Waiting for the Waters to Stir

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May 1, 2016 - Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 5:1-17

5 After [Jesus healed a boy in Galilee], there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.*

5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 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?” 7 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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a sabbath. 10 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.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14 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.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”

*Missing verse 4, probably not originally in the text, includes this: [waiting for the stirring of the water; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.]

Sermon: Waiting for the Waters to Stir

We’re going to start this morning’s sermon with a challenge.  I will buy a cup of coffee for the first person who can find verse 4 in our passage from John chapter 5.  Easy right?  Pick up those pew Bibles and look.

Where did it go? 

In good ol’ Nancy Drew fashion, we have ourselves The Mystery of the Disappearing Verse.  The logical explanation is this: verse 4 was written in a different Greek style than the rest of John, and was missing from early manuscripts of this text.  Which simply means it wasn’t originally here. 

But the whimsical question is this: why have a disappearing verse 4 then?  Why not just renumber the other verses so it was never there?  Why did over two dozen early manuscripts put a note on verse 4, that it wasn’t probably written by the same person originally, but they didn’t want it forgotten?  And why did generation after generation of biblical interpreters and translators continue the tradition of the missing verse?  These are the nerdy sort of questions that we preacher types get a little too excited about!

To help solve the Mystery of the Disappearing Verse, we need to actually read it, of course.  The passage it’s in is all about healing – a paralyzed man had laid by a pool famous for healing for a long, long time.  He couldn’t get into the water without help.  No one helped him.  He remained sick.  Until Jesus came along and, not even needing water to work miracles, made the man well.  It’s tempting to skip to the ending, just as we’d like to fast forward through the agonizing waiting times in our lives to something better.  But we shouldn’t.  There’s beauty here in the details of that waiting.

That beauty is found in our missing verse four.  

With it, our passage says this:

2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed waiting for the stirring of the water; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.

Waiting for the stirring of the water.

I like to think that those who shaped scripture from early writings onwards felt something stir within them at these words.  They knew they didn’t match the other words used in John.  They knew they weren’t originally in this passage.  But they didn’t want such hope-filled words to be forgotten.  Because maybe they, too, knew what it was like to wait for the water to stir.

We all go to our places where we expect healing to happen.  The obvious place would be a doctor’s office, but we also go to other places.  We walk in a beloved park to feel connected with the God who makes green things grow, in order to feel more alive ourselves.  We sit at a familiar old wooden table to feel that, in a world where so much seems changeable, something solid remains.  And of course, we come to this place where holiness meets the ordinary, in bread and a common cup, in the waters of a font, in scripture shared through words and music.  And in each of these places, like that paralyzed man whom Jesus healed, we wait. 

And that waiting is the hardest part of all.  It’s possible the greatest spiritual crisis for us human beings is that we have lost the ability to wait.  Sometimes, younger generations are unfairly characterized as instant-gratification seekers who never wait for anything.  But the sad truth is, if they are this, they’ve learned it somewhere.  Perhaps from those of us who never stop, never pause, but do do do and work work work as if our very life depends on it.  None of us are good at waiting.

Nowhere is our inability to wait more evident than on an airplane.  I flew last week to Texas to help my grandmother get settled in her new retirement community in Corpus Christi, and enjoy time with my family.  And on every flight, as it was time to get on the plane, people formed a crowded, baggage-laden line, waiting for their boarding group to be called.  They could have simply sat in a seat two feet from that line, but they didn’t want to wait.  They wanted to get on the plane first.

And then, when we landed, as soon as that little seatbelt sign went off, people jumped up out of their seats like they were on fire.  They stood awkwardly filling the aisles, craning their heads under too-low overhead compartments.  Again, they could have simply sat in their seats, until a few rows before them started to deplane.  But they didn’t want to wait.  They wanted to get off the plane first (but that didn’t get them off the plane any sooner – in fact it delayed things a bit with overcrowding). 

Waiting might just be one of the most important spiritual disciplines we can embrace.  Because most of our lives are lived in the waiting time.  Like that paralyzed man, we often find ourselves waiting for something to happen.  For the waters to stir.  For something to change.  For someone to show compassion and help those who can’t help themselves.  For holiness to come.  For life to get a little (or a whole lot) easier. 

Yes, Jesus will show up.  He always will.  But sometimes, for reasons we will never be able to explain, he’s not here yet.  We wait.  And the hardest part of the waiting is letting go.  Like those longing for healing who came to the pool of Beth-zatha, we show up.  We go to the places where we most feel whole, where we find hope.  We do not control how or when the waters get stirred and the healing comes, so we do not try to. 

We simply show up.  Day after day, week after week, year after year.  And each time we do, the waiting gets a little easier.  Because we start to recognize those who wait with us.

We start to see that there are others around us, people we might not know or understand, and that they, too, wait for new life to come. 

And maybe, when we really see those who wait like we do, a miracle happens.  Not the miracle of Jesus coming and immediately healing us, though he could do that.  I’m speaking of the miracle I wish would have happened earlier in our story from John.  That a few of those gathered at that pool would have noticed the paralyzed man, who couldn’t get to the stirred waters on his own.  And, forgetting their own longing, they instead would focus on his, and help him into those swirling waters.  Miraculously, they forget their own trouble for a little while, and instead try to help another, rather than competing with them.  They carry another and step into the waters of hope together, and all are made well.

It’s a wild dream, I know.  But wild dreams are essential stuff of faith.  Which is why our mysterious verse four refuses to fade entirely.  The wild dream that sustains all of our waiting in this life: that someday, when we least expect it, the waters will stir, and all who hurt and grieve and ache and suffer will be freed from such things.  The waters will stir, and we will carry one another into them, as the wild grace of God swirls around and within us.  The waters will stir, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. 

In the meantime, we boldly, patiently, hope-fully wait.  We show up, we help who we can, we dare to dream wild dreams, and we wait.  And God waits with us.  And we wait with each other.  Alleluia!  Amen.