A slight disclaimer: What follows is the basic text (minus the occasional digressions) of a sermon that I preached at Comox United Church, Comox, B.C. on May 22, 2022. It is not an essay. It is written to be spoken and in a manner that reflects my preaching style, which I suspect might be described as “informal.” Nor does it have the full assortment of citations, acknowledgements, and footnotes normally (and quite reasonably) expected in a more formal work. Please forgive the grammatical peculiarities!
Blessings
Phil Spencer
"It's a Scandal"
When I get up in the morning, my routine is to pour a cup of coffee, open my laptop, and then browse through some of my preferred news sources on the internet to see how the world has been managing without my guidance during the night. I also usually turn on the radio to keep up on local and provincial news, and this last Tuesday, as I followed this routine, I heard a physician being interviewed and she was clearly upset. She was the head of a BC association of family physicians and what was upsetting and frustrating her was the number of British Columbians who simply aren’t able to get a primary care physician, that number being just under a million people, which is close to 20% of our population unable to access a family doctor. To compound the problem, wait times at our walk-in clinics are the highest amongst the provinces—58 minutes—which is more than twice the national average.[1] Frankly, I was surprised that it was only 58 minutes. Though not quite the same, because it used to be my line of work, I occasionally take a peek at Emergency Department wait times, and they can be much, much longer. That’s often where you go if you can’t go to your GP, if you go at all. Waiting for medical care is a distressing fact of life for us here in BC. The galling thing was that just 30 years ago, we had a surplus of family doctors and some of you’ll remember that back then we were looking at ways to reduce the numbers.[2] Oh, our intentions were good, but …. I also heard not-unrelated concerns about fee structures and the benefits of spending time with patients. It got me thinking of my last visit with an internist—he gave me nearly an hour and a half of his time to help me understand what was making my heart more interesting than we both wanted it to be. That time meant the world to me—it was very helpful—but medical appointments beyond 10 to 15 minutes are (in my experience anyway) not especially common. Obviously, this a complicated problem—there are no quick fixes—but this is something that’s got to be addressed because something isn’t right here. I dare say it’s something of a scandal.
Anyway, that radio interview got me thinking about two things: first, I got to wondering about what it must be like for a new family doctor to set up practice in a BC community today. Would there immediately be a lineup outside, cars slowly circling the office, waiting for the doors to finally open? People are just a little desperate, and particularly those of us who already are aware of existing health conditions. The second thing the interview got me thinking about last Tuesday was to reconsider today’s passage from the Book of Acts that I’d originally planned to explore with you this morning and I shifted the focus instead to this reading from John’s Gospel, which is one of those occasional “alternative” readings that are sometimes suggested for this date in the church year. I began thinking about it because the situation for the sick in Biblical times makes ours look positively blissful. Medical knowledge was far, far more limited, and problems treated with comparative ease today devastated individuals and the community back then. This was a time and a place where perhaps 30% of children would not survive to their teens and adult life expectancy was about half of what ours is here today. You can understand then how the crowds might’ve been drawn to this itinerant healer from Nazareth.
The 3 chapters of John’s Gospel prior to today’s reading are written in a way that has Christ is contrasted against the institutions of Israel but starting now, and carrying on for the next 6 chapters, the story of Jesus shifts to a being told against the backdrop of the religious festivals of Judaism. These festivals were celebrations of God’s actions to save the Jewish people: Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, Hannukah, and the Sabbath all feature prominently through this portion of John. We’re not told specifically which one it was that led Jesus to travel from the region of Galilee to the capitol, but it was expected that the Jewish faithful would—if possible—make their way to Jerusalem 3 times per year to observe these important religious events. The author draws our attention to a particular pool near the Sheep Gate and while there’s some scholarly conversation about the actual name (some call it Bethesda or Bethsaida and my translation names it Bethzatha—your call) we’re told that it was a site that drew the sick, the infirm, the paralyzed. Those of you who have been to Jerusalem may’ve actually been to what’s believed to be the site. We’re told that there were 5 porticoes—five covered entranceways—around the pool and that there were all sorts of people with all different kinds of maladies who were waiting underneath them. These were folk who were desperate (the first century equivalent of those phoning and driving around looking for a physician) camped out by the pool, believing it to be a place of healing.
As a slight aside: For those of you who might’ve been reading along in a pew Bible you may have noticed that there was no verse 4 in the text. Some old copies of the Gospel include a 4th verse that makes mention of how an angel would stir up the waters, but more reliable versions of the scriptures now omit this. Anyway, on the day that Jesus arrived there was one gent present who’d been sick for some 38 years. The way the story’s told I get the impression that this man might have been subject to paraplegia—whether this was through illness, or accident we’re not told, but we are informed that he had difficulty moving when the waters were stirred, which was, of course, just the time when healing was expected to happen. While paraplegia is difficult in our time, how much more so it must’ve been in the 1st century. Mobility, making a living, social isolation, challenges with personal hygiene—his life would have been staggeringly hard.[3] And here he is, 38 years into a profoundly debilitating condition, waiting for the time when he could out-crawl the competition. It’s a bleak, bleak scene.
Jesus arrives at the pool and looks around, sees this fellow and speaks to him. This is, perhaps, the first kind voice he’s heard all day. But then Jesus asks, what is—on the face of it—an absurd question. It reminds me of the story of Bartimaeus found in Mark.[4] You’ll remember how Jesus and the disciples are leaving Jericho, on their way to Jerusalem and Bartimaeus, who we’re told is blind, he calls out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Presumably he’s heard that Jesus is a miracle worker and it’s worth a try, right? Jesus stops, calls him over, and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” Huh? What do you think he’s going to ask, “Jesus: give me the lottery numbers for this week?” He wants to be healed! This makes me wonder if there’s more going on in that exchange.
On this day in Jerusalem Jesus looks at probably the hardest case by the pool and asks, “Do you want to be made well?” Seriously? Why wouldn’t he want to be made well? Well, there are sometimes reasons that people don’t want to be made well, or others to be made well. Sometimes loved ones will unknowingly sabotage another’s attempts at sobriety because the change seems too much. I had a parishioner once who had known some serious struggles in her life—physical, emotional, a really difficult childhood that marked her deeply. She was smart as a whip and chose a profession that supported others who’d experienced similar traumas that she had as a child and my impression was that she was very good at what she did. She became a great resource for the church. But I noticed that every once-in-a-while in her personal life things would seem get a bit out of control. And I don’t believe it was at all deliberate, but it was as if she would create chaos because maybe she knew how to survive in chaos. She knew the rules of that game, but life without chaos was even more complicated. I wonder if there was comfort in what she knew. I know that I get that. I’ve seen a bit of that in my own friends and family. Do you want to be made well? Hmm. I think so. Maybe.
A couple of things here strike me as interesting. The first thing is that there’s nothing in the story that suggests that this gent has the vaguest idea of who Jesus is or was. There’s nothing in the story that indicates that he was aware of Jesus’ track record of healings. In fact, he doesn’t even know Jesus’ name until the end of our reading. Jesus is just some stranger asking personal questions. There’s none of this “Your-faith-has-made-you-well” stuff going on in this particular story. To the contrary, there’s no sign of this fellow having any faith inclinations toward Jesus at all. Remember, Jesus tells him to get up and walk and indeed he takes up has mat and walks away. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, actually follows Jesus after he’s healed. And as we read in Luke 17, unlike his 9 compatriots, at least one of the 10 healed of leprosy did return and thank Jesus.[5] But this guy, he just keeps going, that is, until some of the religious pros notice that he’s carrying a mat on the Sabbath. I mean, the temerity of this godless sinner holding onto what might be the only property he has beyond the clothes on his back on a Sunday! Can you believe it? When confronted about his breaking of this rule, all he does is shift the responsibility to the one who made him well. If he has faith, it’s well hidden.
What also struck me as interesting is that the man by the pool doesn’t say, “Yes!” when asked if he want to be made well, does he? No, he comes back with, “Sir, when the water’s stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else has already elbowed their way in.” Sounds heartbreaking to me, but then again, maybe he’s someone who’s just inclined to complaining and whinging, who can’t see beyond being a victim.
I’m not sure which it is, but here’s the thing: who cares! It really doesn’t matter in the slightest if he’s feeling sorry for himself, and who can blame him, really! Maybe he’s just reflecting on the seeming hopelessness of his situation because he really is between a rock and hard place. But really, who cares that he hasn’t a scintilla of faith! Who cares if he’s even a nice guy? He may’ve been a thoroughly decent individual, or he might’ve been a complete utter jerk See, none of that matters in the slightest. No, the point of this story is a scandal that makes all other scandals—even our difficulties accessing simple health care, I dare to say—the scandal in this story is the glorious scandal of grace. It’s not about whether this man was deserving, or thankful, or nice, or insightful, or in any way good. Performance or character or motivation is utterly irrelevant because these aren’t prerequisites for the love of God. This is a story about God in the person and work of Christ. It’s about the good news that God is inclined to save, save and heal and restore the best of us and the worst of us and all that is in between. This is the good news: God has done something in Christ that disrupts our human notions of fairness. God’s justice is pure scandal. God’s love is not transactional. Grace has been poured out on us, whoever we are: a glorious scandal. All are made welcome. Now, can we do any less? Can we do any less?
Amen
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-walk-in-clinic-wait-times-1.6428497
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-health-care-history-1.6431301
[3] Gary M. Burge, John, p. 183
[4] Mark 10:46-52
[5] Luke 17:11-19