The Risk of Life
Preached at St Paul's Heaton Moor May 16th 2004 [Rogation Sunday]
John 5 1-9

Today's Gospel reading is, for me, nothing short of amazing.
I am quite literally dumbfounded when I read this text.
It is an extraordinary story about an extraordinary encounter.

Here we find ourselves by a pool of water near to one of the gateways into Jerusalem.
We may imagine it how we like, really.
Quite ornate with its five porticos or archways, with steps going down into the water.
Perhaps like something rather grand you'd find in a fine National Trust garden.
Or perhaps more like a natural feature, cut out of the living rock, with slippery ledges, uneven - quite dangerous.
Or else more like a pond with sloping sides where the sheep going into the city for slaughter could pause for a final fateful drink.

But a pool of water - very ancient, with stories about its magical healing properties going back generations.
A pool where, every so often, little eddies and whirlpools appeared unannounced,
(like those bubbles you see in streams when the fish dart up to take a passing fly).

A pool of water around which gathered the sick, those with bad backs and aching muscles,
those with fevers and internal diseases,
those who couldn't afford the doctors,
those who suffered from long-term illnesses for which there were no known cures - however good the doctors were:
the hopeless cases, the forgotten ones, those abandoned by all decent law-abiding folk,
those whose only solace lay in a swift and merciful death.

And one man in particular - just one of the many there as Jesus passed.
One of the nameless ones who had spent his life hoping for the impossible.
38 years of waiting, of lying there, of dashed hopes when the crowd stampeded to get into the pool
when the breath of God stirred the waters.
38 years - a wasted life. 38 years - and a hopeless future stretching out into a living nightmare. 38 years - just imagine!

The story is a wonderfully simple one.
Jesus passes by and - perhaps he recognised him from before , perhaps he spoke to him on a whim,
perhaps he was the only one there, it being the sabbath -
Jesus passes by and says: ' Do you want to be made well?'
The man is flustered and doesn't answer. Instead he goes on about the crowd and the stampede and that all his friends have given up and left him there, so he can never get down to the water.......

' Do you want to be made well?'

Confronted by the question: so obvious, so long awaited, so sudden, so simple: the man is speechless.
Quite unexpectedly, his one desire is there before him.
Never mind that it's not how it should be, there are no eddies in the pool now,
Never mind that it's this odd preacher asking him, teasing him? taunting him?
his one desire is there before him.
There for the taking. Just reach out. Just say YES! And the nightmare is over.

' Do you want to be made well?'

Then Jesus says - stand up. Stand up. Pick up your mattress and walk. Go on. Get out of here.
Go and show yourself to those friends of yours who abandoned you....

And the man does so. He stands - and finds himself to be healed.
Extraordinary. Even for a sabbath.

Now all this is hard work for us.
Hard work because we are sons and daughters of the rational world we live in.
Hard work because we are sons and daughters of the Sadducees - we don't really believe in resurrection
Hard work because we are children of the church: a church that has come to traffic only in small time truth
a church that has forgotten the big picture about the way God is, and about what Jesus proclaims
a church that prefers to think about the inconsequential, unimportant, trivial, banal, boring things.
Today we have before us a story that announces to us that, despite all our hard-earned knowledge,
the management of our lives is still completely outside our control.

Here we have an incident that announces the extraordinary possibility that we have forgotten what God is all about.

Here we have a 'miracle', we call it, an 'odd thing', a thing that goes against all we know about nature.

Here we have the tale of a man, just like us, who cannot believe his ears, or his eyes, or his senses, or his mind.
The story of a man who is, like us, dumbfounded and confused by the offer of unexpected life.
The story of a man who witnesses in his own unspecial life - the resurrection power of God battering at his door.
The resurrection power of God breaking in, unfolding itself, touching the flesh-and-blood life of a human being.

We live in a world that seems full of threats, real and actual.
The threat of terrorism,
the threat of global warfare, of environmental disaster, of the uncertainty of GM foodstuffs, of unemployment, illness, misfortune;
threats of every size and shape and proportion.

And we clutch at straws that will guarantee our future security: we invest in pensions and insurance, we play the stock exchange, we spend money on lotteries and scratch cards, we bury ourselves in over work and some of us work hard at getting to heaven.

And all the while we find ourselves unable to see the one threat that really should concern us.
The threat of life.
The threat of life that God holds out to us. To each and all of us.

The threat of God's power for life.
The threat of God's resurrection power that counters the vicious cycles of death.
A power that will not be overcome, denied or resisted - as our nameless 38 year old discovers that day by the pool.
A power that is not just for the pages of the Bible - but alive and well and out there and in here among us. Even us!

God's power for life is not a religious fantasy.
It's not just for biblical days.
It's not just for charismatic churches, or evangelical churches or for churches that are popular and packed to the doors.
It's for churches like this one - churches at the crossroads,
churches open to the future,
churches half-full with room for growing,
churches seeking to worship God with a quiet dignity and a love for the community.

God's power for life is real - and the threat of it, the offer of it, the gift of it
is always there, before us, without our grasp even.
Just believe it, reach up and take it in your hands.
Even on a sabbath.
Today.

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