Unstuck: Get up!

By Dr. Tom Pace

January 8, 2017

John 5:1-8


We’re going to begin by talking about a passage from the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is divided into two major parts. At the very beginning and at the end there’s a prologue and an epilogue, but the meat of the Gospel is in two major parts. The last half basically is called the Book of Glory is how most scholars refer to it. The Book of Glory refers to Jesus’ road to Jerusalem, the crucifixion, the resurrection and the appearances to the disciples.
The first part of the Gospel of John is called the Book of Signs. There are seven signs that Jesus is inaugurating the Kingdom of God, that the Kingdom has come and in Christ it is beginning. There are seven miracles that are viewed. In John we don’t call them miracles, they’re called “signs” because they’re pointing to the fact that the Kingdom of God has come.
The first one is when Jesus changes the water into wine in Cana, and the last one is the resurrection of Lazarus when Jesus brings Lazarus back from the dead.
Our passage today is about a healing that Jesus does on the Sabbath. It’s in the verses after our reading today that they talk about it being on the Sabbath, but he’s doing a healing on the Sabbath of a paralyzed man. If you go in the Sheep’s Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool there and every once in a while the pool would start to bubble. And when that happened they believed that the first person into the pool would be healed.
So that’s the context of our Scripture. I want you to follow along in your bulletin as you hear the Scripture read this morning from the Gospel of John.

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in HebrewBeth-zatha,which has five porticoes.In these lay many invalids — blind, lame, and paralyzed.One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” (John 5:1-8, NRSV)
It was about four months ago that a woman came to see me, to talk about her life. She’s a regular here, every single Sunday. She’s an every Sunday worshipper with us. She’s involved in a small group.
What she really wanted to talk about was just kind of where she was in her life. She has a good marriage, pretty good anyway, she says. She’s been married about 20 years. Has some kids. She has a good job, nice house. She said, “Everything’s pretty good, there’s no crises in my life except that I just wonder if this is sort of all there is.”
She talked about this dissatisfaction that was in her and she talked about how when she was younger she was striving for things to get better and better and better and they kind of plateaued. She began to wonder, “Is this as good as it gets?”
And she said that she felt like she hadn’t chosen her life but her life had chosen her. She said that there wasn’t anything really wrong, it’s that “I kind of feel stuck.”
Now as she was talking about this I have to confess that this visit was the genesis of this sermon series. As I listened to her, what I felt was that I felt myself resonating with some of the things she was saying. Not all of them of course, but some of them. That at some point you get in a rhythm in your life and things are going okay and that rhythm continues and continues, then you begin to think, “Is this all there is? Is this it?” I don’t know if you’re bored, or what it is, but there’s just this sort of sense of “stuckness.”
So what I thought we would do over the next five weeks is take a look at a number of Scripture passages. There are many of them that I found as I tried to put the series together that really speak to this issue. In your bulletin there is this journal that I hope you’ll follow along with as we kind of work through this process over the next five weeks. Some of you may have to meet certain weeks and if so I hope you’ll go online and either watch by the live stream or check out the download.
Let’s begin with a prayer. O God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see, and our ears that we might hear, open our hearts that we might feel. And then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
You can follow along in your bulletin with the Scripture that’s there. “After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew“Beth-zatha,”which has five porticoes.In these lay many invalids — blind, lame, and paralyzed.One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”
These are people who feel powerless. Paralyzed I think is a powerful word. I think a lot of times we feel paralyzed, stuck. A number of reasons for that. One, I think sometimes we’re just overwhelmed.
I know in my life I feel this anxiety about things, when I just begin to get worried and sort of wrapped around the axle about things. What I find is that I just get paralyzed. I just get stuck. I don’t do anything.
We have all these grandbabies now and they’re wonderful. I love all our grandbabies. When they come over to the house, however … we have this little plastic kitchen and some toys in a basket. And it takes about 15 seconds before they are all over the place. They will grab everything out of that kitchen and just spread it out all over the floor. It’s everywhere. I wonder how they can make such a mess in fifteen seconds.
Then I say, “It’s time to pick up the toys!” And here’s what’s interesting. I think they kind of want to but they don’t really know how to get going. There’s just a thousand of them, they’re overwhelmed. And I honestly sometimes feel that way in my life that when there’s so much.
The Psalmist has an image. He says, “When the waters are coming over your head…” you feel this sort of paralysis. Sometimes I think that’s what it is.
Sometimes I think it’s just habit or inertia that keeps us paralyzed. We get up at the same time everyday, we brush our teeth the same way with the same toothpaste. We go down and we eat breakfast with the same food, we go to work, do the same thing throughout the day. We go home, we do the same when we get home every day. And this sort of builds a little groove or rut or something in our life. And it’s just that the habit is so strong that it’s hard for us to get out of that.
There’s a great story about a man who sits down at lunch and he opens his lunch kit. He’s sitting with his colleagues at lunch and he opens his lunch box and looks in and goes “Ah! Tuna fish again! Tuna fish, chips, a drink. Every day it’s tuna fish, chips, a drink.”
And one of his colleagues says, “Why don’t you tell your wife to make something different.”
Then the man responds, “Oh, I make my own lunch.”
I think that’s like a lot of us – we make our own lunch. But we make it the same way, every single day. And we just build this habit into our life that we can’t get out of. So that’s the second reason.
The third is that sometimes there are real reasons, real significant reasons why we can’t move forward. Real obstacles, real difficulties, real problems. And I’m going to talk about those in just a few minutes.
So I do think that often we’re paralyzed. One thing I want you to do today is to begin to think of at least one area of your life in which you feel stuck. It might be relationships, maybe a marriage or friendships, or relationships with brothers and sisters. Maybe it’s in your career. Maybe it’s your financial life. Maybe it’s just an attitude problem that you just can’t seem to get a decent attitude. Maybe it’s your spiritual disciplines. I certainly hope that that might be for some of you. I really want to move forward in my spiritual disciplines.
But some particular component. Maybe it’s your physical health. You say, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I really want to make some changes and move forward in that area.” And we’re going to work throughout these next five weeks and see if we might find out how God can work within us to make some progress.
The passage goes on, “When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’”
Seems like an obvious answer. “Well, of course I want to be made well!”
But do we really? Do we really want that? We look at our actions and we have to ask ourselves the question. Do we really want that?
I personally want to be very healthy. I want to be a lean, mean, fighting machine. I don’t want to get up off the couch at night and not watch television. I just want it to magically happen.
I say, “Do you want to have a good financial life?” You say, “Of course I do.” Then I say, “Do you want to spend less?” And you say, “No, no, no! Not at all.”
There was a lady in my former church and I got tickled when she’d say, “I am not overdrawn, my husband is under-deposited.” She didn’t want to spend any less.
You could go on. Sometimes what it really is that, we’ve become comfortable with out pathologies. We would rather accept that which is okay as long as we don’t have to really do the work it takes to get where it’s better. So it’s a fair question.
Maybe say it this way: “How much do you want to be well? Do you just want it to magically change or do you really want to be made well?” Do you want God to do that work in your life that would be transformative?
The rich young man comes to Jesus and says, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus says, “Sell what you have and give the money to the poor and come and follow me.” And the rich young man went away sorrowful. He didn’t want to be made well. He wanted everything to change but he didn’t want to change. That’s the first thing you have to ask yourself. “Do I really want to do this?”
And when we decide that, we put a stake in the ground and we decide: “I want to be made well. I want a better marriage. And by the grace of God, only by the power of God not by my own power but only by the power of God I’m going to do the things I need to do to have a better marriage.”
We might say, “I want to be physically healthy and by the power of God I’m going to do the things I need to do to move forward on my physical health.”
You see what I’m saying? We make a decision, we put that stake in the ground and we say, “Yes! I want to be made well.”
Now the man responded to Jesus when he asked him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”
Sometimes there are real issues that keep us from moving forward in an area that we really want to move forward in.
A woman came to see me very recently. Very active here at St. Luke’s. She had received her pledge card in the mail and she wanted to talk about it. And she said, “I come to church every week. I’m in a small group, I am involved here at the church and I’m really want to grow in my faith. But here’s my problem.” And I could see just enormous pain in her face.
She said, “I want to tithe. I want to give 10% of my income to the church and other places, but my husband doesn’t want to. I want us to pray together as a family, but my husband doesn’t want to. I come to church and I see families sitting together in worship and I’m sitting by myself. And I want to have the power of Christ just right in my family but I just can’t seem to get there because I’m not alone. There’s two of us….” There were actually more because she had kids. “There are many of us in this family.”
So that’s a real issue. I can’t just say, “Oh, don’t worry about it.” This is a real challenge and there are some times when what’s in front of us is a real thing. This man was an invalid. This was a real issue. So it’s not just that there aren’t real things that are obstacles, challenges, difficulties, that keep us from moving forward. Those can be real things.
Sometimes on the other hand they are excuses. I’m talking about getting healthier but my dogs have gotten old. I used to run with my dogs and now I saunter with my dogs. So I’ve gained 15 pounds and it’s my dogs’ fault. It’s not my fault, it’s their fault.
That falls into the excuse category. You might say, “My boss is a jerk so that’s why I have a bad attitude.” You can go on and on about whatever those excuses are, those things that keep you from making that progress, that are really just of you scapegoating the issue.
Now here’s what I want you to see in this passage. Jesus doesn’t pooh-pooh those things, he doesn’t help him solve those things. Neither one. He doesn’t say, “Hey, what you need to do is get up right next to the pool and sit right there and when it starts to stir, be the first one in.”
Jesus refuses to accept the paradigm that is given to him. That the only way you can get healed is by being the first one in the pool. He says, “Let’s not look at the obstacles in front of you, look beyond them at where you’re trying to go. Do you want to be well?
What happens is that we get these challenges and we begin to rehearse them in our minds, we play them over and over again. We think, “I can’t do because of this… or this… or this. How can I ever do it with this? Well, maybe I need to get rid of this…” And all of your energy is focused on the difficulties instead of looking beyond at what God can do.
I got an email from a fellow who listens to us on the podcast – he lives in South Carolina. This was about three or four years ago. It was interesting, he’s in a local church but he listens to our podcast. He emailed me and said that he really felt called to be a pastor. He wanted to be a minister but the problem was that he had kids and a mortgage and a job and he couldn’t afford to just quit his job and go off to seminary. It just wasn’t going to happen. He was hoping for some guidance.
So I responded to his email and asked “What makes you feel like you’re called into the ministry and that would be something you’re gifted at?” And he said, “I teach adult Sunday school at my church, and when I do I’m just so excited about it. It makes my heart beat faster.” He talked about how excited he was when he does it and how the people in his class respond so positively. They say, “You ought to be a pastor,” and all these things.
I asked, “How often to you teach this Sunday school class?” He said, “About once every quarter or so.” I thought, “Once a quarter?” I told him, “I am confident that your church needs an adult Sunday school teacher every single week. Could you possibly get an adult class where you would be the regular teacher? And you can be the regular teacher and you can go see those people in the hospital. You can talk to them about their spiritual journeys, and you can work with them on that.” I shared with him how he could get some free training online from various seminaries.
He was so excited that he could step into ministry and now he’s kind of the associate pastor. He’s not the paid associate pastor but he’s the pastor of his church’s assistant who helps him do all sorts of things.
But instead of continuing to say, “I can’t because I can’t….” He said, “Here’s what I can do. Here’s the way I can take a step. I’m going to look beyond those difficulties.”
Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
I don’t know if you noticed how we use the same words: “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” or “Rise up O Church of God” - we have a theme going here.
We don’t just dilly-dally around here at St. Luke’s. We put this together right. Just get up and do something.
I grew up in Illinois where I learned to drive in the snow. It’s different than driving here in Houston. What you learn is that if you get stuck in the snow, which is bound to happen, the way you get out is that you rock the car. I guess it works that way with mud, too. It really doesn’t matter if you get out going backward, or forward, it only matters that you get out. So you get your cronies around and some push back and forward and back and forward and you go reverse. You get it rocking a little bit. You don’t just sit there and spin the tires. You get it rocking and eventually it’ll come out one way or the other. Hopefully.
I think it works the same way in our lives. You just get going. Just do something. Take a step. Make a move. Do something.
I told you to identify an area in your life that you want to really take steps and grow in. I want to maybe challenge you now to think about it a little differently. So maybe what you want to do is move forward really significantly in your career.
It may be that that’s just too overwhelming. That there are too many obstacles that are right in front of you at that time. What I would say to you is, “Is there something you can do? Just one step? Maybe in an altogether different area of your life? Just to make some kind of change, some kind of movement to get out of the rut, in some way, shape, or form. Just do something.”
The thing about preaching is that Sundays come every single week. And some days the Lord is just coming into your mind and you’re so excited. You just feel the Holy Spirit. And other days, not so much. I’ll tell you that I’ll sit down on a Tuesday and begin working on the sermon. That’s the way I kind of work. We look at the whole series ahead of time but on Tuesday is the nitty-gritty, really get going day. And I’ve got nothing. I’ll just sit there and say, “God, I’ve got nothing. I don’t know.”
So here’s what you do: You put your fingers on the keyboard and you just start to type. Anything. “Fourscore and seven years ago…” You begin to just reflect on your thoughts on the passage. You just write something, anything. And what you’ll find is that as you write, things will start to happen because you’re beginning to make some movement in your life. You’re gettin’ up! You could sit there and stare at the keyboard all you want to, thinking, “Come on, God, give me something, give me something…” It doesn’t work. You have to just get going in some way and take some step to move in a direction.
We finally get to the last thing that’s maybe most important. And that is that everything you need is at hand for you. In order to get where God is calling you to go, God will provide for you everything you need to get there.
I used to say, “You already have everything you need.” I don’t believe that’s the case anymore.
The real purpose of this passage is to identify that God is at work in our lives to bring about healing and wholeness and that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Matthew, Mark, and Luke use that language to talk about how John the Baptist and Jesus would preach, that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
At hand doesn’t just mean that it’s about to happen. At hand means it’s available. The reign of God in my life is available and God will give me everything I need (that to which God calls me.) I don’t have to sit around and think, “But I don’t have this… or that… “No, I know that God will give me everything I need.
One of my favorite movies is “The Pursuit of Happyness.” I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. It stars Will Smith – it’s ten years old now – and he plays the role of a man named Chris Gardner. It’s a true story and at the end of the movie the real Chris Gardner has a cameo appearance as he walks by and says hello to Will Smith.
So here’s the story: Chris Gardner put all his family’s life savings into to this machine that he felt was a better X-ray machine than a regular X-ray. He lived in San Francisco and he traveled around to tell people about this X-ray machine and how much better it was going to be. It just didn’t work. His wife left him and he took a job in a pizza parlor. He had his son, who’s played in the movie by Will Smith’s real-life son. He was homeless now, he was sleeping at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. If you ever get the chance to go to San Francisco I really want you to encourage you go to Glide. It will not be much like St. Luke’s, let me tell you. It’s quite a place. They let people sleep in the church all night long, especially when it’s cold.
So he’s sleeping in the church at Glide and he finds out about this internship that’s about to become available at a stock broker. It’s because he’s been sitting out in front of that building trying to hawk this machine.
The night before the interview for the internship, he is arrested for unpaid parking tickets and spends the night in jail. He gets out just in time to get to the interview, and when he gets there he runs all the way to the interview. He’s ushered into the interview and all he has on is his undershirt and a pair of pants and a little jacket. He looks awful, like he’s been up all night because he’s been in jail all night.
He’s sitting there, and these four guys are across the table interviewing him. They talk for a while and he tries to be persuasive. He tells them his story. And at the end, one of the guys says, “What would it be like if I told you that a man came in to interview for a position here without a shirt on, and I hired him.”
Chris Gardner says, “I would tell you that he probably has a really great pair of pants.”
Now, I like that picture because you may not have a shirt. It may be that the difficulties in your life, the things you’re missing are important things. But I bet you’ve got a good pair of pants. Because God’s going to give you everything you need to accomplish that to which he calls you.
So here’s what I would say. Just get up! Do something. Make a move in your life to get unstuck. And then see what God will do.
Let’s pray together. Lord God, we confess to you that sometimes we have a lot of “Yeah, but…” “Yeah, but I have this problem, God I can’t do it. I’m just stuck.” God forgive us. Show us what you can do in our lives. Give us the courage to get up and take one small step. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.