Edgewood United Church

United Church of Christ

May 13, 2007         Edgewood United Church UCC            Rev. Karen E. Gale

Jersey Barriers
Acts 16:6-15
John 5:1-9

In that we all live in Michigan, it would be silly to ask you if you know anything about road construction. However, do you know what those large cement sort-of pyramidal shaped lane dividers around construction sites are called? They are called “Jersey barriers” because they were designed by Hoboken University researchers in New Jersey in the 50’s after police observed the effects of car wrecks and rollovers. They are called Jersey barriers everywhere but in the state of New Jersey where they are called lane dividers. Their purpose is to keep traffic separated and prevent worse accidents by slowing or keeping upright vehicles that crash into the barriers. (Basics of Concrete Barriers, by Charles F. McDevitt)

All of us in Michigan are really familiar with Jersey barriers. It can feel like we are surrounded by them. Sometimes I feel I will never be able to leave my home and drive toward the hospital and down Pennsylvania without negotiating a Jersey barrier maze.

Barriers are featured in today’s scripture in the travels of Paul as well as the response of the man waiting by the pools of Beth-zatha.

The first question is, does God put up barriers? Our Acts text says that God does put up barriers. Paul and the apostles “went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.”

I’m not sure what I think about this. When Paul says he couldn’t go to Asia what does that mean. Then he couldn’t preach in Bithynia because the spirit of Jesus did not allow it. Do I believe this? Do I believe that God so specifically and purposefully directed Paul where to go and not go? Do I believe that the Spirit of Jesus was so present and directive? I’m not sure.

But I do think we have experiences that make us consider if God is redirecting us. Experiences that make us wonder if, in moments when we are open to the Spirit, that God does put up blocks in our path.

I hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail after graduating from college. This involved long slogs through the woods and often very little in terms of creature comforts. To reach a shelter, one of the series set along the trail, was wonderful for it offered a roof over one’s head and a latrine.

I remember one hot day I was set to walk off the trail down the half mile path to a shelter. It had been a long day and I was looking forward to a roof over my head for the night. I turned and walked 50 feet down the path and started to get the strangest feeling: an uncomfortable feeling, a feeling of wrongness. I thought to myself that this was silly and so I kept going. Then I saw a very large snake. Again I felt just wrong in my gut. But I continued on and saw three more snakes, probably the only ones I saw the whole three months I was hiking. (I don’t know why I needed to see four snakes, Moses only needed one!) I stopped again. And then, feeling distinctly like I was receiving a message, and despite my great weariness, I walked back up to the trail and kept hiking along until I found another place to camp for the night.

It wasn’t until months later that I learned that the shelter I was trying to hike to was the one where two women had been brutally murdered several years before. The killer was never found. Not that I necessarily think I would have come to harm, but still. There was a definite experience of something, some Spirit, some force, some presence, telling me not to head down there. The Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the presence of God. I don’t know. But I sure don’t have any other more plausible explanation either. The message I felt was as or more powerful than a line of Jersey barriers stretching across the path.

So I give Paul the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps God was guiding him away from danger or urging him on toward a place where his words of ministry would grow. Perhaps we do serve a God who can sometimes place a hand in front of us, making a barrier to the path we have chosen.

We read in Acts that Paul has a dream that he is to go to Macedonia, what is now northern Greece. (Philippi was settled as a “Roman colony” when veterans from a battle in 42 BC were granted land there.) He reaches Macedonia and looks to find the religious community there. He finds a gathering of women by the river where they meet to pray. One of them is Lydia. Lydia sells purple cloth which was a luxury item. Lydia would have been quite wealthy. She is moved by Paul’s message of Jesus and the resurrection. She listens and then presses hospitality upon him. And so begins the church in Europe.

Paul was led to someone who was ready and willing to hear the message, and with resources to lend. Crossing barriers of upbringing, culture and gender, Paul is led to connect and plant the seeds of Christ’s message in a new land.

God knows, as we know, that there must be willingness in order for barriers to be crossed. Willingness to listen to something new, willingness to risk, willingness to give up something, willingness to be healed. And that leads us to today’s gospel text.

Jesus has gone Jerusalem for a religious festival. He arrives at the pools of Bethzatha, also called Bethsada or Bethsaida which our gospel writer John describes as having five porticoes or covered areas or walkways, an important architectural feature in a desert climate.

These pools were known for having miraculous healing powers. But what exactly happened there is both under dispute and a mystery. What you can’t tell from your scripture in your bulletin this morning is that the passage from John this morning, chapter 5 verses 1 through 9, is actually incomplete. You actually don’t have verse four in the text in front of you. Why not?

Well to make a very long story short, the Bible has been translated and retranslated many times and often scholars go back to the oldest surviving copies of books as they are the most reliable. The oldest copies of our the gospel of John do not have verse four. It was added sometime after the gospel was written around 110 CE and before 220 CE. [None of the best and most ancient manuscripts have these words which accordingly, have not been retained in the A.R.V. On the other hand, Tertullian (about 145-220 A.D.) already shows that he knows this passage; for he states:“An angel, by his intervention, was wont to stir the pool at Bethsaida. They who were complaining of ill health used to watch for him; for whoever was the first to descend into these waters, after his washing ceased to complain’ (On Baptism V).”238]

The mystery verse is found in some translations right after the description of the invalids lying around the pool. Verse four says that “they were waiting for the stirring of the water for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had.” 

Aha! These people were waiting for the angel to show up and stir the pool giving it miraculous healing powers. Then they could push and shove each other out of the way to get to the pool first and be healed.

But wait a minute. As Rev. Robert Deffinbaugh says, “here is something very bizarre, very unusual (dare I say “troubling”?) about this “miracle.” Does God really heal someone because he can push and shove and bully his way into the pool first?
Suddenly, the waters of the pool begin to boil, or bubble, or froth in some way, and pandemonium breaks out. Only one person will be healed per “stirring”—the first one into the pool. Every ailing person there at the pool is in competition with the rest of the multitude who are also hoping for a healing. If and when the waters are actually troubled, no one dares to tell anyone else, for fear they might reach the pool first.

“Can you imagine the pushing, shoving, and tripping that takes place as every ailing person desperately strives to be the first into the water? What chaos there would be! And then, even if one person was healed, it would not be the most needy person, because the one with the smallest ailment would be the most likely one to reach the pool first. The most needy person would be the least likely to get into the water first. Therefore, the least needy would probably be the one cured, while all the rest struggle to get out of the pool, get back to their “stations,” and await their next chance.” (Robert Deffinbaugh, bible.com)

Doesn’t sound very much like what we expect from a God of love to me.

In some ways sounds an awful lot like our current health care system. The folks with the best advocates, the wealthiest, the least sick, get the best care….while others wait and suffer and often die of treatable diseases. But that’s another sermon for another day.

So if there is no angel, what’s up with the pools? What some scholars have thought is that
“the pool of Bethesda, like many similar pools in the Jerusalem area, is an intermittent spring. At times water is released in surges from hidden reservoirs in the hills around the city, causing these springs to rise and fall suddenly.” (William Loader) Hence the bubbling water and stirring of the pool. And perhaps this bubbling source, perhaps also laden with minerals, could have been of benefit to some folks with arthritis or other maladies that do find ease from that kind of treatment. Sort of an early hydrotherapy or godly hot tub.

But there is one man who has been there for 38 years and has not been healed. He cannot get to the pools. Someone always gets there first. It is an insurmountable barrier.

But let’s back up for a moment. When Jesus arrives he goes and talks to this one man. Why him? Why this one person? Why offer healing to this one and not all the others? Could it be this man had an openness, a willingness that Jesus could see or sense? Could it be Jesus just wanted to do a random healing that day? Could it be Jesus only had enough energy to heal one person before slipping away again? Could it be great compassion for a man who had suffered for so, so many years? We don’t know.

Jesus approaches him, knows he has been there a long time, and asks the man “do you want to be made well?” Do you want to be made well? It seems like an obvious question. Of course he does or why else would he be here at the pools.

Do you want to be made well? On second thought, Jesus’ question is a deep and potentially difficult one.

This man has lived his years as someone unable to engage in regular life at that time in history. He has not been able to provide for his family, assuming he has one. He has not been allowed in the temple (no one with any disability was). He would have been reduced to begging, or a charity case. For thirty eight years, most of his life, his world was narrowed to lying in wait for a miracle of someone helping him into the pool at the right miraculous time.

Do you want to be made well? Does he? Would you? It is not an easy question. There would be just as many, if not more, barriers in his life if he was healed. Restarting his life, finding work, always being seen as an outsider, leaving the sanctuary that had been his home for so long. How had the world changed in all that time?

Do you want to be made well?
The man does not answer Jesus’ question. He says “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.” The man says his barrier is that he doesn’t have any help. How could he possibly manage himself? “No one will help me. I can’t do it.” But he never answers Jesus’ question: do you want to be made well?

Jesus responds to him, “stand up, take your mat and walk.” Then we wait. In this pause, truly the most dramatic moment in the story, the long, long moment of silence between what Jesus says and what the man decides to do, we wait to see what will happen. Can he reach around the barriers of life over these last 38 years, to hear what Jesus is saying to him? Can he believe and stand up? Does he want to?

The man by the pool could have just as easily said to Jesus, “how can I possibly walk having been here these 38 years.” Or “I don’t have anyone to help me stand up.” Or “I am too afraid to hope for healing after all these years of disappointment.” Or “I am just happy with the way my life is right now.” Jesus gives the man the choice. This is important. Jesus doesn’t just randomly heal people without their permission. He asks. Do you want to be made well? A hard question.

Rachel Naomi Remen shares this story about her father. “For many years I tried to persuade my father to buy a new living room couch. Year after year, the old green couch grew shabbier and shabbier. Finally I was no longer safe to sit on. Embarrasses, I told Dad that I had ordered a new couch from Macy’s by phone. I was sending a photograph of it for their approval. If they liked it, it would be delivered by Friday. They loved it.

“Saturday I called. How did it look? Shamefacedly, my father told me he had canceled the order. It turned out that he didn’t know what to do with the old couch. I suggested calling Macy’s and telling them to take it away. He told me they didn’t do that in New York. Then how about the Salvation Army? Apparently they only took away thinks they could still sell. With a sinking heart, I suggested looking in the yellow pages for someone who does hauling. But Dad didn’t want a stranger to know how to get into his home.

“Finally I was silenced. My father, unaccustomed to letting go of anything, could not find his way to accepting my gift. Several years later, in the night, the old couch collapsed in on itself. It stood in the living room that way until my father died and I brought my mother to live with me.” (Kitchen Table Wisdom)

Do you want to be made well?

What will the man do? Is there willingness to be healed?

At last, the man stands, picks up his mat and walks. He walks. He walks right through the barriers of doubt and tradition. He walks through the barriers of fear and change. He walks through the barriers of despair and what his life used to be. He stands, picks up his mat and walks.

Do you want to be made well?

There are many barriers in our lives. Some are outside of our control. Some are within our own hearts. I know that not all people are cured, but all people can be healed. I know that sometimes our best plans fall apart, and I do think sometimes God desperately calls to us, “wait, no, don’t go that way.”

Through the power of the Spirit as Paul talks about it, barriers can arise in our lives, sending us on another way, like the wise men seeking an alternative way home. And through the power of Jesus Christ, some barriers can finally fall, leading to healing and hope and reconciliation in our lives and the lives of those around us.

Not all barriers can be crossed. There must be willingness. Willingness to risk, and willingness to heal. Willingness to let go of the past and to trust in a different future. Willingness to release what scares us with a faith in God’s ability to catch us and not let us fall.

Not all barriers can be crossed. Sometimes the message we still get is “no.” A no from others who refuse our offers of help. A no from those who will not release past grudges and accept our confession or our forgiveness. And sometimes even God says no, not that way.

I believe in a God who watches over us and is sometimes able to reach us with messages of hope, of warning, and of love.  I believe in the power of Jesus to heal our lives, through forgiveness, through hope, through peace. I believe in the power of the Spirit to bring us together in community and through our togetherness heal us individually and spur us to heal a hurting world.

There are some times, sometimes too few, when the Jersey barriers are taken away, and we have an open road ahead of us. Even in Michigan. Amen.