Something I’ve Never Seen Before (non-Psalm reflection on a squirrel with a watermelon cookie)

...and a story of Jesus from John 5

I’m taking a step away from the Psalms for today because of some things that I’ve never seen before - one walking around in real life and another from a passage in the New Testament.

First, walking around...this. I was walking Scout on Thursday morning around our neighborhood and saw this squirrel.

That is a cookie from the local pastry shop - not a watermelon slice. This photo was in front of one of the locations of a local montessori school and likely the cookie was dropped by a now-sad child whose parent said that since the cookie fell, it was not to be picked up (come on, 5 second rule!). This was also at about 7:15am, so props to that parent getting their kid a cookie at 7:15am! Anyway... This was a sight I have never seen before -a squirrel with a (nearly) full size heavily frosted cookie. I can only imagine the sugar rush going through that tiny animal body if it ate the whole thing. Yowsa.

Here’s the thing. I was honestly out looking this morning for something I had never seen before and I came across this - prayer answered I guess! I was looking for something I had never seen before because I saw something in John 5:1-9 that I hadn’t seen before. (side note - I am preaching on that passage this coming Sunday in the congregation I serve).

In preparing for a sermon, a reality emerges some weeks that there are multiple sermons in one passage but only one can be shared on Sundays. This week was one of those weeks. The sermon on Sunday is going to center on the physical healing that takes place in the story but there’s another aspect to the story that I also feel is important to share and is the new thing that I hadn’t seen before. Here’s a link to the John passage in case you need a refresher about it.

First, a bit of background. So, this story comes at after a bunch of other stories in John 2-4 where the author is showing Jesus doing things in the ways that people likely do not expect. At the wedding in Cana (chapter 2), he turns water into wine, thereby having the best wine coming out last (contrary to popular custom). The next story is where John records Jesus coming in and over turning the tables in the temple (and the most vivid and somewhat brutal description of it in all the Gospels - this one has Jesus fashioning a whip to facilitate the clearing). This is followed in John 3 by Jesus being visited by Nicodemus (one of the leading Pharisees) and a conversation where Nicodemus hears things he seemingly has never heard before and seems to truly transform the ways he understands God working in the world. When moving into chapter 4, we come to the story of Jesus having a conversation with the Samartian woman at a well - again something that, by the customs of the day, Jesus shouldn’t have done. And that all leads into the story we read at the pool in Jerusalem in John 5.

One of the things to remember about the Gospel of John is that John has all kinds of symbolism throughout his version of Jesus’ story - more so than the other Gospels. The other Gospels seem to be more concerned with the “just the facts” while John is more on the side of “what does it all mean?”

I find it curious that Jesus comes to the pool where there are a LOT of people there who are in need and he chooses only one to reach out to and heal. I don’t understand why only one person was chosen. I’m also pretty sure that, after the man was healed, there were a lot of others who started calling out to Jesus to do the same for them. Did he? We don’t know - but John’s Gospel doesn’t say he did (or that he didn’t). So, on the one hand we can focus (as we’ll do on Sunday) on the surface of this healing story showing Jesus’ power over this man’s condition.

On the other hand, we can wonder about what deeper meaning might be present. What if this was another story sending a message of “Jesus is doing a new thing” just as the author of John has been showing over and over so far? After all, this man has been at this place for some amount of his 38 years of affliction. He has been trying to do the same thing over and over hoping for a different result - trying to get into the water to be healed. But nothing has changed for him. He is still trying to get healed by getting into a pool that, according to local legend, has very specific healing powers - only the first person in the pool when the water gets stirred up is healed. Does that actually happen? My guess is probably not but instead that something happened at one point and then the legend of the healing pool was born. But still, those who are in need were desperate for something to change their lives.

I wonder if a similar message is underlying this story and the ones that have come before? Most of the stories that have come before this one point to Jesus doing a new thing. They point to traditions that people had held to for generations that Jesus is saying, “maybe not so much anymore.” He overturns a tradition of practices at a wedding. He overturns (literally) practices of buying and selling in the temple court. He overturns understandings of how people relate to and connect with God. He overturns who is called and who is chosen to be leaders in this new movement (calling fishermen to come and follow, for example). He overturns customs that said that Jews shouldn’t talk with Samaritans and that men shouldn’t be alone having a conversation with a woman. And here, he doesn’t even acknowledge the legend of the pool but instead simply asks the man, “Do you want to be made well?” (or maybe better translated - do you want to be made whole?)

And the man’s response? He actually doesn’t answer Jesus’ question but instead talks about how he can never manage to make it to the pool when the water gets stirred up so he has never had the chance to be healed. He is locked into that singular way of thinking and that singular sense of what is possible. I am not criticizing him because I know how pain and struggle can limit imaginative possibilities and narrow vision and perspectives. I know how limited my vision and imagination was during my deepest seasons of struggle in my own life. So I get it - this was his life for 38 years - he understandably cannot see beyond what he has been experiencing for those 38 years. It is only when Jesus steps in and asks that question “do you want to be made whole” that a new possibility begins to emerge.

In my Presbyterian roots, when we ordain people to offices in the church (elders and deacons), one of the questions asked is, “Will you pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?” This is my favorite question of all of the questions asked. It is a beautiful and wholistic question that covers so much but I especially love the imagination part of it. Imagination is seeing something that others might not. Imagination is seeing beyond what is there. Imagination is about possibility. Imagination doesn’t simply see things as the way they are but begins to say, “well, what about this?” Imagination can be playful. It can be improvisational. It can be contagious. It can bring about hope.

The man in the story here seemed to be without hope. And 38 years might do the same for me too. But Jesus comes into the picture with imagination, asking a question and taking an action that points to something new and unexpected.

Generalizing a bit here...In the area that I am very-steeped in, the church, we are kind of like that man at the pool. We have been doing the same things over and over again hoping for different results. We think that the way that we connect with others can be the same today as it was 50, 25, or even 10 years ago. Programs and staffing are often seen as the key pathways toward growth. Build it and they will come is a mentality that is all-too-present. Even our gatherings (often called “worship”) look much the same in many places that they did decades and decades ago (maybe even 500 years ago). I was in an event with other pastors on Wednesday and a conversation came up about “contemporary music” and it was shared that there’s a radio station here in Cincinnati that is essentially “oldies contemporary music.” And our services that are often called “contemporary” are filled with music and practices that are decades old.

At another pastors gathering on Thursday morning, one pastor shared how she isn’t going to serve another church that just wants to do the same old same old that has always been done. In what she shared, I heard a bit of Jesus’ question to this man at the pool... “church, do you want to be made whole?” Our response to that question is too often to quite literally try to go back to the pool once again even though we know it won’t really change anything. And yet Jesus is there, maybe with a sly smile on his face, with imaginative and hopeful possibilities that we can choose to respond to when he says, “Get up, take your mat, and walk.” We can respond by trying to go back to the pool or we can respond by doing the new thing to which Jesus is pointing.

And when we do the new thing, like what happens in the story as it continues beyond verse 9, there will be people who will say, “but that’s not what you’re supposed to do!!!!” If you read verses 10 and on, you’ll see that some of the religious authorities go after the man for breaking the sabbath by carrying his mat and then also go after Jesus for healing someone on the sabbath day. That’s going to happen to us as well as we play with imaginative possibilities and experiments with change or as we ask questions about why we are doing something in a certain way. There will be people who will say, “that’s not how we do this” but Jesus’ response to that is simply, once again, “get up, take your mat, and walk.”

In the tradition in which I am currently serving (United Church of Christ), there’s an often-used saying, “God is still speaking.” As I leave that tradition in the coming weeks to return to a Presbyterian congregation in July, I’m going to keep saying that because it is absolutely true. In the latter part of the larger story of this man at the pool, Jesus himself says something similar. When asked about why he was doing things like healing on the sabbath (gasp!), he says, “My Father is still working, and I also am working,” Sure sounds similar to “God is still speaking” to me!

So, a man healed at an ancient pool. Groups of believers seeking imaginative ways to move forward. And a squirrel eating a watermelon cookie. All of them...something new, imaginative, and hopeful.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

PS - Scout meeting a small slug friend