I have always been fascinated by today’s reading from the Gospel. At first one hears it and thinks of it as just another healing story of Jesus. We think of it as a sign of Jesus’ compassion to those who were ill and sort of, in the back of our minds, see it as being included in the gospels to show the divinity of Jesus and his miraculous power. However, the more I hear this story the more I think that viewing it like that rather misses the point.
Unlike other healing stories we do not have that key phrase “Jesus, moved with compassion”. Instead we see Jesus ask a rather blunt question: (harsh voice) “do you want to get well?” and, at the end of the story, the man is lectured by Jesus about not sinning again. I wonder why Jesus was so blunt and confrontational. In response to Jesus’ question the man replies (whining voice) “Sir, I want to get well but I have no one to help me, when the water stirs the others get their first.” Evidently something made the water at this pool stir and, when this happened, the pilgrims used to bathe themselves in the hope of being made well. A sort of Jewish version of Lourdes I suspect. The man’s response was to give an excuse. Of course he wanted to get well, it just wasn’t his fault that he had been lying there for 38 years! I can hear Jesus’ exasperation when he heals the man.
The writer of this passage describes the pool as being housed with five gateways or porticoes around it. This got me thinking that perhaps these gateways were not, in fact, ways in to the healing pools but served, at least in the mind of our friend today, as barriers to being made well. I wonder if we are not so different now. I wonder if Jesus came in person to us and said “do you want to be made well” if we would say “yes, Lord” or if we would give a list of excuses to explain our behaviour, to explain the way we cling to our pain as if it were a comfort blanket given to a child. I wonder what these excuses would be – what would our five barriers be?
Barrier 1: We are Oppressed. The first barrier to our being made well by Jesus is so obvious – we are oppressed. “You cannot expect the same of us Lord, we are oppressed” We feel we are oppressed because often the way we love, the way we dress, the way we think might be different from the mainstream of society – whatever that is.
About 15 years ago the, then, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie caused a storm when he said that people should have compassion on lesbian and gay people and he said that he viewed us rather like we were disabled. We couldn’t help how we were made, but how we were made was not quite perfect. At the time I remember getting very angry and even appearing on television to tell the world, and the Archbishop of my thoughts on this. Whilst I think I had a point, I have to concede that my impression of the man is different having read his biography. As a principal of an Anglican theological college for many years he dealt with many gay male candidates for the priesthood. Some of the ways these guys behaved is rather beyond belief – it was certainly beyond the norms for an Anglican seminary in the early 60s! The truth is that the majority of the gay men that Dr Runcie met behaved in ways that made him view them as being sick. We can rail against the label if it is unfair – and it is certainly unfair to label all lesbian and gay people as being sick – however, sometimes we need to examine why that label was given to some of our people. Were they using their oppression as a barrier to healing and wholeness?
And then I think of the times when I have been asked hard questions by others about sexual ethics. I think of some of the answers I have given. Sometimes I have been very honest and talked about the lack of role models, the difficulties in maintaining healthy relationships when we cannot be totally honest about them and even talking about how healthy it is to have a wide range of relationship options. Much of what I have said is true and I have no desire to ever see MCC lecture on sexual morality like some other communions do, but I wonder, in my heart of hearts whether I was indulging in special pleading “you can’t expect us to have healthy relationships, we are oppressed.”. You wouldn’t hear that type of language in a Black-led church, I wonder why we have heard it in MCC.
Then of course we may feel oppressed because of our gender. “Well, I wasn’t allowed to do that in my last church because I am a woman” or “lay people weren’t allowed to do that where I worshipped before”. This of course is true. Many churches limit the ministry of women, use sexist language and ideas and, generally, have not adjusted to the realities of the 21st Century. Almost no other church allows lay people to celebrate the sacraments, under supervision, like we do. Most churches that allow lay people to preach put many more restrictions on them than we do – some even make them dress up rather like clergy! But sometimes I wonder if that is an excuse to either refuse to take on responsibility now or to take on too much to over compensate for previous oppression. Whatever the reason, it is still an excuse when Jesus asks us “well, do you want to be healed?”
Barrier 2: We Are Hurting. The second barrier that I see we put up between ourselves and the healing touch of Jesus is that of hurt. “I am hurting Lord, I can’t concentrate on your sermons now, I am in pain!” Now one of the things we all have in common is that someone, somewhere has hurt us. Often it is the people we love most or work most closely with that have the capacity to hurt us. Sometimes the only ones we want to hurt are the ones we love – sometimes we hurt others to test them out, to see if they really will reject us – and of course if they do then we will be justified in being hurt.
Last year a friend expressed a lot of anger to me about an incident that had happened many years ago. This friend and I went through a bad patch and, for a time, she refused to speak to me or have anything to do with me. She called me every name under the sun – and made sure other friends new about this and that it got back to me. It so happened that my friend was in the midst of having a nervous breakdown. After 6 months my friend got her life together, started a new relationship, got a new job, moved and got into counselling. In the midst of her process of healing she came and asked me for forgiveness. Our friendship continued. Last year, our friendship went through a bad patch again and the same pattern started to emerge. This time I asked about what was going on, expressed my confusion and mentioned the first incident. She replied – “I am sorry I was so nasty about you, but I just wanted to hurt you into responding. Yet you didn’t respond so I felt you had rejected me”. Well our conversation then went on to discuss the fact that I am not psychic!
I can think about the first two long term relationships I was in. There was much in them that was good, particularly the second more than the first, but I had not, in either of those relationships, dealt with my own pain and my own hurt and this meant that I managed to hurt and wound both men in those relationships. This doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt me either – but I remember with shame some of the ways I behaved then. Sometimes the pain we felt in the past is so present, so real that we decide we won’t get into situations where we could get hurt again. We don’t take risks in relationships because when we took a risk before, we got hurt. I remember one of our members coming along to us for his first visit and saying to me “I like it here but don’t ask me to join or get involved as I don’t want to get hurt again”. Happily after 18 months he has moved on from many of those experiences.
I remember the pain of my own training for ministry. My supervisor changed half way through my process due to my original supervisor, and mentor, becoming a District Co-ordinator. The person who took me on was newly ordained herself and quite inexperienced. In addition she came from an Elim Pentecostal background and rather harboured a deep seated view that Roman Catholics weren’t real Christians. This did not make for a good working relationship! Half way through my time with her, she sacked me. She did this in a manipulative way and I appealed and won my appeal – however, this made working together rather more difficult. The appeal process took a month and that month was the worst of my life.The pain felt like a knife in my stomach. I had never understood before when people spoke of emotional pain being physical in its intensity. The easy thing to do would have been to walk away. I had an offer to go to a different congregation to finish my training – a good offer with an excellent congregation. However, I knew that I had to complete my training in the church where I had been. I knew that I had to try and make the relationship with my supervisor work, despite the pain she had caused me. We never managed to become friends, but we did manage to become, after a fashion, colleagues working in the same city. Some years later, I had a very messy relationship break up and this person was the one person who knew how to pray for me; her words, during a conference service, were the most healing and prophetic. God chose that woman, of all the people, to speak words of love and healing to me. Sometimes God’s sense of humour is beyond all human understanding! Now when we meet at fellowship conferences there is warmth and some understanding and affection. I had a choice, I could have said “no Lord, I can’t do it, I am hurt” or I could choose to get well.
Sometimes we use the issues of hurt and pain to manipulate. I remember working in East London when the majority of the congregation wanted to go on a political demonstration. One of our Board members had profound difficulties with the cause in question and used many different techniques to stop us going. She spoke of the hurt it would cause her, she spoke of the hurt it would cause others, she said it would make us look bad in the press – I have never heard of an MCC getting bad press reports for supporting justice. This woman’s previous experiences of hurt meant that she used her weakness, her refusal to let Jesus heal her, manipulate others. Whatever the reason is for us hurting, we can find it very easy to use it as an excuse when Jesus asks us “well, do you want to be healed?”
Barrier 3: We’re Different. I have been part of this amazing movement called MCC since 1987. Through it God has touched my life in many ways. It has been an amazing journey and I intend to spend the rest of my life working for God through MCC. I have not known another church make so much different to our lives. I have not known another church give so much hope to the communities we work for. But, at the same, time I have not known a church make so many excuses!
The big MCC excuse comes from the lesbigay culture – “we’re different” It’s ok to expect less, it seems, because our people are different. I remember going to preach in an MCC which is now closed. I arrived 45 minutes before the service was due to start and was perplexed to find the church building empty and locked. 30 minutes before the service was due to start one member appeared with a key and let me in. 15 minutes before the service was due to start, they started to prepare the church. By five minutes to the start time the pastoral leader, who was leading the service, had not showed up, I had welcomed most of the people at the door, including three new people and was busy picking hymns, from the Unitarian Hymn book – that was all that seemed to be available – that I could lead, which had easy tunes and weren’t too heretical! Just as I was about to start worship, the pastoral leader sauntered in and proceeded to give out hymn sheets. We started 20 minutes late because he wanted to change everything. I was fuming inside as three of my friends from that city had come along to hear me preach and to experience MCC for the first time. Somehow it was ok to expect less because we are different.
Last week I said that it took God only a few days to get the Jews out of Egypt but 40 years or so to get Egypt out of the Jews. I talked about aspects of our culture that we need to re-evaluate in the light of being free, whole and healthy people. When I do weddings for couples I prefer to do them in church. Sometimes, however, I end up agreeing to do them in other venues. Hotels are fine, but bars really stress me. The problem is that people behave in certain ways in church and in other ways in bars. It is very rare that they take their cue from me standing there in an alb and behave like they are in a church. Instead, they continue their drinks, sometimes through the service, they are usually a little bit drunk and I find myself doing the sort of crowd control that reminds me of teaching in secondary schools rather than officiating at a wedding. I wonder, though, how often our people bring bar culture to church. Sometimes the snide, nasty humour and general rudeness that we associate with some aspects of our culture come to church – but they don’t seem to come to church to be changed or baptised. Again, our culture has a name for this behaviour “queeny”. Now sometimes that humour can be very funny, sometimes it serves a cultural function to reduce people down to their proper size and it can take away a lot of false pomposity – but it can also be downright nasty. “So,” says, Jesus, do you want to be healed?” “But Lord, this is who we are, this is our culture, we’re different, you don’t understand.”
Barrier 4: We Can’t Do it. Sometimes the biggest barrier to our accepting the healing that Jesus offers is the feeling that we can’t do it. We often think we can’t do something because of what others say to us. We see this in the gospel story – the religious leaders go and see the healed man and say something to the effect of “you might have been healed, sonny, but you can’t carry your bed around on the Sabbath – you are breaking the Law.
When I first came to the North West I had plans to start a new MCC in Liverpool. I was living there at the time and thought this was what I was being called to. The last place I wanted God to call me was to Manchester. I hated the city and thought that starting a new MCC was something I could do – I had already done it once after all. So I asked around in Liverpool about possible places to meet and I was determined to meet in a church building. We had realised in East London MCC that it is much easier to attract people when you meet in a building which is church like. I approached the parish priest of Toxteth – a lovely man who was desperate to get more faith-based groups into his church – his bishop had been complaining that he was renting out to the Socialist Workers a little too often. Well we arranged a deal but a neighbouring priest, a gay man as it happened, complained to the bishop about our intended presence. The bishop put a stop to it but wouldn’t actually speak to me. I was told that one just couldn’t demand an interview with a bishop.
Now I am not one to take “no” for an answer and put a lovely press release out to the Church Times. I sent this out just before Christmas and gave them the headline “no room at the inn”. The Church times loved it and I made the front page. Now the Church Times might not be something you read regularly, but it is read by every Anglican bishop. Within days I had an interview with the relevant bishop. We didn’t get anywhere but I was able to answer all his objections to MCC. Now, 7 years later, we are worshipping in an Anglican owned building, are just about to move to another Anglican owned building and have the explicit blessing of the local bishop. In addition we have had the city’s Bishop come and preach for us. Seven years ago I was told that one can’t do these things – I should be grateful for the crumbs from the table. I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do! So when Jesus says to you “well, do you want to be healed?” are you going to say “but, Lord, they say I can’t do that.”
Barrier 5: We’re Not Good Enough. The biggest barrier, it seems to me, to choosing to get well, is that of low self esteem. Perhaps this is the root cause of all the other barriers. Because of what society has said about us, because of what the church has said about us we feel that we are, somehow, not good enough to get well. Sometimes this manifests itself in a profound dis-ease in accepting care from others, or kindness. Sometimes we become suspicious of those who wish us well. Sometimes we find it impossible to pray for ourselves as we imagine that God really doesn’t like us. If this feeling of not being good enough is linked to our sexuality then we may find we have problems within our relationships and in our sex lives.
Now the truth of this is both wonderfully simple and wonderfully complex. No one is good enough that is why Jesus came to die for us – so that what was lacking on our part would be made up by his love and sacrifice. However, the fact that Jesus has died for our sins, not our sexuality, means that we are accepted, we are loved, we are made in God’s own image and that image is good. There is a world of difference between recognising our sinfulness and realising we are not worthy and thinking of ourselves as worthless worms. When Jesus asks “well, do you want to be healed” do we say, in false humility, “oh, Lord, not me, someone else, I am not good enough.” It’s just another excuse.
Conclusion. Jesus tells us to pick up our mat and walk. He tells us to get well and not to use excuses or barriers to this. We may be oppressed – but that is not a good enough reason to stop responding to the call of Jesus. We may be hurting - but we will stay hurt unless we let Jesus touch and heal us. We are all different – everyone in the world is different for we are all unique, fearfully and wonderfully made. Yet in our difference Jesus calls us to be whole and our differences are meant to be enjoyed not used as excuses. We have been told that we can’t do it. We are told we can’t do it by dark voices within us, by the voices of pain, of repression and of sin – yet we need to deny those voices and respond to the voice of Jesus. We may feel we are not good enough – in many ways we are not, but we don’t need to be. We are called to wholeness, Jesus asks us to pick up the bed of our sins, our burdens, our oppression, our culture, our hurt and journey with him in forgiveness and newness of life.
Will you follow that voice of Jesus or will you, like the man in the story lie at the side of the pool and make excuses? The choice is yours.
Questions:
1: Do you like this image of Jesus that Andy presents – an image of a Jesus who gets exasperated by one who wants to stay down?
2: In what ways do you feel oppressed? How do these things get in the way of your relationship with Jesus?
3: In what ways have you been hurt? Do you allow and want Jesus to heal these hurts, or do you feel the need to hold on to them. How do you let Jesus heal those hurts?
4: What have you been told you cannot do but yet you feel called to do? Why do the voices that tell you not to do something hold you back from following Jesus?
5: How do you feel about yourself. Do these feelings help or hinder your relationship with Jesus?
Suggested Songs
1: Jesus calls us here to meet him
2: I heard the voice of Jesus say
3: Lord I lift your name on high
4: We cannot measure how you heal
( Neil to sing “The Rose” if possible, if not have it on CD.)
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.