Getting Unstuck

Have you ever been stuck?

Have you ever faced an obstacle so daunting you just couldn't see your way around it?

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 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.' - John 5:1-7

Today's Gospel reading is a familiar one.  Not only have we encountered this crippled man before in this story, but we have encountered people like him on the street, people who are stuck.

Perhaps we have been like him as well.

There are many ways to get stuck.  Like this man, we could accept our situation and believe we are powerless to change it ourselves, that we need help from someone else.  We could be correct, or we could be convinced by the facts, facts which may never have been proven wrong.

In the story, Jesus tells the man to get up, and the man stands, picks up his mat and walks.

Having spent so many years without exercising the muscles in his legs, he should not have been able to do that.  It is a miracle, we say.  Any time we can propel ourselves forward against all reason and understanding, we are left with no other explanation.  It has to be miraculous.

But Jesus shows us that those miracles are alive in us as seeds of faith.  It doesn't take much, he tells us, to get heaven and earth to move.  We just have to have faith.

But that isn't good news, is it?

The cynic within wags his head and says, "So, it's my fault?  If I am not sured, healed, made whole, if I remain stuck, I am to blame for not having faith?"

It is easier to believe the miracles are solely the work of Jesus, rather than have to accept that we play a part in them at all.  But the fact remains that the man could have said, "I can't.  I have been crippled too long.  There is no way my legs can hold me.  I will fall if I try."

Perhaps if the man had said that, Jesus would have offered a hand to help him up, but I am not so sure.  I think the message here is a lot tougher than that.

I think we sometimes fail to help someone stand on his own two feet by offering him too much help, rather than not enough.  If I lift you up and you have no faith in your own ability to stand, I have to continue to hold you, to steady you, to guide you as you take those steps.  Then, I too become stuck.

So many of our social programs are structured this way, offering assistance rather than building support.  The real support comes from within.  Drawing on the strength of God in the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, we can do amazing things, but we have to get unstuck first.

So, what is it that is holding us back, keeping us down?  What weight is burdening our shoulders?

Remember what Jesus said, "For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light."

More to come...