Easter 6
Sermon preached by the Revd Sophie Young
John 5: 1-9 and Acts 16: 9-15
This week, as the rays of the sun beamed down in the St. Bene’t’s garden in all its spring beauty, I had the privilege of spending a day there with some very courageous, inspiring individuals. We gathered there to make a film, and this film would be the climax of a project that we’ve been working on together for a while.
The aim of the film was to challenge some of the myths about homelessness and about people experiencing multiple disadvantages, and for services to hear from the service-users about how they can better shape the services, according to those who use them.
This, essentially, is some truth to power, and the truth was being told by those who have first-hand experience of what it is to live with addiction, to have experience of the criminal justice system, to have experience of domestic violence, homelessness, and mental health problems.
When you are multiply disadvantaged - so experiencing several of these things at the same time - then getting the help you need can be very tough and the people I was film-making with were setting about changing that, they were setting about sharing their own difficult experiences to challenge, and change the system.
Our preparation for that day had been several conversations trying to distil what it was the group really wanted to say. What were the core messages, from their experience, that people needed to hear?
These were them:
We need to be seen as a person, not a problem
We need a hand-held not a hand-out
We need to be asked what we need and want, not told what we need and want
As we boiled it down, it became clear that the essence of what we were talking about was relationship, and fundamentally, LOVE. The emphasis of the message they wanted to convey was not on system change, in practical terms, but it was about cultural change, in relational terms. It was about being seen, and heard, and listened to.
It was about marginalised people, being met in their humanity.
Now, here we are making this film in 2022, and yet the gospel of John as we just heard shows Jesus modelling all of this 2000 years ago! This is not new stuff!
John invites us to visualise the scene at the pool of Bethsaida, a busy place with many ill, blind, lame, and paralysed people. Jesus sees a man there who he knows has been ill a very long time. 38 years. Jesus also knows that he has the power to heal him. To transform his life, to make the lying there day in, day out, history. Jesus knows the power he has. But the power he shows, is the power of love: a love that gives dignity to the other person, a power that respects what they want. That respects their desires and freedom to choose. He asks the man, ‘do you want to get well?’ Jesus gives the person a voice.
And it is not just this man he gives a voice to, or just those on the margins, but the good news is he offers that voice to all of us. Sometimes people have challenged me: well, if God is all knowing and all loving and he knows what I want, and he loves me, why do I have to pray and tell him what I want? Why doesn’t he just give me what he knows I need? The answer is here: it’s because he loves each of us, he respects each of us, just as he respected the man at the pool.
He wants to know what’s on our hearts, as he wanted to know what was on his; he wants to know what our desires, and needs, and wants are. He is not a God who will force himself and his own desires on us, but he is a God who wants relationship. And any good, healthy, loving relationship needs to encourage, and respect, the voice of both parties.
As part of the filming for the video on Wednesday, out here in the garden, one of the brave ladies I was working with shared about a significant relationship she had had. She talked about a woman who worked for the council, and who had ‘saved her life’. When I asked how she did that, she said ‘I was in a prison cell very mentally unwell and this lady walked in, and she asked me ‘what do you need’? She gave me a voice. And from there I could move forward. She saved my life.
Giving someone a voice, and being given a voice, is power. It is a mechanism for change, for transformation, for relationship, and for love to flourish. For trust to develop and needs to be met: not the needs we think the other has, but the needs they genuinely have. And Jesus, all those years ago models this. Jesus asks the man, what he wants: does he want to get well? But it’s not a straightforward yes/no answer he gets in response. The man pours out his problems. In asking the question, Jesus opens up the opportunity for this man to share what it is that is keeping him from being well, he gives him the opportunity to share his story.
Jesus models a compassion that sees the person before him as an individual, with a specific history and situation. He sees the person, not the problem. He models a compassion that is grounded in love for the other, in listening and hearing and responding.
And when he does hear, what is it the man is saying? He is saying basically that he is alone. And he can’t do what he wants to do on his own. He needs a companion. He doesn’t respond to Jesus’ question directly with a yes/no, but instead states the immediate problem: he has no one else to put him into the pool when the water is stirred up, and because he has no one else he misses his opportunity for healing.
This pool at Bethsaida was believed to have healing powers, and the healing took place when the water was stirred up intermittently. Well, the man says, by the time he’s on his way, someone steps ahead of him. What he is telling Jesus is that his need is not to be healed, no he doesn’t ask for something so unimaginable, but he asks for company. A relationship. Someone to be alongside and to help him. He is marginalised, and kept marginalised, by his relational poverty.
Thankfully for all of us, God gives us so much more than we ask or imagine possible. Even when we don’t answer his question straight, or the one he asks, or we wobble or fret or blurt out all our concerns and circumstances that we can’t manage or imagine beyond……he offers more…. and with the man, he offered him new life. Not just a hand down to the pool, not just a friend alongside, but healing. He says to the man…. stand up, take your mat and walk. As if to say, this is a new life. You’re not going to be coming to back to this place, this way of life. Your future does not depend on that pool, and whether you can get to it, but it depends on me. Here is a life -long relationship, not one that meets an immediate end, but one that gives life in all its fullness, for all eternity.
What Jesus does here with this man in Bethsaida is a vivid sign of the life he brings and offers. But Jesus does not heal all the invalids whom he sees at the pool. As far as we know, this man is the only one. This individual healing of the man is a sign, it is not an instantaneous solution to all health problems, or an alternative to caring for the sick. So, for those of us that consider ourselves Christ’s disciples, that are sent as he was sent, what might the meaning of this sign be for us?
I think it is about active compassion to those who are marginalised, of meeting one another in our humanity as Christ met this man in his. It calls us to see the person, not the problem. To listen to one another, as we know he listens to us. To walk with one another as we have the confidence he walks with us. It calls us into relationships of dignity and respect with one another, as he treats each of us with dignity and respect. And I think it calls us to trust him, to go before us, and to prepare the way not only for us as individuals but with those he calls us to minister to.
In the reading from Acts we heard that Paul had a vision that he deemed to be a direct call from God. It was to go and preach the good news to the people of Macedonia. Paul didn’t then take with him, I don’t think, all that he pre-empted the Macedonians needed. He didn’t spend ages angsting over whether he would be well enough equipped and have everything with him that they needed when he got there. Because he didn’t actually know what they needed, in the same way that we often don’t know what is needed, by the people God calls us to be alongside.
But Paul took what he had: the good news, and the knowledge that Jesus had done for him far more than he asked or imagined. And as he shared that good news in the place God had called him, Lydia responded, opening up the community to Paul and his travellers, inviting them into her home and their life and their community. It would be easy to think this was due to Paul’s persuasive delivery, and that people’s drawing close to the Lord is on us, our responsibility, failure or success……based on how we do. But it is clear this is God’s work: It says that the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly. The lord had paved the way. The Lord had called Paul to Macedonia and was at work in those people, and that place, way before Paul got there.
And in the same way, we can have confidence that God is already at work in our lives, in the places he calls us to go, and in the people he calls us to share the good news with. We don’t always know what they need, just as we can’t always know or imagine what God might want to give us, but god knows and god goes ahead…..and when we get there…to the people and places he has calls us to go to, just as Jesus did with the man at Bethsaida, we can ask them, and we can listen and in asking and listening, in meeting them in their humanity, we can show our love, and his, for them. Just as he has shown his love for us. Amen.