"Wilt Thou Be Made Whole?"
Sermon Transcript for May 26, 2002
By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
"He was never sure when he began to change. At first he had fought against the paralysis. Shame had washed over him when his friends picked him up on his pallet and carried him to Bethesda Pool. His mouth compressed tightly; his forehead was rigid with a frown. One could feel the determination since the voice inside him that demanded over and over, "I will walk. I will walk again." How he had watched that pool. He was so desperate to reach it when the waters would ripple, to when the healing people said would come to the first person to slip into it. He had dug his fingers into the pavement frantically jerking his body across the stones. But that was years ago, so many years ago. The friends were gone now busy with their own affairs. His world was the tiny space occupied by his pallet on the pavement. He no longer struggled to reach the water. In 38 years he had learned to live with his paralysis, learned to accept his wasted, stick-like legs. All the old dreams were discarded. Now he was satisfied with an extra crust of bread in his begging bowl or a little warmth when the wind brushed the clouds away from the sun. Thirty-eight years – life had settled in to a routine and he was resigned to it."
That is a commentary from "The Teacher’s Commentary Index", an old and popular study of the Bible. And I wanted to read that to you to help you visualize more clearly the state of this man that you see here in the painting on the screen. You see that he’s laying on a pallet there, that’s another word for a mattress. And you see he’s got a little tent built over himself. That had become his home – that little space by the pool. He’d become quite use to his situation. I wonder how many people here today feel the way the man by the pool at Bethesda must have felt? Has it been so long that you’ve suffered with this infirmity or illness or this state of mind or this state of relationships that you’ve become accustomed to it, that you’ve accepted it as it is, that you have properly placed the blame on every conceivable person or thing that could have accepted that so that you could be comfortable camped out by that pool?
I don’t often use the King James Version of the bible. There’s nothing wrong with it but I find that the old English is troublesome for some people to understand. That is why you first heard this reading from the New International Version, which is written in a more plain kind of English. But if you are serious about bible study I encourage you to make sure that you have a King James Version of the bible on hand. It is one of the most reliable translations that have ever been printed and it is extremely gifted in its language. And sometimes they get it better in the King James Version than some of the newer translations. The title of the sermon today is a case in point. For in the King James Version of the Bible it says in the same scripture passage that Jesus looked at the man who had been sitting there for 38 years and asked him, "Wilt thou be made whole?" That says so much more about Jesus inquiry than the question, "Do you want to get well?"
I did a little word study with the King James text. You can do that because many great study materials have been geared towards it. I used something called the "Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance". I prefer to call it the "Strong’s Exhausting Concordance" because it’s very large and very heavy and to use it will wear you out; it’s just that big. But I checked a few of the words in this passage and found some rather interesting things. First of all, that word "whole". Jesus asked the man, "Do you want to be made whole?" If you use the Strong’s Concordance you can find the original Greek word that was used by the first authors of the Bible of the New Testament text. And what you find is that the word "whole" is in Greek "hugies" and that it requires you to dig a little deeper because it just talks of health. But if you go to it’s root word, which is the word "auxano", you find a very interesting, figurative meaning. When we talk about Jesus’ words it’s important to get the figurative meaning down. Are you ready for this? The word "whole" as Jesus used it and it’s figurative meaning is "grow up". Jesus asked the man after 38 years of sitting beside the pool, "Are you ready to grow up now?"
"Then He made the man whole and He told the man to take his bed up and walk." And I found that the word "walk" also has an interesting meaning to it. And so I looked at it and it is the Greek word, I’m not very good at pronouncing these, "peripateo". And that word’s figurative meaning is "to live, to deport one’s self, to follow as a companion, to go and be occupied with." So again, if we look at the words that the original authors of that text used we hear Jesus saying figuratively, "Are you ready to grow up?" Then He heals the man and He says, "Now get up and be about the business of following, living fully." And whom do you suppose He wanted him to follow? I think that’s a no-brainer. I’m imagining that Jesus told him it was time to grow up and follow Him.
The Scripture implies a lot between the lines in this story. And so I want to see if we can together extract a little bit of that. The man must have been pretty young when he was brought to the pool of Bethesda. Folks didn’t live as long in those days as they do now. Thirty-eight years it says he sat by that pool! Scripture tells us that Jesus was about 33 when He was talking to this man. So that man had been sitting by that pool waiting for his miracle longer than Jesus had been alive on earth. And Jesus came to him that day and said, "Are you ready to be made whole?" I think the reason that He asked the man this was because the man had given up trying, that he accepted his situation but not in a positive way. What was his answer to Jesus when He asked him, "Do you want to be made whole?" The man said, "Yeah, well I want to be but, you know, I’m just…none of my friends are around, nobody cares about me any more and I can’t get down there before the ones that are faster than me so I can never get to the water you know." It sounds kind of whiney, doesn’t it?
I don’t understand the story of the pool of Bethesda as far as how it can be that only one person gets that miracle and they have to be the quickest. It seems a little strange to me but I’ve come to the conclusion that the story illustrates something really simple. That when the season or the time came for the waters of the pool to be stirred so that healing could occur you had to want it, you had to want it really bad in order to get it. And perhaps this story of the man that had been there for 38 years is telling us that he didn’t want it bad enough, that there was some security and comfort for him in his situation. When we read in the New Testament the stories of His healing, the underlining message in every one of them is the same. Jesus healed what was wrong with their body so that they could be restored to the community, so that they could become an active part of the community again. Because in that society if you were sick, if you were physically handicapped in some way you were limited in what you could do in society. And in some places and cases entirely cut off. So when Jesus healed them He restored them to the community. The question I ask in the case of this man is, "Did he want to be back in the community?" Did he want to be well if it meant being associated with the same people again and being an active, physical presence in the community worshiping, working, and interacting with others, placing the needs of others high on his priority list? Or was it better for him, he thought, to stay there wallowing in his pool of self-pity?
I read one more interesting thing in my study of the word. The word "angel" in this context, the angel who stirred the waters, the word is in its origin by implication a pastor. The root meaning of the word "angel" in this case is "pastor". Well that stirred me up a little bit because I realized that in order for those of us who call ourselves pastors to do our job we’ve got to stir the waters of healing once in a while. That’s what we want to do today. Today we want to stir the pool so that some healing can occur. But we need to understand exactly what that could mean for you today and for ourselves. I believe with all of my heart that today, if God wants to or if it is right for you, you could receive a miraculous healing that defies explanation for whatever ails you. But I believe with equal certainty that today God could do something very subtle in your lives but very significant. Because my experience has been that when we pray for healing of our bodies, many times Jesus is asking us the same question. He looks at us and says, "I can fix your body, that’s easy; but will you be made whole today?"
A little further on in that same Scripture passage, Mike didn’t read this to you so I want to add it for you. In the 14th verse of the same chapter Jesus found him, the man who had been by the pool, at the Temple and He said to him, "See you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." It seems that what Jesus was dealing with with that man wasn’t so much about his legs that didn’t work, but about his attitude, about his spirit. And maybe today when you ask God for healing you need to be ready for Him to ask you a difficult question, "Wilt thou be made whole today?" Are you willing to let Him change your heart?
As pastors we have the privilege of being with people at the most profound and significant moments of their lives and none more profound than when they are dying. And I can tell you from my experience as short as it is in these last five years, I have encountered people who were facing the inevitability of death because their bodies had failed, their sickness was winning the battle over their body. And yet I saw in them incredible health in their spirit. I saw people who were more whole than I ever imagine myself to be even as their bodies were failing. I remember one man in particular whose body was eaten up from the outside in with cancer so that his body looked like Swiss cheese. He couldn’t see anymore; he could barely speak anymore. He had not been a terribly committed Christian in his life and yet in the time we spent together he grew closer to the Lord again. So that on the day that he died I was with him. And with everything he could muster he said, "thank you" to me because together we had worked on the wholeness of his soul and he was prepared to go home whole to be with the Lord.
Perhaps there are relationships in your life and you feel that they are fractured, that they are pot-marked and nearly destroyed. What if Jesus is saying to you today about your relationships, "Wilt thou be made whole?" What if Jesus is asking you to change your heart? A dear friend shared a story one time with me of a marriage that was on the brink. And it was in the changing of the heart that it was saved and not so much in healing what was wrong with their habits, with their impression of one another. It was their hearts that needed to be healed.
In a few minutes I’m going to join the other pastoral staff members here in the front of the sanctuary and we are going to invite you to come forward. I want you to understand that you don’t have to do that. I want you to understand that you can sit and watch and pray silently from your pew if you want. But that this practice that we are going to engage in in just a moment is very biblical, very much a part of what the church is about. You heard what Mike said at the beginning of the service, the church is supposed to be doing this. Together as a community we bring each other before the Lord in faith and pray for healing. When we line up across the front here each couple will have some anointing oil and if you want we’ll anoint your forehead and the back of your hand. We’ll anoint the back of your hand because it is my personal belief that later in the day Satan is going to try to tell you that this isn’t real, that God doesn’t care that much. And when that happens I want you to lift your hand to your nose, smell the oil, and remember that God is faithful. And if you are willing to be made whole, He will heal you. We invite you to come forward and give you the opportunity to name in a word or two what it is and then we’ll anoint you. And it will be your act of faith before God; we’re simply the vehicles. When you come forward if you want to just have us pray for you and you’d rather not be anointed, that’s okay too. Just tell the person that you’re talking to exactly what you’d like us to do. And if you don’t want to come forward but you still want God to bring you healing, simply pray and believe that God cares deeply about you. He cares enough about you to ask you the hard question, "Wilt thou be made whole?" When you’re given the Invitation, please do whatever you can to accommodate those around you and help each other to come forward down the center aisle. Come to one of the couples that will be gathered up here and then depart back down the side.
But now, as we’re faced with the challenge from Christ, I want Reverend Mike to come back up and lead us in preparing ourselves for this time of healing. Let us pray, "Holy God, like our loving mother and a caring father, you seek the best for us. You desire wholeness in our lives. And yet we seek our own way wandering out towards the God’s of success, popularity, and wealth. We look for immediate satisfaction, a quick fix, and a temporary relief. We sit at the wrong table ignoring our troubling conscience and trying to numb our loneliness and spiritual emptiness. Teach us loving God that our true home is with you. That you have a place for us at your banquet table that we cannot earn by our own efforts. That you adorn us with Jesus’ robes of righteousness and the sandals of His grace; and that your unfailing love is willing to forgive us again and again and to place us back on the right path. Gracious God, let us stir whatever you have for us today in this service of worship of healing through the awesome power of your blessed Holy Spirit. It is in the saving and precious name of Jesus that we pray these things. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Amen."
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