"The Grave Robber: The Third Miracle” - John 5: 1-9

The story in today’s text is one of my favorites in the Gospel of John. Jesus encounters a man who hasn’t been able to walk for 38 years and asks him one simple but life-changing question: “Do you want to be made well?”

We are now in the second week of our sermon series based on Mark Batterson’s book The Grave Robber, about how Jesus takes what Satan has made us think is impossible and makes it possible again. 

The man we encounter in today’s text certainly would think that his healing seems unlikely at best, impossible at worst, in the face of his circumstances. The average male in the ancient world Jesus inhabited lived to be 38. If you lived past the age of 2, the average age was 40. He was seemingly nearing the end of his life, even at the age of 38, and he had never walked. It would seem that he would want to walk, he had positioned himself in the place where waters that were said to be able to heal when the water was stirred, but he himself never made it into the waters. Perhaps seeing other people make it the water before him crushed his hopes, for now he was around the water simply begging, the only way he would have been able to support himself in ancient society. He begged for money, not for healing. 

Enter Jesus. Jesus saw this man laying there and asked him a life-altering question, “do you want to be made well?” But the man didn’t answer him right away. Instead, he started to make excuses, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool. He couldn’t even bring himself to voice his desire for healing, only instead the reason it wasn’t going to happen. 

Do you recognize yourself in the man? I recognize myself in him from time to time. Jesus is trying to offer us something beautiful and instead of claiming it, we simply say that it is impossible. Or Jesus offers us a life-changing opportunity, but we don’t take it because others say that we aren’t good enough or others have told us not to take the risk. But, brothers and sisters, this miracle story proclaims that Jesus can make the impossible, possible in our lives.

One of the staple books of my childhood was The Little Engine that Could. Published in the 1930s, perhaps many of our children or grandchildren have had this book on their shelves as well. In fact, it was name one of the Top 100 Books of All Time by a poll of teachers. The story tells of a long train that needed to be pulled over a mountain. Train after Train was asked to do so, but each had an excuse as to why it couldn’t. Finally, a small engine agreed to try. As the train kept slowly pulling the larger train up the mountain and onto the other side, it kept repeating “I think I can” until finally it celebrated making it safely to the destination with the phrase “I thought I could.”

I don’t think we need a world where we keep trying things on our own, but I do think we need a world where the church picks up a new refrain, inspired by The Little Engine that Could, “I think Christ can!” Mark Batterson writes about prayer, “If you assume the answer is no, you don’t even give God a chance to say ‘yes’”. Its as if we have given up believing how big our God is, brothers and sisters! We need to start believing that Christ can in our lives and in the lives of others, lest we become a group of Christians who simply make excuses. 

Some of you are aware that one of my brothers coaches swimming for elementary and middle school students for the YMCA. We were talking about some of his swimmers that are improving in leaps and bounds and he reminded me that it took those kids years to get to the point where they are improving like they are now. He noted that we live in a world where parents want their kids to be naturally good at a sport, so after 2 or 3 years if the student isn’t developing the way the parent thinks they should, they jump ship and try the next sport, and the next, and the next. But it takes time to get to the point where you develop the muscles and skills to swim well. Or play the piano well. Or be able to dance ballet in pointe shoes. But too many people give up quickly because they aren’t perfect 100 percent of the time, at an early age. We wouldn’t have any skilled athletes or performers if everyone would have this mindset - for no one hits a homerun all the time. Yet, isn’t that exactly how some of us treat prayer? We pray once or twice for something and if it didn’t turn out exactly how we wanted it to, we give up. Sometimes trying another one or two times to pray about something else, sometimes not praying for anything again for a long time. 

Here is a man who has not been able to walk for 38 years - almost a lifetime for him. How many times do you think he cried out to God for a miracle? Yet, it wasn’t God's timing yet. On this day, this Sabbath day, Jesus chose to heal the man and he had so given up hope for a miracle that he didn’t even recognize what he was being offered. 

Two years ago one of the District Superintendents in our Annual Conference, Rev. Beth Jones, preached on this particular passage of scripture, but related it to the church. She stated that God is asking the church if we want to be healed, but sometimes all we could offer were a list of excuses. What if we started to believe again that the seemingly impossible becomes possible with Christ, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of the local church as well? What if we wanted to live and serve Jesus Christ so badly that we were willing to change just about anything in order to glorify God? 

We cannot change all of our circumstances, but sometimes we need to change our spiritual routines. In today’s passage the man was going about his daily routine, begging outside of the city gates. Probably most people passed him by, but perhaps a few people a day would speak to him. What if he would have ignored Jesus like he had probably ignored questions from others before? What if he wouldn’t had been willing to even try what Jesus was asking of him - to pick up his mat and walk? 

Do we want to get well Church, both as a whole and as individuals? If the answer is no, then we should simply keep on doing what we are doing, making excuses like the man by the pool. But if we truly want to be made well, we need to be willing to take a step of faith, that just might, with God’s help, turn into running and leaping and praising God! There were all sorts of laws pertaining to the Sabbath and that man probably broke most of them that day, as he went walking all around because he was healed. Because he could with God’s help!

What about you? Where have you told God that it is impossible in your life to be healed? Where is God just waiting to work the possible? Not in our timing, but in God’s! Amen.