John 5: 1-9a

On Thursday night, we had our first reunion of the Muslims, Jews, and Christians from Atlanta who went on a pilgrimage to Israel in August. We shared a wonderful meal at a Middle Eastern restaurant, looked at each other’s photos, and reminisced about our amazing experience. Each of us took a few minutes to share how the pilgrimage has affected us. One of the ways it has impacted me is how it has permeated my preaching since my return to the pulpit, including how it has affected my approach to the Biblical texts, as you will see today. The text you just heard does not appear in the common lectionary, the three-year cycle of readings that we generally follow. The fact that some texts are left out is one reason we are not legalists about following the lectionary. Though it provides a discipline for planning worship and preaching that helps us attend to passages and themes we might otherwise ignore, to follow it rigidly does not allow for the kind of inspiration that often arises that leads me towards a particular text. When I went to the reunion Thursday night, I had already begun a sermon based on this week’s Epistle from the lectionary. But afterwards, I changed directions altogether.

What inspired me was Rabbi Joshua Lesser telling us that he had for the first time in his synagogue, Bet Haverim, delivered a Shabbat message based on a text from the Christian scriptures. He did so because of one of our experiences in Israel.

The text he used was the one you just heard read from the fifth chapter of John. Josh was inspired to do this because one of his favorite spots on our pilgrimage was the ruins of the Pool of Bethzatha, the name of the region north of the Temple area in Jesus’ day, or as better known to many of us from later texts, the Pool of Bethesda, from the Hebrew for “house of mercy.”

As Josh spoke of this, I remembered how I was also touched by that experience. When I left the dinner, I came by the church and changed the bulletin to use this text for my sermon. My experience at the pool of Bethesda caught me by surprise. It came right after a couple of sites which left me feeling a bit embarrassed about some things in my Christian heritage. First of all, it sits on the property of an old Christian missionary group called, to our astonishment, “The White Fathers of Africa.” I learned later that that name is said to come from the distinctive white habits they wear. But for the African Americans in our group, both Muslim and Christian, it was like a confession of something they had always known. All of us, black and white, did not know whether to laugh or cry.

And though this Catholic order no doubt has done some good things in Africa, that name, “The White Fathers of Africa,” was too much a reminder of how colonialism and Christianity have too often gone hand in hand. They might ought to change to another color habit, and some other habits as well, beginning with a name change. Beside their headquarters on their property is also the medieval church of St. Anne. Our group went into this church that exists close to its original form when it was built almost 900 years ago. The Christians led the group in singing to enjoy the church’s remarkable acoustics. Many of the Jews and Muslims joined us in meditatively singing, “Alleluia.” This lovely church was built by the Christian Crusaders, not long after they captured Jerusalem and massacred most of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Jewish residents, reminding us once again of the ugly side of Christian history.

After the White Fathers and the Crusaders, the pool of Bethesda was a refreshing surprise. The initial thing that struck me was that it felt very real. Indeed, it is one of the few spots that most archaeologists agree is probably the exact spot described in a Biblical story. The second century theologian Tertullian describes this setting as does Bishop Eusebius and an anonymous traveler to Jerusalem who visited it in the fourth century. Today, you look down upon this site from wooden platforms built around it. It lies well below the modern day streets of Jerusalem and was probably below street level in Jesus’ time to allow rainwater to supplement the natural underground springs. You can see the ruins of the porticos built by Herod the Great described in the story in John. You can also see the original steps leading into the pool. John was the last of the four gospels and the furthest removed from the events in the life of the historical Jesus. That, and its more mystical style, has often led Biblical scholars to conclude that it is more of a spiritual or a theological account and less historically accurate than the other three synoptic gospels. But the specific details of this story which match these later sources mentioned makes a good argument that there are accounts such as this of the historical Jesus that appear only in John.

Anyway, these simple ruins were the first place that I could clearly picture the Jesus. As someone from our group read this story aloud, it came to life for me. A scribal gloss added to this story in a later Biblical manuscript, which was included in the King James Version, probably reflects a popular tradition about the pool that an angel of the Lord went down periodically and stirred up the waters and that whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.

Archaeologists have theorized that the bubbling of waters may have had a natural cause, an intermittent spring. Whatever its source, in the popular imagination of Jesus’ day, it was thought to have supernatural healing powers. I could easily imagine Jesus walking around Jerusalem on his first visit, and stopping at this spot. I can picture him gazing upon all those in need who daily gathered there, the invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed, lying around this pool waiting for the waters to be stirred up. Typical of Jesus, the person he focused on was the one he thought had been coming there the longest without success. The narrator tells us the man that caught Jesus’ attention had indeed been ill for some thirty-eight years. Jesus seemed to know this without asking; he always was good at spotting the look of hopelessness. Jesus approached him and said, “Do you want to be made well?”

Is that not fascinating? Jesus does not assume the man wants to be rid of his illness. Like a modern therapist, he wonders if the man has come to be dependent on it. Caroline Knapp started drinking when she was 14, and spent almost 20 years as an alcoholic. Throughout the 1980s she maintained a good front, holding down a high-pressure job at the Boston Phoenix and keeping her addiction under wraps. Much of the time she managed to hide it even from herself. She wrote, “You know and you don't know. You know and you won’t know, and as long as the outsides of your life remain intact -- your job and your professional persona – it’s very hard to accept that the insides, the pieces of you that have to do with integrity and self-esteem, are slowly rotting away.”

Her memoir about how she finally hit bottom and went into recovery is titled, Drinking, A Love Story. She provides an honest look at the way our addictions and illnesses can become such a part of our identity that we do not want to let them go.

That is not to say that all illnesses are psychosomatic, or caused by something we did, but there are certainly some that are. Jesus understands this and so he asks the man first, “Do you want to be made well?” Interestingly, the man does not say yes, but instead explains that when the water is stirred up, he has no one to put him into the pool and someone else always jumps in ahead of him. With compassion, Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take up your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

One reason Rabbi Lesser was moved by this story when he heard it read in Jerusalem because it resonated with other stories of healing in Jewish texts and tradition. And at the pool of Bethesda, we could feel that connection. But when Josh looked up the passage in John’s gospel, he was taken aback by the conclusion of the story, which had been left out by the person reading it in Jerusalem that day.

At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. (John 5: 9-18; emphasis mine)

Suddenly Josh had to confront one of a number of texts in the Gospels, and particularly in John, that have been used by Christians to undergird anti-Semitism. And we are forced to deal with it as well. Fortunately, the rise of modern Biblical scholarship has helped us to understand such passages in context. The gospel of John was written in a time of growing tension with the authorities of the Jewish community. It was for decades a family fight, as the community of John attempted to hold onto its Jewish roots. But after the Romans put down the Jewish revolt in 70 C.E., those Jews left in power, particularly the Pharisees, felt a need to suppress dissident groups in order for the Jews to maintain their identity now that the Temple was destroyed. The Johannine community’s inclusion of Samaritans and Gentiles may have hastened this. At some point, John’s community was expelled from the synagogue community altogether and the hostility that created shows up repeatedly in John’s gospel.

In this story for example, Jesus, the man being healed, and those who end up arguing about it, are all Jewish, yet the people that are threatening to kill Jesus are called, “The Jews.” This is one of those instances in John that on one level is supposed to be a story about Jesus but reflects much more the situation with John’s community many decades later. As our resident John scholar David Rensberger writes, “The Christians who were expelled (from the synagogue) would have been cut off from much that had given identity and structure to their lives. Expulsion would have meant social ostracism and thus the loss of relationship with family and friends. And perhaps economic relocation as well. It would certainly have meant religious dislocation. …A growing isolation and even alienation from outsiders came to characterize the group. It could now think of ‘the Jews’ as such as a foreign and hostile body, representative of ‘the world’ at large.” (Johannine Faith and Liberating Community, (Westminster Press, Philadelphia: 1988) p.26-7)

Unfortunately, in the centuries ahead, texts like this would be used to justify acts of hatred against Jews that would betray everything Jesus was about. And it is the healing of this that we are about in our interfaith connections. It is a daunting task given the church’s history of White Fathers, Crusades, and anti-Semitism.

The part of the story that touched both Joshua and me provides the hope; the rest of the story provides the challenge. As I study this passage, I would put forth that the first part of the story comes directly from Jesus’ time and the second part reflects the tensions in John’s time. In his time, Jesus joined with many other Jewish rabbis who argued that human need takes precedence over any prohibition of activity on the Sabbath. He joined other reformers within his Jewish tradition that insisted that there is no wrong day to relieve human suffering. He stood against that part of his religion where rules are more important than human need. Jesus was revealing a God who continues to act for human good even on the Sabbath. But he would never have thought of those he opposed as “the Jews,” for he was as Jewish as any one of them.

Even though it was the Sabbath, Jesus reached out to this man who was a victim of paralysis and a victim of a cruel tradition that offers healing to the first one in the pool. Notice that Jesus does not help him be the first one in the pool, he heals him without his ever getting in the water. By doing so, he also makes it clear that we do not need to fight each other over God’s healing grace; there is plenty to go around.

And by the way, this is not a “Your faith has made you well” story. At first, the man did not even know who healed him and when he learned it was Jesus he testified against him as a Sabbath breaker to save himself from trouble. When Jesus acts favorably toward one in whom no reasons can be found, we call it grace, radical grace amazing grace, the kind of grace we all need. And so it was that a story that connected a Reconstructionist rabbi and a Baptist pastor also turned out to be one reflecting the two centuries old tension between our faiths. Josh and I found that we could share the connection and acknowledge the tension and do so as friends.

All this makes me glad to be part of this faith community who has been willing to share with me in this interfaith pilgrimage. On Thursday night I took copies of my doctoral project called “Pastor and People, an Interfaith Pilgrimage” because a number of the Jerusalem pilgrims had asked to read my account of the last several years we have been involved in this area. On Friday morning, the following message was on my voice mail:

“Dr. Peters. My name is Sabir Muhammed. I am Jessica Mohammed’s husband (who went on both the Turkey and Jerusalem pilgrimages.) I read your doctoral project and it gave me a much better understanding of interfaith myself. It infused me with the spirit to want to do more in the interfaith area. Most of my time has been spent in foraging for food for my family. As you know, we have a big family and my children attend the private Muslim school. But I am going to have to make some time to contribute something to the interfaith effort. I thoroughly enjoyed your paper, all of it. It was very clear and it spoke from your heart and it spoke directly to my heart. Thank you very, very much. Hopefully, I will get to see you again soon. Al-salaamu ‘alaykum.) (peace be upon you.)

I hope that thrills you as much as me for Sabir Muhammed was responding not just to my story, but to our story. A Baptist church that infuses a Muslim with the spirit to do more in the interfaith area is somewhat of a miracle in our time. Once again, you are willing to be on the edge of a new frontier. Though that can be exciting, it is not always a comfortable place to be. After our last interfaith service, there was quite a discussion on the Oakhurst Internet listserve and a wide range of responses to the service. If we played it safe like many, if not most churches do, we could avoid such controversy. But if we did, we would also never experience the grace that comes by living on the edge.

If we had wanted to avoid controversy and not take risks, this church would have moved out of this area in the sixties along with the white folks who did not want to live in a neighborhood where black folks lived. If we wanted to avoid controversy, we would not have given women equal status in the church 35 years ago. As a sign of how far ahead the church was when Hazel Grady was ordained in1974, they had to mark out all the times “his” was used and write in “her” on the ordination certificate the church gave her. (All those on the council who signed it were men showing that the church still had a ways to go.)

If we did not want to take risks, we would not have begun housing homeless men in our church building twenty-three years ago and recovering drug alcohol and drug addicts fifteen years ago. If we wanted to avoid controversy and not take risks, we would not have allowed gay and lesbian Christians to be full participants in the life of our church. We would not have been expelled from the convention that gave us birth.

If we wanted to avoid controversy, we would not have helped found the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America with its mission to gather, equip, and mobilize Baptists to build a culture of peace rooted in justice and to declare with them: “We are called by God to the Gospel of Peace. This calling is rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ, who is our Peace, in whom God is reconciling the world and through whom God calls us to the ministry of peacemaking. Peace is not only our goal, but our means. The foundation of peace is justice. The force of peace is love.”

Who would we have been if we had not taken risks? And who will we be in the future if we do not follow the one who was not afraid of controversy and risked his very life that we might experience the grace, the love, and the power of God for whom nothing is impossible.

And so we come to one of my favorite rituals of the year, when we process to the front of the sanctuary with our financial commitment cards for next year. Without what this ritual represents, we would close the doors tomorrow on this church’s ninety-two year history. We all risk giving away money that we could certainly find other uses for. But we do so in order to keep the doors open for us to gather in the name of God, to support all the ministries that we have undertaken, and even those that God has yet to dream up for us. Take a risk, and see what amazing things God has yet to do among us.