Karen Locklear Lesson for October 12-13, 2013 John 5: 1-17 Be Awesome Recently, I ve done some reading about people who were able to accomplish great things. One consistent characteristic amongst those who are awesome is this: they had to face conflict Conflict within themselves. Conflict with other people. Conflict with society. In John 5, which articulates the third sign signaling Jesus identity as the son of God, we see Jesus healing a paraplegic man, while at the same time addressing the conflict between societal interpretation of law versus its intention. Read John 5:1-6 (Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people use to lie the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, Do you want to get well? ) At Bethesda, which means house of outpouring or house of mercy, Jesus asks a specific question: Do you want to get well? Sounds a bit trite, doesn t it? APPLICATION: But here s the thing: sometimes we don t want to get well. Sometimes there is comfort in pain and sorrow and sometimes, because we as people do not have a great answer in regards to an alternative solution, so we stay in a painful circumstance because it s just what we re used to experiencing. In the book Made to Crave, Lysa Terkeurst tackles the difficult subject of other stuff filling a void which should be filled by God. We do this in a variety of ways, Terkeurst focusing specifically on her own personal struggle with food, while acknowledging this demon potentially has a variety of faces, including promiscuity, gossip, anger, excessive spending, alcohol/ drug addiction, etc. In considering any battle, we have to ask this same question: do we want to get well? Because the reality is most of these problems in and of themselves are simple. We readily acknowledge our responsibility to abstain from so many harmful elements of the world, the command to keep ourselves pure on all sorts of levels, but yet we defy those terms regularly. And despite knowing the answer is just stop it, we don t know how. But what s really going on? Why do we feel this need to cling to what we know is harmful? Why are we filling a void which was created to be filled by God with something else? Again, do we want to get well?
Read John 5:7-8 ( Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. Then Jesus said to him, Get up! Pick up your mat and walk. At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked... ) Illustration I ve been under an abnormally high amount of stress for the last six weeks or so. For a while it appeared absolutely nothing was going the way I expected or desired: professionally, personally, spiritually, emotionally, whatever. And, honestly, up until about two weeks ago I ve come up with every excuse known to man in regards to not handling my stress: I know I need to get back on a good exercise routine. But I claim to be too busy or too tired. I know I need to seriously reevaluate a variety of elements within my personal and professional existence, and I ve avoided doing so as well because I m too busy treading water. I know my eating habits have been feast or famine. But I claim to be ruled by time restrains here as well. I know I need to be conscience of how much sleep I get. But again, I think I don t have time to sleep. At a bare minimum, I know I really should find a safe place to talk about some of this, but again I haven t made time to do that either. So, yet, I have to ask myself: Do I want to get well? Because I ve been pretty good at throwing excuses out, and instead of embracing conflict, I run from it. My point is this: our logical minds say I can t walk. We don t have time, money, space, or whatever excuse we create. And we accept this as a fact. This has two problems: 1. Can t is a word which works in an absolute sense. And our world does not exist in absolute terms. 2. God doesn t live in our 3-D existence. And if we are placing our faith in God, as opposed to whatever we see around us, perhaps we could walk, or at least not be paralyzed. In the book Start by Jon Acuff the author discusses what he describes as the land of awesome. How do we get there? Well, the answer is in the title and in Acuff s mantra: Some beats none. Part of the problem in our society is we don t even consider some beats none. We want everything perfect. And here s the thing: I no longer believe in perfect. What does that mean anyway? Perfect to whom? Is the model on the cover of the fashion magazine perfect, despite living on a sub- 1,000 calories existence with excruciating headaches and blood sugar drops which impact her mental health and everyone around her? Is the seven-figure executive who spent a grand total of four hours with his family over the last two months perfect?
When we say perfect I think we mean what I want. The tendency is in our culture if we can t have it exactly the way we want, then it s not worth doing at all, which is highly dangerous. Success rarely comes up on the first go-around. Success usually is a series of imperfection leading to a pretty good job because the effort was placed in an unknown thing. So there is no perfection. There is only blood, sweat, and tears. The text doesn t specify what walked looks likes. We assume it looks like Fred Astaire sauntering about in a distorted Hollywood depiction. This is dangerous because it sets us up for a perceived failure every single time if we don t move perfectly first go around. Walking five steps might have been the most arduous experience of that man s life. He might have fallen four times. He might have limped the whole way. But he did it, because he believed Jesus healed him. And the miracle is as much in the mind as it is in the resurrection of atrophied muscles. After 38 years, the same length of time the Israelites aimlessly wandered the dessert by the way, can t is palpable and perhaps expected as a fact. Jesus removed can t. I might not right now have time to marathon train. But I can find an hour on three or four separate days this to take a stroll in my neighborhood. Perhaps if I made myself go to bed an hour earlier I could use my time more effectively during the day. Maybe if I packed a lunch the night before I d be more likely to eat properly. All of these highly simple solutions might make my life easier on a very common sense level, yet I haven t totally bought in to self-improvement. Read John 5:9-13 ( The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you carry your mat. ) Jesus healed an invalid. One would think that would be enough to distract the powers that be away from legalism. But it didn t. Keep in mind this all happened in a place known as the house of mercy. I hope the irony of this is not lost. Have you ever completed a project at work, spent a huge amount of time on it, and ended pretty satisfied with the result, only to have your boss criticize some ridiculous piece of minutiae which had absolutely no significance holistically? It s even worse when they realize the offense and look surprised when you are irritated. What? It s not personal... I used to have a boss who believe employees wouldn t perform unless they thought she wasn t happy with their work. Towards the end of our professional relationship she made the It s not personal, Karen response and I replied with, Maybe not, but it sure is rude. Not one of my better moments, I must admit. But I still feel that way about people who sit on the sidelines criticizing stuff which doesn t matter. To quote Theodore Roosevelt from his 1910 speech Citizenship in a Republic :
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. That s how I feel about the legalism. It might not be personal, but the whole not good enough concept, disregarding the big picture and an individual s well-being and replacing that with regard for a rule, is problematic. When faced with legalism, or conflict in general, I think it s important to consider the real question. What really is the problem? Sure, the Pharisees valued keeping the Sabbath holy as a fundamental truth. That being said, they were also smart enough to acknowledge the significance of healing the paralyzed. I could argue they too were deluded by this need for enforcement of perfect rules within an imperfect society, but I think this is only the beginning. Remember, this is the third sign regarding Jesus being the son of God. On some level, there is fear as well. Because if the son of God is working on a system which values others over legalism, the entire structure of the church, with God s blessing, will be turned on its ear. Jesus is faced with a serious dilemma because His definition of keeping the Sabbath holy was different from that of the religious authorities in this instance. In their minds the purpose of this concept originally was to free people from having to earn a living one day out of seven (Constable 94). It had nothing to do with distance in regards to helping others or exerting oneself for the purpose of spreading good will. In this case it appears the critics of Jesus either were not aware of this or dismissed the intent of the commandment for their own purposes It s easy to forget the purpose of a rule. We do it all the time. But we also have to acknowledge the reminder of its purpose when that reminder appears. Read John 5:11-13 (But he replied, The man who made me well said to me, Pick up your mat and walk. So they asked him Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk? The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. ) Jesus didn t announce His significance. He just took care of things. The man didn t have a clue as to who Jesus was per se, but He did know He could walk. And perhaps that in and of itself was enough of a distraction he temporarily forgot it was the Sabbath.
It would have been for me. In addition, all historical and Biblical evidence point to a preoccupation regarding Jesus by religious authorities. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume this question was perhaps asked in an assertive enough manner to embed fear in this man s brain as well. Read John 5:14-17 ( Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working. ) This is Jesus warning. You have your life. Use it for something good. Embrace what you know is right and shun all else. Take advantage of this gift. And so he did: he told the Jewish leaders who healed him. This, of course, created conflict. But change only happens during great times of conflict. Conclusion The one lesson we should take from 20 th century history is isolationism motivated by fear is not an option. We cannot say, That s not my problem and let it go because problems fester and if not addressed will ooze its way out of isolation. We have to learn to embrace conflict as quickly as we embrace peace and prosperity. Until we do this, we cannot expect to be awesome. We will be stuck somewhere between tragedy and mediocrity. So, to close, let us pray for the courage to embrace conflict as a means of challenging ourselves spiritually, as means of promoting the Lord s work.