From brokenness to health

Jesus promises to make us whole and healthy; but we have a part to play in becoming healthy, too. Jesus' encounter with the invalid at the pool of Bethesda is a model for us.

“Do you want to get well?” (John 5:1-9) It seems like an odd question for Jesus to ask the man sitting by the pool at Bethesda. After all, that man has been sitting there for 38 years waiting for a chance to dip his body into the waters of healing! Why would Jesus ask him such a question? It seems like the answer would be obvious! “Jesus, I’ve been sitting here for more than half my life! What do you think?”

But there is more to Jesus’ question than meets the eye. In the original Greek, Jesus asked the invalid, “Do you want to be made healthy?” Being made “healthy” is a little bit different than “getting well.” We can be “well” without being “healthy” – and, quite frankly, many of us fall into that category at one time or another. We all know people who are “well,” but who aren’t healthy at all! Maybe they are constantly tense from the stress of their job. Maybe they suffer from an eating disorder. Maybe they can’t sleep at nights because they lie awake worrying. All of these folks are “well,” but they certainly aren’t healthy! Real health is being whole and complete, with body, mind, and spirit all working together the way that God made them to work. It’s what the word shalom means: completeness, tranquility, and peace; and it’s what God wants for all of us. We can’t get to that kind of health all by ourselves. We need to ask Jesus for help with it. If we break a leg, we don’t expect it to heal properly without help from a medical professional; and if we suffer from a mental disorder, we turn to a psychologist or a therapist. In the very same way, Jesus is ready to help us get our lives to that state of shalom where God intended us to be, and for which we yearn so deeply.

We have a part, too, in being made healthy. After Jesus encountered the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, he told him, “Take up your mat and walk.” I’ve always wondered why Jesus told him to take up his mat. After all, that invalid wouldn’t be needing his mat any longer; his days of sitting helplessly by the pool were over! Why did Jesus tell him to “take it up”? We turn again to a Greek word for insight: the word that Jesus used when he told the invalid to “take up” his mat. The original Greek word is a specific kind of “taking up;” it’s a “taking up” in preparation for discarding! Jesus’ instructions to “take up” the mat are actually the first step in the process of throwing that mat away. It’s just like Mom telling Junior to “take up” the nightly garbage. Junior isn’t supposed to “take up” the garbage and keep it in his closet; he’s supposed to “take up” the garbage in preparation for throwing it away in the garbage can!

That puts a new spin on this story, doesn’t it? The very first step in regaining health is to throw something away. Does that make sense to you? It does to me. I have all kinds of things in my life that I need to throw away in order to be healthy. I need to abandon some old resentments that are dragging me down, to discard some old ways of thinking that are no longer useful to me, and to get rid of some worries over which I have absolutely no control. They aren’t doing me any good at all!

What do you need to throw away? Is it your compulsion to say “yes” to every single thing that you’re asked to do? You need some rest; and that compulsion is keeping you from being as healthy as you could be. Get rid of it! Maybe you should throw away your fear of doing something new. That something new might have great benefit in your life, but whenever you even consider it, you feel like a deer in the headlights. Get rid of that fear! And I know quite a few people who are convinced that God could not possibly forgive them because of what they have done (or because of what they haven’t done). Get rid of that belief! “Take up” all the things in your life that are keeping you from being as healthy as you could be, and throw them out the window!

“Take up your mat and walk.” That’s what Jesus said to the invalid sitting by the pool of Bethesda; and he is saying the very same thing to us. Whatever it is that is holding you to your old, unhealthy way of life, get rid of it! Jesus is ready to make you healthy! Maybe you can’t throw it away all by yourself. Jesus can help you do that, too! Just being willing to be made whole is enough – and that’s exactly what Jesus asked the invalid at the pool: “Do you want to be made healthy?” Today, I invite you to be willing to get rid of whatever is keeping you from being whole and healthy. Jesus is ready to heal you!

From Legalism to Compassion

What's the point of having rules if we don't follow them exactly? Christians have been fighting for years over following the rules. Do we or don't we? And which rules are we supposed to follow? A legal expert asked that question of Jesus, and didn't expect the answer that he received!

Let’s take a look at the exchange between Jesus and an expert in the law. (Luke 10:25-37) What’s going on there, anyway? “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” is the first question that the legal expert asks. Now, that’s a very good question. There are 613 separate commandments in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that Jews consider to be authoritative. As a legal expert, the man who asked Jesus that question may not have been trying to trap Jesus (even though it’s Luke’s opinion that he was). He may have really wanted to know Jesus’ opinion! “In all those laws, Jesus, which one is the most important one?” Jesus, being the good teacher that he was, turned the question right back on him. “What do you say, sir? Which law is the most important?” And the legal expert answered very well. The most important law is “Love God more than anything else, and your neighbor as yourself.”

So far, so good. But then, he asked Jesus another question: “So, who exactly is my neighbor?” When we hear his question, we tend to roll our eyes and think, “What a jerk!” Luke tells us that he asked that question “to justify himself.” With all due respect to Luke, I wonder whether he really knew what the motivation of that legal expert was. Experts in any discipline want precision. They want to know what each word means in any discussion of their area of expertise. For example, if I tell my tax advisor that I live in Piqua, I could mean a couple of things. I could mean that I live within the legal limits of the city of Piqua; or I could mean that I live in the Piqua area but outside the city limits. He would be a very sloppy tax advisor if he didn’t ask me to clarify that statement; because my tax liability depends on what my answer was. So let’s give that legal expert the benefit of the doubt, and let’s assume that he really did want to know what the legal definition of a “neighbor” was. “Who are we talking about, Jesus? The people who live next door, the people who live in my town, or the people who live in the immediate area? How far away can you live and still be my neighbor?” That legal expert wanted a precise answer; but Jesus gave him an answer that wasn’t precise at all. Jesus told him the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Let me give you some background into the relationship between Samaritans and Jews in Jesus’ time. Samaritans were the descendants of Jewish peasants who had been left behind when all the educated people in the northern kingdom had been dragged into exile by the Assyrians. Because those peasants had intermarried with the Canaanites who still lived in the area, the Jews of Jesus’ day considered Samaritans to be half-breeds. Worse than that, they didn’t worship at the Temple in Jerusalem; they worshiped at sanctuaries in their own area; so they were not only half-breeds, they were heretics! Because Jews looked down on them, Samaritans hated Jews; and the feeling was mutual! The Jews and Samaritans looked at one another the way that Ohio State fans and Michigan fans do: they couldn’t stand each other!

But the hero in Jesus’ little story is a Samaritan! Jesus’ parable blows apart the legal expert’s hopes for a tidy definition of who a “neighbor” is. A “neighbor,” according to Jesus, is anyone who is in need, regardless of where they live, who their parents were, or what football team they root for. A “neighbor,” says Jesus, is… well, practically anybody. And that’s exactly the point. God’s law is meant to guide our behavior, not put limits on it. Peter learned the same thing when he asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive someone? As many as seven times?” Do you remember what Jesus answered? “You should forgive him seventy times seven times!” Well, heck, Jesus – by then we will have lost count! And that’s exactly the point. We should lose count of the number of times that we forgive someone; and we shouldn’t worry about whether someone in need is someone that we like, or someone that we can’t stand.

You see, Jesus knows that we tend to use the law to our own advantage. When we do that, we become like little kids playing, “But you said…!” Do you know how that game works? Let’s say that Mom promised that little Johnny could have ice cream after he finished his dinner. But – alas! – when Johnny finishes his dinner, Mom finds out that the ice cream container is empty. She apologizes to Johnny, who protests, “But you said that I could have ice cream after dinner! You said…!” When we use the law to split hairs to gain an advantage over other people, we are just like little Johnny. If Jesus had told that legal expert that he should help “anybody you run into who is needy,” then pretty soon, that legal expert would have been claiming that he didn’t have to help anybody if he didn’t “run into” them. “After all, Jesus, you said that I only had to help people if I run into them! You said…!”

But if we try to stay true to the spirit of the law, it’s a lot harder to use it to our own advantage. In fact, if we try to follow the spirit of the law, a funny thing happens. First, it turns our attention away from the law itself to the reason that the law is there in the first place. We stop worrying about whether we have fulfilled the letter of the law, and start worrying about the people it is supposed to help. As we do that, it gets easier and easier to do what God wants of us. Pretty soon, our behaviors have become habits; and before we know it, we are compassionate, feeling and showing concern for others. We’re understanding, caring, and merciful. And the last time I checked, that’s exactly what Jesus asks of us – to be understanding, caring, and merciful. God’s law is meant to help us become the people that God means for us to be! God doesn’t want us to hide behind the law, or use it to get the jump on other people. God wants to use it to transform us into people who act like Jesus.

It’s too bad that we don’t know the ending of the story of the legal expert who asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” I wish that we knew what happened to him. Did he start looking at all kinds of other people – even Samaritans – as his neighbors? Or did he turn on his heel and head off in the other direction, shaking his head at this fool Jesus who expected him to treat even his enemies with compassion? We’ll never know. And the jury is still out on us, too. Do we take Jesus seriously; or have we decided that being a neighbor to everyone is impractical? You’ll have to make that decision for yourself. But I can tell you one thing. If God had not treated us as his neighbors with love and compassion, there would have been no cross and no resurrection. Who is God’s neighbor? Thank God, it’s all of us! Now, it’s up to us to go and do likewise with our own neighbors – all of them!

From Selfishness to Generosity

Christians strive to be generous. How we change from selfishness to generosity is a mystery; but what happens afterwards is very clear: our quality of life gets better! Maybe that's why God wants us to be generous. It's for our own good! My sermon explains what I mean by that.

How do you encourage another human being to be generous? I know that many parents ask themselves this question while they are trying to raise their children to be responsible adults. I know that I did. We can teach them to drive a car, to balance a checkbook, and to cook macaroni and cheese; but it’s considerably more difficult to teach them to be generous. We humans are, after all, hard-wired to take care of ourselves; so generosity is not a quality that comes naturally. And yet, generosity is part and parcel of God’s nature; so, if we want to reflect the love to God to others, generosity should be part and parcel of our natures, too. But how can we move from being selfish to being generous? Charles Dickens thought that he had the answer to that; and he told us about it in his most famous story A Christmas Carol. You remember Ebenezer Scrooge, who changed from being the most tight-fisted man on the planet to the poster child for generosity. He learned to be generous after becoming enlightened about his own loveless childhood, learning that happiness is not in money but in human relationships, and being threatened with a lonely death if he continued to ignore his fellow human beings.

But when Jesus met Zacchaeus, he didn’t do any of that (Luke 19:1-10). He didn’t recall memories of a loveless childhood or threaten a lonely death. In fact, it doesn’t appear that Jesus talked about much of anything after he told Zacchaeus to come down out of that tree. But something obviously happened, because Zacchaeus changed from being a corrupt tax collector who had made a fortune by over-taxing his fellow citizens to a generous man who promised to return all the money that he had overcharged them; and then, give more on top of that! What happened, anyway? I wish that I could give you an answer to that question. If I could, we could all use it to help other people become more generous, and the world would be a better place! But I don’t know how Jesus did it. What I do know is that the transformation of Zacchaeus from a miser into a generous man was just as much of a miracle as any of the healings that Jesus ever did! But even though I can’t tell you what happened to change Zacchaeus, I can tell you what Zacchaeus was like after that change.

He became satisfied with what he had. He no longer overcharged people when he collected their taxes. That’s because generous people aren’t driven by the desire to get more stuff. They don’t need designer clothes and a big house in order to be happy. What makes them happy is the satisfaction that they get from helping other people, whether they do that by being generous with their money, their time, or their talents. Generosity and satisfaction go hand in hand, like soup and a sandwich, or macaroni and cheese.

Zacchaeus also learned to say “yes” when folks asked him for help. Generous people have an amazing ability to say “yes.” They may not have more money, possessions, or time than anybody else; but they figure out a way to say “yes” when someone needs help. That’s because the good of other people is important to them! And generous people don’t hoard their possessions, because they know that everything they have belongs to God, and that God intended for us to be channels of God’s own generosity. Zacchaeus even learned to ask, “What can I do for you?” Generous people don’t wait for opportunities to come to them. They look for ways in which they can bless others. They carry Blessing Bags in their cars so that they can help someone begging at an intersection. They keep extra cans of nourishing food on hand so that they can donate to the Boy Scouts when they are collecting for the local food pantry. They are quick to make a casserole for the neighbor who had a sudden death in the family. They know that some of the neediest people will never ask for help; so the generous person goes to them.

And Zacchaeus took himself a lot less seriously than he ever had before. He stopped worrying about whether he had enough money, and started wondering how he could help other people with it. Giving up your attachment to all the stuff that you own is incredibly liberating! Life is an adventure if you’re always looking for someone to help; but a terrible burden if you’re always worrying about what you have. Maybe that’s why the people who have the least are often the most generous. I have heard story after story of people who are homeless gladly sharing the little they have with others who have even less.

Satisfaction with what we have; caring about others as we care about ourselves; and freedom from worrying about the stuff that we own: those are characteristics of a life that is lived as Jesus wants us to live it! And those are also the characteristics of folks who are generous. American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie once commented that "No one can become rich without himself enriching others. The one who dies rich dies disgraced." We aren’t all able to give generously like the very wealthy. We can’t give away $27 billion, as Bill Gates has done during his life; or like Warren Buffett, who has given away $21 billion. But we can set aside time to volunteer at a soup kitchen, or to visit friends who are sick or confined at home, or even to take care of a child so that her parents can have some much-needed time together. We may not be able to do much; but we can be generous with what we have. And that’s all God asks.

In the end, we are generous because God has been generous with us. Aside from the possessions that we have or the money in our bank account, God has given us the air that we breathe, the beauty of nature that surrounds us, the friends who love and support us, and the creativity to make our world a better place. And if that is not enough, God came to us in Jesus Christ who died for us, and offers us the joy of eternal life through his grace! Oh, Zacchaeus, come down out of that tree! Jesus wants to stay at your house tonight. In fact, Jesus wants to stay at our house tonight, so that he can transform us into the generous people that God intends for us to be. What a generous gift; and what a loving God!