Finding or being found?

Read: John 5:1-9

 

Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 5, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin

 

Where is the Good News in this story?

It would not be good news if we think that we have found the correct technique for self-help.

We just cannot find it by ourselves, no matter how carefully we look.

The Good News is that God comes to sinners, to the crippled, to those who are terribly needy, including those who don't even recognize how needy they truly are, the ones who don't have the vaguest idea of how to help themselves, who maybe couldn't help themselves even if they had an idea how to go about doing it.

We call this grace.

It is amazing, this gift of God, whenever and wherever it is granted.

 

I attended a funeral a month ago.

No, it wasn't a funeral, but a memorial service.

No, not even that; it was a memorial event, in a former Moose hall.

A parade of speakers told of how brave the deceased was, and how much the deceased would be missed.

The local bicycle club members vowed to toast her memory whenever they passed a certain pub.

And then the local Buddhist came in, never having met the deceased or family, and said that he thought that the deceased was on a search for something.

He rang his bell to cleanse the air, wanted the group to breathe in and out together; and then proceeded to misuse several Bible passages.

But in this entire sad event, there was not one word of hope, not one good word about the Lord Jesus, nothing of the resurrection.

It was all about what the deceased had been able to do once, or was trying to do, but could do no longer.

She was seeking, but had not found; her search was over and not successful.

It was profoundly sad.

I escaped from there as quickly as I decently could.

 

A good person, with many admirable qualities, seeking, but not finding.

She is like much of modern society.

Of course there is one part of this that is good; on one level we do need to take responsibility for a number of things about our lives, and cannot slough them off onto someone else or onto the government.

[When I first typed that word I made an interesting typo: “givernment.”]

 

And so as we look at the Gospel lesson this morning, one might ask if the man really wants to be healed.

Is his response to Jesus delivered with a whine? “I don't have anyone to help me get down into the water and so someone else always arrives first.”

So we want to know if he really deserves to be healed.

Wait! We know we're on the wrong track with those thoughts and questions; for if the healing were something he deserved it would no longer be grace, would it? but rather a pay-off.

 

So let's back up and come at it from a slightly different way.

The gathering of accurate information and the sharing of that information are worthy things.

The dangers of drugs, alcohol, & tobacco, bike riding without a helmet, epinephrine shots for those having allergic reactions, defensive driving techniques, green leafy vegetables, C2H4OH [antifreeze]

We want to have accurate information about all of those subjects, and we ought to share that information widely with all who need to know.

But just because a person has accurate information does not mean that the person will act appropriately on that information.

Every child in America has heard about the dangers of drug use, and still they are being bought and sold in every high school and maybe every middle school even in this area.

Every adult knows what the commandments say about bearing false witness and we remember Luther's explanation that stresses that we should interpret our neighbor's words and actions in the kindest possible way....and we don't do that.

We could say similar things about each of the commandments.

Having information isn't enough.

The human will to do what is in accord with the best information is weak and flawed.

We're in a mess when we depend upon ourselves, especially when we think that we are so smart.

 

And we're not going to find God, especially on our own terms.

We want God to be safe, domesticated, at our beck and call and not in our way the rest of the time.

Kind of like the fairy-tale genie that one summons to solve the difficult situations and otherwise stays out of the picture.

The Lord God won't stand for that kind of treatment.

 

St. Augustine dabbled in various philosophies and with various god-substitutes  and was unsatisfied when the Lord God finally caught hold of him, got him to read a key passage in Paul's letter to the Romans, and through that reading began to confront him with his presence.

Augustine didn't find God; God finally got through to Augustine.

 

Just as Augustine was surprised by God in the 4^th century, CS Lewis was surprised by God in the 20^th century.

He had been running away from the church for years.

He hated everything about it from his childhood, from his experiences in WWI,and from his schooling which was politely skeptical.

He read this and that, but didn't find  satisfaction and didn't find God.

And then one day in 1931 he wrote that God broke through to him.

He writes: ...whenever  my mind lifted even for a second from my work, I felt the stead unrelenting approach of the God whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.

That which I feared came upon me.

I gave in, admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed.

Perhaps that night I was the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.

Completely surprised by God.

In the book that CS Lewis wrote that mentions this incident, people look in vain for other incidents from which one could track influences, etc.

There are none.

He did not attend some conference on “having a more meaningful life” or some other such trigger.

God simply chose him as he was riding in a motorcycle sidecar one day, as ridiculous as that sounds.

 

And God chose Paul and thew him to the ground to get his attention, and set him on a very different path.

And God chose Lydia and “opened her heart” to listen to Paul, and thus changed the course of an entire community.

And God chooses us; some of us when we were so small we don't remember anything earlier and others of us later on.

We who are so used to thinking only in terms of our accomplishments and all the wonderful things that we have earned and deserve must come to a full halt.

The call of God and the gifts of God are neither earned nor deserved.

Willliam Willimon says it well:

“Only God knows the self I'm meant to be.

Only God knows the self I shall be, by God, become.

Only God can give me a self worth having.

And God does, in those surprising moments, when we are proceeding down our accustomed ruts, just busy looking after ourselves, and there is, as if out of nowhere, a summons, and we know that we have been cornered, and we mutter in astonishment, 'So, it was you all along.'”

 

God has already come after us in Holy Baptism, and he will be looking to renew that call in our lives in as many inventive ways as he can imagine and we can grasp.

What Good News!  What great news!

Of that we can be sure, because Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.  Amen.