Getting Un-stuck | 5/25/25

• Reflection Questions

  • Where in your life do you feel “stuck” right now?
    What routines, mindsets, or circumstances feel like they are holding you in place?

  • The man at the pool had a very specific idea of how healing had to happen.
    Are there ways you may be limiting God by expecting healing or answers to come in only one particular form?

  • How do we, as individuals or as a church, sometimes prioritize systems, rules, or traditions over compassion and mercy?
    How can we choose people over policies in a faithful and loving way?

  • The healed man is criticized for carrying his mat on the Sabbath.
    Have you ever experienced criticism for doing something that brought life or healing, just because it didn’t follow others’ expectations?

  • Jesus healed without being asked, without requiring belief, and without judgement. What does this say about the nature of God’s grace?
    How might we live more fully into that kind of grace with others?

Transcript:

Today, for our message, we are in between message series. It’s what we sometimes call around here a “standalone Sunday.” On those Sundays, often the first place I will turn my attention, when we are not focused on a themed series, is to the three-year cycle of readings called the lectionary.

It’s a good practice for preachers to go back to the lectionary sometimes—listen to what we find there, wrestle with the scriptures, and pay attention to what the Spirit might be saying to us all. Today, the gospel passage in the lectionary for this sixth Sunday in Easter is from John, the fifth chapter.

Our scripture reading today is from the fifth chapter of John. I invite you to follow along as I read:

“Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticos. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’

The sick man answered him, ‘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.’

Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat, and walk.’ At once, the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a Sabbath.”

This is the Word of God for the people of God. And God’s people say: Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me?

Come, Holy Spirit, and breathe life into the words that I speak, so that they might carry a word from You into our hearts and lives this morning. Amen.

Thirty-eight years. That’s how long John tells us this man has been sick. I was thinking this past week—I’ve been married for thirty-eight years. Next month, Catherine and I will celebrate our thirty-ninth anniversary.

I was looking back over those thirty-eight years, thinking about how many different moments we’ve gotten to experience—moves to new places, graduate school, ministry shared together, children, our first grandchild more recently, vacations, surprising twists and turns, challenges, more surprising twists and turns. As I look back over those thirty-eight years, there is so much for which I can give enormous thanks.

But our friend in the story today? Not so much. For thirty-eight years, day after day, he has done the same thing. He has laid by the pool, hoping for the day when he could get into the water at the right time and be healed.

Let me give us a little more context here, because the timing was very important—but you might not necessarily know that unless you know the backstory, especially about the missing verse. If you go home today and pull out your Bible and read the beginning of John 5, you’ll likely notice—unless you’re reading from the King James—that there is no verse 4. It skips from verse 3 to verse 5.

Why? Because more current biblical scholarship, based on archaeological digs and other findings, has revealed that the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of John don’t include that verse. It was a later add-on.

But here’s what verse 4 says, because it’s really good context for the story: “Sometimes an angel would come down to the pool and stir up the water. Then the first one going into the water after it had been stirred up was cured of any sickness.”

Now you know why the man—and so many others—wanted to stay close to that pool. So that at the moment the water was stirred up, they might be able to get in. But for this man, day after day—13,870 of them—the day ends in the same disappointment.

What makes a person keep doing the same thing every day for thirty-eight years, hoping for a different result? And how is it possible that in thirty-eight years, no one has seen him and come to his aid?

Fritz Wendt, pastor and theologian, reflecting on this story, reminds us that Bethesda was “a mass of humanity at its lowest point of hopelessness.” After thirty-eight years—13,870 days—does the man even still hope that healing is possible? Or has he just accepted that this is his reality, but stays by the pool “just in case”?

Now, I have to admit—there’s a small part of me that wants to ask the man how he hasn’t found a way to get himself into the water at the right time. After all, he’s been there for thirty-eight years! Surely, he could have positioned himself closer or found someone—anyone—to help. But it’s easy to make assumptions from a distance, isn’t it? To cast judgment when we haven’t lived the experience.

Jesus shows up. He sees the man and initiates the conversation: “Do you want to get well?”

Now, there are stories in the Gospels where someone approaches Jesus looking for healing, looking for hope—in an act of faith, they come and seek him out. But this is not one of those stories. The man does not approach Jesus. Jesus approaches the man and asks him if he wants to get well.

You might think the man would immediately answer, “Yes!” After all, it’s what he’s been hoping for—for thirty-eight years. But he doesn’t know Jesus. He doesn’t recognize the man who asks the question. All he knows is that he hasn’t been able to get into the pool. He is stuck in his thinking that the only pathway to healing is the pool.

Jesus makes no assumptions. He casts no judgment. He doesn’t even require a profession of faith. He simply heals the man: “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” And immediately, the man was well. After thirty-eight years, he picked up his mat and walked.

So imagine for a moment being there, knowing this man’s story, and now—for the first time—he is walking away. What’s your reaction?

Flabbergasted? Hopefully we’re all saying, “Praise God! Hallelujah! What a miracle!” And the story ends with everyone rejoicing and living happily ever after… right?

Except, that’s not the way the story ends.

Maybe you noticed the last line I read: “Now that day was the Sabbath.” And you might think, “Even better! What a great way to spend a Sabbath—someone got healed!” But some of you also remember what you’ve heard about Sabbath: the laws, the rules, the regulations.

As the man walks away, perhaps lost in thought about how different life might now be, a group of people tries to get his attention. “Hey, it’s the Sabbath! You can’t carry your mat!”

That’s in the scripture. That’s the reaction he got—from people who watched him walk away for the first time in thirty-eight years. “You can’t carry your mat on the Sabbath.”

“But the man who healed me told me to…”

“What man told you to pick up your mat and walk?”

And the interrogation goes on. Those watching are stuck in their mindset, unable to rejoice that a member of their community has been made well.

Later, when they learn who healed him, they turn their attention to shutting Jesus down. All because he chose to heal on the Sabbath.

In response to this, professor and theologian Dale O’Dea says, “The defense of the Sabbath law in this story is the defense of an entire system of ordering life and religious practice.” Jesus operates outside that system. His action brings healing and hope to the man—but makes others so angry they want to kill him.

So the story raises a question: Is it more right to keep a law—in this case, Sabbath—or for a man to be made well?

Perhaps this story calls for some reflection in our own time: about what and who is considered legal or illegal—and what we should do about it.

Jesus models the pathway of mercy. His compassion disrupts the system as he offers a different solution than the one the man and the community assumed was the only answer.

So as you hear this story, where do you find yourself in it? Where do you need to get unstuck?

Are you the one stuck in how you think healing can happen in your life? Are you the one stuck in thinking how healing must happen for someone else—and who deserves it? Are you the one stuck in thinking the system is more important to uphold than the people?

Stuck thinking ripples in all of us—and keeps us from experiencing the gift of community that God has in mind for all of God’s children.

And then Jesus comes along. Without assumptions. Without judgment.

He looks at each of us and says, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.”

Will you?

Would you pray with me?

O God, open our ears to hear, our eyes to see, our hearts to be molded and shaped by You—so that we might bear witness to Your love as gifts to one another and to the world. Amen.