“The Dark Woods:
uncertainty”
Do you
want to be made well? Jesus asks the man
at the pool a very pointed question. Do
you want to be made well? I still
remember, when I was in high school, going to the doctor and hearing a similar pointed
question. My doctor asked me, do you just
want to be sick? Do I just want to be
sick? I’m at the doctor’s office, I am
seeking help to be made well. Why, why
would he ask me if I just want to be sick?
Who wants to be sick? In high
school, I had two mystery ailments, one was migraines. Why no doctor could figure out that I was
suffering from migraines is beyond me, I should think that would be an easy one
to diagnose. I think one doctor said I
had a mild form of meningitis. The other
mystery pain in my side was never diagnosed.
The doctors were really good at ruling things out, like appendicitis, but
never could determine a real concern, so I must be making it up. Do you just want to be sick? Ugh.
Did the
man at the pool feel the same way? Here
he had been for 38 years, waiting, waiting to be made well. The pool was believed to have healing powers,
but one must enter the water as soon as it is disturbed and for some reason, in
38 years, this particular man never made it into the water. 38 years is an awfully long time to wait, to
wait to be healed. How did he survive
for 38 years? Most likely, he
begged. People came from all over to be
healed by this waters, day after day, and so as family members brought their loved
ones, they perhaps tossed him a coin or two.
He survived on the charity of others, but no one would place him in the
pool. Or maybe, he just didn’t want to
be made well. Is that possible? Would someone really not want to be made
well? After how many years do you get
use to a certain lifestyle? When did he
finally realize that begging at the pool really wasn’t that bad? When did he possibly decide to give up trying
to have someone place him in the pool?
Maybe after one year of waiting, five years of waiting ten years of
waiting? But 38 years?
I chose
to use two passages from the gospel of John today, both passages involve people
that are separated by society, both involve water, and both involve encounters
with Jesus. The woman at the well and
the man at the pool are both in the Dark Woods of their lives. They are both in places of uncertainty, From the book: The Gifts of the Dark Woods, Eric Elnes
writes: To most people, uncertainty
seems more like a curse than a gift.
When you cannot see the endpoint of your journey, or the path ahead of
you is not clearly marked, you grow nervous.
If you do not have rock-solid assurance that everything will be okay and
that the path ahead is perfectly safe, you tend to dig your heals in.”
The woman
at the well, and the man at the pool both encounter Jesus but they both do so
in different ways. The women engages in
conversation, and as Jesus names things about her, she is awoken, and is able
to see him as the Messiah. She leaves
him and goes and tells others in the village about him, and we learn that
others come and believe because of her testimony.
As Jesus tells
the man at the pool to take up his mat and walk, he finds himself in conversation
with others. They are criticizing him
because he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath which is unlawful. Instead of being so full of joy about being
healed, instead of proclaiming that he has encountered the Messiah, he does not
even know the name of the person that healed him. What a drastic contrast to that of the woman
at the well. We are told that later,
Jesus finds the man in the Temple and engages him in conversation again. Is he at the Temple because it is the
Sabbath? One source suggests that he has
reverted back to begging. He has been
made well, but he does not know what that means. All he knows in life is begging, so he goes
to another place where people will have pity on him and toss him a few
coins. As Jesus confronts him, See you
have been made well, do not sin anymore.
What is he referring to? Is
begging a sin? Or is he pretending that
he is still an invalid so as to make money on the charity and pity of
others?
This time,
as he leaves Jesus, he goes to the Jewish leadership and lets them know that
Jesus is responsible for his healing.
There is not the same reaction as the story of the woman at the well,
others do not come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah because of his
testimony, rather, the religious authorities begin their persecution of Jesus
for healing on the Sabbath.
On
Thursday night, we started our Lenten dinner series, and the man at the pool is
a great example of what it means to be stuck.
Maybe Jesus was right with his question, do you want to be made well? This man is stuck. For 38 years he has only known one way of
life. Being a beggar at the pool gave
him certainty, it was consistent, it was his routine. He knew what to expect each and every
day. Now that he is well, he doesn’t
have a clue as to what to do with himself.
He is deeply stuck.
The woman
at the well, her life is shook up too.
But instead of fighting the uncertainty, instead of digging in her
heals, she embraces the gift she has been given, and places her life into the
trust that this is indeed the Messiah.
She was open to the spiritual transformation that it was bringing into
her life, even though socially, she still had issues and challenges to
face.
Each of
us live by how our journey of life has defined us. We have roles, mother, father, brother,
sister, athlete, scholar, some of these labels are ones that we accept and
embrace, while others can be given to us by others and are not so
desirable. In the days of Jesus these
involved: sinner, outcaste, prostitute, tax collector, leper, Samaritan,
unclean. For the man at the pool, his
life was defined by his limitations. To heal
this man would be to disrupt everything he knows and has become accustomed to
in this world. God does not want us to
live by our limitations. So, even though
this man does not seem grateful at all for being healed, Jesus heals him non-the
less. So why does Jesus bother? Why would Jesus waste his time with this
man? Because no matter how hard of heart
we are, the Holy Spirit is always finding ways to nudge us into places of
wholeness. We are given opportunities to
awaken like the woman at the well, and we are given opportunities to resist
like the man at the pool. Jesus knows this man is in the deepest of the Dark
Woods of his life and that his soul will never be free if he continues to live
in the false certainty that he has convinced himself that he has as a
beggar. In healing him, Jesus begins the
process of freeing this man’s soul, so that as he awakens in the dark woods of
his life, he will have more opportunities to see his greater potential.
Sacred
moments happen over and over again in our sacred story in the dark woods of uncertainty. Moses lived in uncertain times, and the Hebrew
people struggled in their journey through the wilderness, learning to place
trust in God over their uncertainty of the journey. We too are living in uncertain times. I can give you a long list of all the
uncertainties around us: The
environment, the economy, our education system, the job market, our food
supply, random violence, the fear of terrorism.
We each journey through the Dark Woods of our lives, and as we encounter
uncertainty, we are called to examine the moment as a possible sacred
intervention. God is asking us, where do
you place your trust? Are we being
shackled by fear, or allowing ourselves to continue to live?
In the
book, the author uses an illustration of a swan. Swans are awkward on the land, the waddle
around, and they yearn to be in the water.
When a swan is in the water, it is graceful, at home, in a place of
peace. “You only have to touch the
elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those
waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard.” It is no accident that both the woman and the
man are at places of water, for Jesus at least is able to share with the woman
that he is living water, The water
that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal
life.”
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