We are tricked into believing we cannot take up our mats and walk

Easter 6-C May 9, 2010
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9

We here at St. Paul’s, Brockton, are the beneficiaries of the imperial reach of the Church of England. This was an English colony, yes, long ago, but also were Jamaica and Trinidad and Nigeria and Kenya and Ghana. The Church of England marched over the globe with the British Empire, and a lot of those global Anglicans have ended up right here! Along with the wonderful parts of the faith – the robust, universal things that people from cultures all over the globe took into their hearts and languages and made their own – the music, the customs, the traditions from many different places that now define “Anglicanism” – the Church of England also exported some peculiar and quaint customs – customs that may have made sense in England’s “green and pleasant land,” where the seasons change and the crops are planted and harvested on the calendar of the northern hemisphere. Today is one of those quaint customs: Rogation Sunday, when in “merry olde England” prayers were asked at the time of the spring planting of the crops. In the Anglican churches of the southern hemisphere, or in countries around the equator, is this the time to plant crops? Probably not. But here, today, we in this same northern hemisphere, are in the season of planting, and so we pray to God for a good yield. We sing hymns that assure us that God has made the earth, and the earth brings us health and wealth and beauty and joy.

The lessons are not “Rogation” lessons but they are full of the abundance of God’s creation. Healing and abundance often go together in the Gospel. “Being sick” is often a social disease – a social condition. The sick person is out of whack with his or her surroundings, cast out of the family, the normal social dealings of town or city. It’s like they say in AA: some are sicker than others. The sick person is truly the pariah, the untouchable, the one no one can help because he cannot help himself.

The man in the gospel story today has no idea who Jesus is. He does not ask to be healed. He declares no faith in this Jesus, no recognition that this one is the Son of God – nothing. All we know about the man is that he is trapped in his infirmity. He cannot get to the pool in time to take advantage of the healing waters. The “less sick” people crowd out this “truly sick” person, and shockingly, there is just not enough healing to go around.

Is that not the case in the world we live in? The truly sick have no access – isn’t that the mantra? No access to health care, to jobs, to decent housing. They have no way to get to see their families or to go home or to take care of their own affairs. We know people like that. We have all been people like that, at one time or another in our lives.

It’s no lie: in a society like ours we are tricked into believing there is not enough to go around. We are tricked into believing that if we don’t hustle our butts over to that pool at one of the rare times the waters are ready to heal us, then we will get nothing. We are tricked into believing that we are defined by our addiction, or our disability, or by the people who do not like us, or do not understand us, or who somehow conspire to keep us down. We are tricked into believing we have no dignity, cannot stand up for ourselves, can never, in any countless number of ways, take up our own mats and walk.

God has other ideas for us. In this city of God where we live, this new Jerusalem, this new heaven and new earth, the light of God shines from the center, life-giving water flows from crystal fountains, providing all people and all nations with healing and with abundant fruit of every kind: a true Rogation-tide of blessing and fertility.

When Jesus asks the man, “Do you want to be made well?” he rips asunder all those lies and deceptions and traps and tricks that make us think there is not enough to go around. Jesus heals the man without the pool, without the lines, without a green card or a social security number. Jesus does not require that the man have a sponsor or an appointment or a college degree. “Take up your bed and walk,” Jesus says. It is the Sabbath. God’s work breaks all the rules, even God’s own rules that people have been following faithfully. Jesus heals on the Sabbath, on God’s sacred time. In this new Jerusalem, there is always enough to go around: enough healing, enough time, enough life.

In this holy Rogationtide, come and be fed. Feel the clean air on your face and dig deeply into the fertile earth. Do not believe any of those tricks that there is not enough of anything to go around, for all of these gifts are God’s to give, and God’s alone. Take up your mat and walk. This is the new Sabbath.