"The Frightening Prospect of Being Made Well"

"If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him. 'We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, "You will be made free?'" John 8:31-33

They were totally perplexed by Jesus’ words: “Set free! What ever do you mean? Not us?" 

As a part of their final assignment, our confirmation youth had to tell, in their own words, two favorite biblical stories – one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament.  This morning I would like to employ one of my favorite gospel stories, appearing in John 5. 

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ^{4 5}One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When 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?’ ⁷The 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.’ ⁸Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a Sabbath.     

"Do you want be made well?" At first it sounds like a ridiculous question!  What else would he want? He's been wasting his life away by that pool for 38 years -a lifetime. It appears insulting to ask such a question.  But does he wish to be made well?  Is it an insulting question?

One would think the man's answer would have been a resounding, "Well yes!! Where have you been all my miserable life? What took you so long?"  But that's not how the man responded. In fact, he sort of dodged Jesus' question saying, "Well sir, when the water stirs I have no one to put me in; someone else always beats me to it." (Their belief was when the water stirred, perhaps the result of an intermittent underground spring, the first person in the water would be healed.) But that's not what Jesus asked. He didn't ask the man why he hadn't got to the water in time. He asked him if he wanted to be “made well?”  The man's answer was ambivalent at best!

I believe these two awesome stories are connected to one another like heads and tails of a coin. The Jews had been in slavery for so long they could scarcely picture what life might look like and be like without Roman occupation. Occupation had become the norm. Normal was living under Roman scrutiny, so much so they almost didn’t recognize their slavery.   In a similar way, the man by the pool had lived his life within the confines of his limitations for so long that perhaps the prospect of life without those restrictions was simply too unrealistic and even too frightening for him to consider even when presented directly with the possibility. For him, normal was spending life by that pool with all the other sick people. He knew the rules of that kind of life. Perhaps he had become comfortable with that kind of life, and had learned to live within its confining limitations.

Victor Frankl was a holocaust survivor.  He spoke of his fellow prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp of Dachau in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he says, "Some of these prisoners, who yearned so desperately for their freedom, had been held captive so long that, when they were eventually released, they walked out into the sunlight, blinked nervously, and then silently walked back into the familiar darkness of the prisons, to which they had been accustomed for such a long time."

I was talking to a psychologist friend about dysfunction. He said that over 50% of the people in America have some dysfunction. The reality is there's a lot of dysfunction in America. Some stats:19 million Americans experience a depressive illness every year. Five million Americans experience eating disorders. Nearly 600,000 children are in foster care today primarily because of dysfunctional homes. Nearly 3 million children are classified by health and human services as abused or neglected. Twenty million adults in the U.S. have an alcohol problem. Five to six million adults have a drug or substance abuse issue. Nearly two million Americans are affected by ADD and nearly 3 million Americans are affected by an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I’m just getting started.

The reality is we've grown accustomed to our brokenness and dysfunction. We've learned to live with it. It's become normal for us. Now we may not like some of it, and we may not like some of the pain it creates, some of the issues that arise because of it. But the reality is we've learned to live with it. It's what's routine. It's become the accepted pattern of behavior for us, so much so that the prospect of getting better may be frightening. 

When Jesus asked the man by the pool, "Do you want to be made well?" it was no trivial thing!   If Jesus did make him well his whole world would radically change.  Things would be totally different.  Some of his friends by the pool would not be healed, and his relationships with those friends would change as he got better when they did not.  His lifestyle: how he spent his days and how he earned his living; all of that was going to be different if he would be made well.  And if this man was a Jew, he understood that this was the Sabbath day. You don't just pick up your mat and walk on the Sabbath day. They're likely to throw you right out of the church because it was against the religious law.  You risked losing your standing in the community and be in really big trouble.  Getting well and being set free was risky business.  

Have you ever been in some situation or predicament, and perhaps deep in your soul you knew the way out, knew the changes that needed to be made that would lead to resolution and empowerment. However, there were things about the prospect of wellness that frightened you, and things about the old situation that you just couldn't let go of; hence it dragged on unresolved.

I have visited with a lot of people in prison over the years, and very few of them have been behind iron bars.  More times than I can count I have heard, “I know pastor, but…”  "I want to be better, but…”  “I want my marriage to be better, but…”  “I want my relationship with my kids to be better, but…” “I don't want to be so abusive, but…” “I don't want to be addicted, but…” “I don't want to be angry, but…”  “I don't want to be stuck, but…”  “I don't want to be like this, but…” It is easy to grow accustomed to our brokenness and dysfunction to the point that we no longer even recognize what is not normal.  Even when it creates chaos, estrangement or turbulence or pain in our lives, we say, “Well, that's just the way it is.”  We may make some superficial adjustments to temporarily improve, but the reality is we've accepted our brokenness and become comfortable with it and find the prospect of parting with it frightening.

In my own life, there have been numerous times and a couple of especially significant times, when I was in slavery to an harmful and negative attitude, or to an emotional wound that had been inflicted upon me, or to materialism, or to an assortment of other popular gods.   At those times, in one way or another, the Lord Jesus made his way to me and asked, “Joe, do you want to be made well? Do you want to be set free?”  More times than I would like to admit, I have said, “Made well from what?  Set free from what?  What are you taking about?”  However, somewhere deep in my soul I knew I was being confronted with the Truth, I could not finally deny it, but I danced around it; found it too hard to let go.   

Jesus said, "…the truth will make you free!" and asked, "Do you want to be made well?" I believe the risen Lord stands in front of each one of us here this morning, and he looks you in the eye, and more significantly looks deep into your soul and he asks you the same question.

What will be your response? Are you going to sound like those religious leaders or the man by the pool?  Each of us has some part of us that is enslaved by something and locked up in some prison. I don't presume to know what yours is. You will have to do some serious reflecting on that yourself. But some part of your being is crippled and stricken by something: a tragic loss, a traumatic experience, a serious regret, a heavy guilt, an anguished betrayal, a profound rejection, what ever.  And it’s resulted in some brokenness: a fear of intimacy; fear to take a risk; fear to make a commitment; an inability to trust; or a compulsion; or a judgmental attitude; or lack of love.  Jesus named it.  He named it a slavery “to sin.”  But what is sin other than our desire to play God, and deny our subsequent brokenness, and wallow in the resulting estrangement between us and God, each other and even ourselves.

When Jesus made the man by the pool well, he was asking him to step away from a lifetime of ingrained patterns of behavior, conscience and attitude. It was a huge deal for him to get up and pick up that mat and walk into a new and unknown life. 

I believe that's the same invitation that God makes to you and me. All that we've known; all that we've held on to; all of our ingrained sinful patterns; and our rehearsed precedents of behavior, all of it—Jesus says, "If you want to get well, first you must let go."  Perhaps that is why it is not so easy to be made well. Because we've grown accustomed to the small "t" truths that we live with; the small “t” truths that are really masked lies; and we've missed out on the big "T" Truth of God – “the truth that sets us free and makes us well.”

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.”    In John, chapter 14, verse 6 Jesus also said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

The truth of being made well from our dysfunctions and set free from our sins is found in “knowing” the person of Jesus Christ.  He is the Truth with a capital “T.”  Being set free and made well is a repeating rhythm, a daily process of letting go of the old, and embracing the TRUTH; embracing the Lord Jesus Christ; who sets us free; and makes us well; by the power of His grace and love.  Amen.