all of us feel like the man in the story – living a curtailed life that’s far from what we’d hoped for.

All of us have our own internal Bethzatha; places where the air is thick with the ghosts of what might have been. Where the shadow of disappointment hangs over our souls. Where our weaknesses or our habits, or our regrets, or our fears can come to define us if we allow them to. If we spend too long by that pool, the story of why we’re there will become the only story we’re capable of telling.

We’ve all met folk like that. Folk who’ve become stuck in Bethzatha. Somehow the conversation always comes round to that thing that went wrong in their lives – those people who let them down – the cruel hand that fate dealt to them – those poor choices they made, or worse still, that were made for them.

We all know folk like that, and I’d guess in many of us there’s a lurking fear that we might become folk like that if we aren’t there already.

Deep down we long to be well within ourselves. And here is Jesus holding out to us the tantalising hope that that is a real possibility for you and me. Without putting all our hopes in the capricious waters of Bethzatha, or a Clootie Well, or a book by Paul McKenna.

This morning, Christ stands over us in those shadowy places in our lives this and says “Do you want to get well?”

And we might well respond – “Lord, what does well look like?”

I thought about that a lot this week. What does well look like?

I found myself thinking of an image in the Psalms - a tree growing by a river; roots winding deep into the earth and fruit swelling on its branches. Bending in the wind but never broken. The Psalmist says that’s a good image of what the man or woman who stays close to God becomes.

I realised that wellness is about being integrated. About being at home with yourself.

I saw that wellness is about being connected to other people. Part of the paralysed man’s condition was his loneliness. He had no-one to help him in – no connections.

I saw that being well means getting things in the right perspective and not allowing yourself to be possessed by circumstances.

I realised that wellness is hopeful – it has more of an eye on the present and the future than the past.

And as I thought about the people I know who strike me as ‘well’, I realised how full of the fruit of the Spirit they were – the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control that come from God.

And as I held all of that together, I realised that being well actually hasn’t got much to do with physical health.

Just out of interest I asked some of my Facebook friends what being well means. One of them, who has children with learning disabilities, a sister with cerebral palsy, and a mother who’s almost blind said this:

You can be well despite physical disability if you are able to function and enjoy life! Wellness is a state of mind, soul AND body - some of the sickest people I have known are physically "well"


That comment reminded me of a book I read a while back called "Tuesdays With Morrie". The author, Mitch Albom and one of his old professors, Morris Schwartz, had been close friends at college. Morrie had mentored him, but as Mitch’s career progressed, his contact with Morrie lessened, and though he was making it good in the eyes of the world, he knew he was losing something too. Something good within himself was being eaten away – corroded by the pace and the pressures of his work.

By chance he comes to learn that Morrie had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he goes back to see him. And so begins Mitch’s last class with Morrie, a class that was to change his life. Because the subject under discussion was life, as seen from the perspective of a man who was shortly to die. They met up each Tuesday for three months until Morrie passed away, and they worked their way through a list of topics including death, fear, marriage, family, forgiveness and the meaning of life.

Early on in the account of these meetings, Mitch writes “I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie who could no longer dance, swim, bathe or walk; Morrie who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with his fork, picking at a piece of tomato, missing it the first two times – a pathetic scene, and yet I could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the same calm breeze that soothed me back in college”.

As the weeks progress, and death approaches, one thing becomes very clear to the reader. It’s Morrie who’s well. It’s Mitch whose life needs healing.

Dying is one thing to be sad about, said Morrie. Living unhappily is something else.

We may not be blessed with a flesh and blood mentor like Morrie, but we have a spiritual mentor in Christ, and he is always with us.

His hand is reaching out to each and every one of us
wanting to draw us out of the collonades of Bethzatha -
our places of unfulfilment -
and into a new way of living
where his adequacy and his presence are the focus;
not our flaws and our failings.

The harsh reality of life is that all of us, in different ways, are broken people.
The good news of the gospel is that our brokenness needn’t be the thing that defines us.

If we place our trust in Christ,
we may find healing.

We may not.
But we shall become well.

Amen, and thanks be to God.

God's Questions - "Who is My Mother? Who Are My Brothers?"

Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside the house and sent in a message, asking for him. A crowd was sitting round Jesus, and they said to him, “Look, your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, and they want you.”

Jesus answered, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”

That little exchange should be enough for you to realise that what’s coming is not the usual chirpy Mother’s Day sermon.

After a brief sojourn with the woman at the well, and a sneak preview of the Easter story, we’re back onto the theme of God’s questions this morning. And the question in today’s reading has loomed large in my imagination for many years, though until now I’ve never preached on it.

I’ve been saving it up for a sermon series I’m planning called “Ten Things I Wish Jesus Hadn’t Said!”

“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”

I wish Jesus hadn’t said that. It really doesn’t fit with my picture of him, and I’m guessing you probably feel the same. It sounds uncharacteristically dismissive, petty even.

There’s something about those words that’s deeply unsettling. And that’s a gift to a preacher because it means there are layers to the story, and layers to you and me that need to be peeled back if we’re really to understand what’s being said here.

So let’s work our way through the story, just as we find it in Mark’s gospel.

20 Then Jesus went home. Again such a large crowd gathered that Jesus and his disciples had no time to eat.

So two questions to begin with. Where are they and what’s been happening?

Well, this is early in Mark’s gospel, but already the word about Jesus is beginning to spread.

Wherever he goes in Galilee, there are crowds – a mass of unmet needs – and with that fame there comes scrutiny. The Pharisees begin to snoop around the place, watching what he does, asking questions, trying to trip him up or find holes in the things he’s saying. Anything to prove he is unorthodox so they can try and set the people against him.

In the verses just before today’s reading, Jesus has had to take refuge in a boat on the Sea of Galilee to avoid being crushed by the sheer number of folk trying to hear him and touch him for healing.

And so he withdraws for a time with the disciples to a quiet hillside, probably in the Golan Heights to the east of Galilee, and it’s there that he chooses the twelve to be he disciples, his most trusted followers.

And after that, Mark tells us, Jesus went home.

I have never noticed that phrase before. Did you ever think of Jesus having a home? We know that later in life he said that birds have nests and foxes have holes, but he had nowhere to lay his head. But that was later.

At this stage of his life, had he found a little place to stay somewhere in Capernaum – the same village Peter and Andrew came from? A base to work from in Galilee? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

How do you feel when you arrive home after a working day and close the door behind you? Would Jesus have felt the same way? Was he happy to be home; content to lose himself in fixing some food; ready to turn in for a while?

He didn’t get the chance. The downside of having a place you call home is that people can always find you, and when the word spread that he was back home, the crowds descended again, so much so that Mark tells us the disciples and Jesus couldn’t even eat. How busy do you have to be so that you can’t even eat? But such was the response to the things he was saying and doing that proclaimed the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

Now – verse 21:

When his family heard about it, they set out to take charge of him, because people were saying, “He's gone mad!”

How did they hear about it? Maybe someone tweeted. “Things going mad here. Can’t even eat. LOL”. More likely, the story passed from person to person as news travelled the 25 miles between Capernaum and Nazareth, and as you know, stories often get embellished in the telling. So over the space of a couple of days, and several re-tellings, “Jesus is mad busy” became simply “Jesus is mad”. And that’s the point at which the family decided to intervene.

And we miss the force of the word Mark uses here in some translations. The GNB says they came to “take charge of him” but the Greek word is better rendered as “restrain him”, and in other places the same word is actually used of arresting people. They weren’t going there to muck about. They were going there to take control, by force if necessary.

Now let’s stay with that for a moment.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to put yourself in Mary’s shoes, or those of Jesus’ siblings. You can imagine what they were thinking. “He can’t keep doing this. He’s going to kill himself if he doesn’t slow down. He needs looking after. All of this attention is turning his head”.

On that level we can all sympathise with what they were trying to do.

But nobody’s motives are ever 100% pure. Scratch the surface and I wonder if there were other issues at stake here. More selfish ones. “He’s going to land us all in it. If he doesn’t shut up we’ll all get put out of the synagogue. It’s fine for him to be stirring things up like this, but does he realise what this is doing to our reputation and our lives?”.

And if you scratch even deeper under the surface, not just of this story, but of the whole of the four gospels, you have to ask yourself – what kind of relationship did Jesus have with his family anyway?

Why were none of his brothers among his disciples? Why do we know so little about the rest of his family? Why does Joseph disappear off the map altogether? Why do we hear so much about Mary at the beginning of the story, and also at the end, but hear virtually nothing about her in the middle? Why do we read about Jesus spending time at the homes of many different people but hear nothing about visits home to his mother? Jesus’ family are conspicuous by their absence in the story, at least as the gospel writers choose to tell it.

When you dig deeper, you come across passages like John 7:1-9, where Jesus has a sharp disagreement with his brothers about the direction of his mission, and John, almost as an afterthought, casually mentions that ‘even they’ didn’t believe in him.

It’s only after the resurrection that Jesus’ mother and one or two of his brothers begin to come into the story as members of the emerging church.

When we hear the words “Jesus’ family”, we immediately jump to conclusions about a concerned group of relatives coming to save him for his own good. But who exactly were these people coming to restrain Jesus? What was the nature of their relationship with him?

Mark leaves that question hanging in the air with a little technique good storytellers often use – he gives you the start of one story, breaks off to bring in another related story, and then winds things up by finishing off the first one.

So at this point Mark introduces a conflict with the Pharisees about the origins of Jesus’ power, and the connection he wants to make is that neither Jesus’ family, nor the Pharisees have really understood him.

It’s bad enough that Jesus’ family think he’s mad. These high heid yin’s up from Jerusalem are saying that he’s possessed. They can’t deny the miracles that have happened because too many people have seen them – so the best they can do is try and discredit him.

“He’s using demons to cast out demons” they say. “Aye right” says Jesus, or words to that effect. “Satan’s evil but he’s not stupid. Why would he go about destroying his own kingdom, negating his own work? If you had eyes in your head you’d see that this is a sign that one stronger than Satan is here, and that God’s Kingdom is breaking in. You’re on very dangerous ground when you become so twisted within yourself that you can’t tell God’s work from the devil’s any more”.

The speech bubbles are still hanging in the air when someone pushes his way through the crowd and says in one of those stage whispers that’s loud enough for everybody to hear – “Master, your mother and brothers are outside, wanting to see you”.

And I wonder what Jesus thought at that point.
You see, a good Jewish boy would have held his hands up and said “Sorry folks, I really have to go. My mother’s outside. My family are looking for me”.

We would struggle to understand the social pressure upon Jesus to react in that way, but we know enough about middle eastern culture to realise that there are still parts of the world today where a son is expected to show unquestioning deference to the presence of his family, and most especially the woman who bore him.

By all the standards of the day, Jesus should have gone. But therein lies the whole point of this story. Jesus did not come to preserve the standards of his day or his culture; he came to reform them in the light of God’s priorities.

33 Jesus answered, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” He looked at the people sitting round him and said, “Look! Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does what God wants him to do is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

As with so much that Jesus has to say, there is judgment and blessing mixed together into those words.

The judgment falls on those who, like his family, stand outside; who claim kinship with Jesus but will not sit and keep company with him. Who claim to know the best course of action without having sought his counsel. Who press home their own agenda while completely disregarding his agenda. Who expect him to fall into line and follow them, when it is we who should be following him.

Should anyone, be it his mother or his brothers or his sisters, fail to see that the only appropriate way to engage with God incarnate is to sit with him, listen to him, and set aside our own agenda in the pursuit of God’s way, then he will have words with them. Hard words.

Words like “Who is my mother?” to his mother. Or ‘get thee behind me Satan” to his disciple Peter.

If we dare assume we can tell him what to do while standing apart from him, it matters not one jot whether we’re his mother, or his brother or his sister, or a regular churchgoer, or a minister or an elder.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.’

I wish Jesus hadn’t said those words. They scare me. I would like a nice, kind, uncontroversial Jesus who does my bidding. Friends with everybody. Kisses things better when they go wrong. Able to be co-opted to whatever agenda I want to peddle to the world today.

But he does not allow that to happen. He doesn’t even allow his own mother to get away with that. And maybe she of all people should have known better than to try.

All across the world today, sermons are being preached about how Jesus was the great upholder of family values: motherhood and apple pie are being served up with a smile from many a pulpit. On another Sunday, I may well choose do the same because despite my cynicism, there is a core of truth to be mined there.

But today we’ve engaged with a deeper, sterner truth. What Jesus is saying here is that if blood is thicker than water, then Spirit is thicker than blood. Our spiritual connection to Jesus and to one another should be even more important to us than the bloodlines of our families, much as we love them.

If you’re not shocked by that, then you haven’t really understood it properly.

It was shocking then and it’s shocking now, but it’s there in black and white, time and time again in what Jesus has to say. Perhaps the measure of our shock is a measure of how far we still have to go on the road of discipleship…

“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” He looked at the people sitting round him and said, “Look! Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does what God wants him to do is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

Jesus didn’t come to preserve the standards of the day. He came to reform them. He came to tell us that in God’s economy there was something even more important than the ethnic and family ties that his own people, and people down the centuries, hold so dear.

For the young Christian communities who heard those words of Jesus read out as copies of Mark’s gospel began to circulate, there was a deep blessing to be found in them. Many of them would have been disowned by their families for their faith in Jesus; most would have been expelled from the synagogues and shunned by those who had once been their friends.

This new Jesus community was their family. A place where they were loved and valued for who they were. Where bonds of fellowship and accountability grew up that transcended the transiency of bloodlines and family connections and social status.

And before we start thinking that must have been a peculiarly New Testament phenomenon, it’s worth recognising the parallels with the kinds of churches meeting today under extreme Communist or Islamic regimes. Small, mobile, hugely committed, and with a radical focus on relationships and discipleship.

A deep and abiding sense of belonging to each other and being responsible for each other.

In the comfortable West, we generally find all of that in our families. Is that why we so rarely find it, or look for it, in the church? Are our congregations simply too big to thought of as families, many of them? Do we focus to much on ritual and ceremony and buildings at the expense of relationships? Is this why the churches that are growing in the west tend to be the ones with a wide variety of small group activities, where people feel they belong?

At times I despair of how far we are from that New Testament model of family and fellowship. And yet, by the grace of God, we get the occasional flash of it in our life together; when people show unexpected kindnesses; when grace pours oil upon troubled waters; when folk show themselves ready to offer up a sacred cow for the good of all, when people connect and new relationships begin to form; when hospitality is offered without thought of reciprocation.

It’s in moments like those that we sense something of the potential Jesus saw as he looked around that room at people who had very little in common except the shared desire to follow him.

These people, he said, these people are my mother and my brothers and my sisters.

So today, on mothers’ day – love your mother if you have her with you; let her know how much you appreciate who she is and what she’s done for you. If she’s gone, remember with gratitude what you can and say a prayer of thanks for her.

But remember, as Jesus said in another text I wish he hadn’t said, that if you love only those who love you, you’re no different from anyone else.

You want to be different? Try this. Can you be a mother in God’s church? Spreading your wings wider than your own kith and kin to embrace others who need love? Can you be a father in God’s church? Taking responsibility? Taking the time to lead others to understanding and maturity? Can you be a brother or a sister in God’s church? A companion, a friend, a co-worker, a listener to those in this community who need you?

These people, said Jesus, these people, who do the will of God are my mother and my brothers and my sisters. Why?

Because blood is thicker than water. But Spirit is thicker than blood.