\

FATTO TS AN ADVENTURE John McCormick Buchanan

Genesis 1211-4 JOhn 511-9 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
february 9, 1975 Columbus, Ohio

There was something to be said for sitting on the porch. | Tt was not
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terribly unpleasant lying there in the cool shadows GolearialenecPRTE ae reratict:
SNe a AAR
depending on others to give alms for food.\ @xmumsekiapetuigeeeerseies The man
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had his pallet, a flexible mat, on which to rest and sleep: he had the

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camaraderie of the other cripples and be ars .\He had the sympathy
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of the passers~by who had seen him lying there for thirty eight years.

There was something to be said for remaining on the porch - at keast
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that is one of the ways we can interpret the very interesting scenario
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laid out in the fifth Chapter of John.

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Bethzatha, a large double pool approximately 150' x 120' in Jerusalem

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is the scene. |The pool had five porticees - or porches - surrounding it
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and it was a very pleasant, placid place,| fhe uniqueness of the pool,
however, had to do with the curative powers attributed to its waters.

The pool was fed by an intermittent underground spring.| When the spring

began to flow the surface waters rippled and splashed and turned a musty

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color. tt was a rather dramatic and mysterious phenomenon and pagan
a_i, _—s

superstition had it that a deity disturbed the waters, and that the first
—" es

person in the pool during the disturbance would be healed _of whatever
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ailments he happaned to have.\ The Jews, as they did with many Canannite
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religious customs, preserved the tradition but changed the symbols,

—

An Angel of the Lord disturbed the waters, it was said, and belief in the
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healing power of the Bool was widely held,
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I found it interesting to diseover that archeologists have come
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upon what they believdG @ the Bethzatha pool in deep excavations beneath
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Jerusalem's Church off St. Anne.\ The site has murals ef M&M crippled and

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may be

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lame and inscriptions attributing healing power to the waters of the
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double poot.| And a careful study of Church history reveals the interesting

anecdote that as late as the fourth century A.D. pilgrims were making their

way to a pool in the city of Jerusalem which was said to have curative
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power,

In any event, the scene which emerges is one that includes crippled

people, critically i11 people, having taken up a king of permanent residence
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th d th ‘ £t d th t watchi the water,
on the porches aroun e pool \pay after day they sat watching the wate

waiting for the disturbance \ And when it happened they frantically hobbled
or limped or crawled to the edge, hoping to be the first one in. Some had

friends or relatives to help them - to carry them when the moment arrived.

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Some would have had no chance at ai1:| alone, severely disabled, always

pushed aside at the last moment, never quite able to make. itso it is
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that I envision one man who had been there for thirty eight years.
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The longevity of his residence means that he was among the most severely
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crippled, and the most hopeless.) Someone has calculated that over those
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years he had made 14,000 attempts to get into the water. And IT feel safe
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in concluding that if he had not yet made it, he was never going to get
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into the water on tine. | we want to admire his tenacity, his refusal
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to give up. \ gu that exercise in sentimentality is interupted rather
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abruptly by a blunt question from a passing stranger.

WhAetutame 1 "Do you want to be healed?" |sesus of Nazareth, in Jerusalem for a

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religious observance, walked past the pool, and taking notice of all

the sick and lame, came to this man who had settled in permanently.

We would expect a kind word, a gentle, sympathetic word, or at least
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an offer to jassist him to the pool, | Instead he asked, fro. you want
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to be heated?" |

New that is a curious question to ask of a man who had invested

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nearly four decades iamonnatingeieninentnerie! . \ 01 course he wanted to be
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Dra Ahe inflection in Aesue Yok se
wealtad wet. \ Anyone could see that. \ or did he? \ Fontie-eevenseneindeoms!
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questiow;, "Do you really want—tobe-healed''?
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I am guessing that the man had long ago given up: |tnat somewhere

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in the course of thirty eight years he had made a bargain with his fate and

that he had settied for the comfort of the poreh \ I see the possibility
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at least that the man wasn't really sexious; \tnat he sustained the myth
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—

that he wanted to be healed by acting out a frantic scramble toward

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the water.\ But the fact of the matter was that it had long sipce become

a ritual for him, played for the gallery and perhaps for the sake of

his own conscience, \ He did not, in fact, want to be heated.\ He did not,
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in fact, want the status quo for him toa be changed .\ And Jesus said to him,
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("xise, take up your pallet, and wale." »

Faith in Jesus Christ is an adyenture.\ It means changin :

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it means discarding empty rituais.\ Tt means getting up and walking.
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The scene at the pool side is a prototype of what happened time and
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time again when men encountered Jesus Christ.

—

Tf we go back as far as we can, to the dim beginning of the

Biblical drama the message is the gane:| back all the way to the venerable
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patriarch Abraham.| éewws and Christians know him as (rather of the Faith,"
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His credentials? \ He wasn't a theolegian or a scholar, | Abraham simply
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ber mean sn en neta i

heard the call of God to gather his belongings and his family and
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pack off into the desext.\ tt meant cutting all ties with familiar
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and comfortable status quo. \r meant making a very difficult decision
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and then venturing into an unknown future with only God's promise to
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sustain him.| That promise (and how incredible it must have seemed) -

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~ that there would be a land for him, that his family would be a great nation,
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was Abraham's salvation - God's gift to him, | actually to pick up and_go,

to risk the adventure of the unknown, is the primal Biblical definition

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of faitn.| Abraham is the( "rather of the Faith" not because he believed
_ heard +o beyed,
cettain things about God, +=tsagemee he Racked up his belongings and

OVEd Siintidiininebaiabnientiete A TESTE C Ao Mee ce E Geet

In the Bible God gives salvation as a gist: | ne saves his people.

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Tn jesus Christ we believe that God has acted ultimately to give the gift it else
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of salvation. Man's response to that divine initiative is éaish. | 12_ngems

taking what has been given:| seizing, embracing and living the new life that
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has been given.\ It implies leaving the old behind, taking risks, and
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above all else adventure,
\Omieeetaaeninichainaatens

And yet, we would not ordinarily define the word 'faith" in those terms,

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When we use the idiom\"the Christian Faith"/ we ordinarily refer to a

corpus of dogma, the body of beliefs that characterize Christian orthodoxy -

the existance of God, the divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible,etc,
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To have Christian Faith is to give intellectual assent to the veracity of

those assertions. \ simply stated, Christian Faith for us is the gtate of
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believing, with one's mind, Christian theotogy.\ When we say we believe
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in God, what we ordinarily mean is that we believe that God anna
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Likewise to believe in Jasus Christ is to believe that he existed and
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that he did and said certain things. \The Bible, om the other hand, knows
aad ne —_—/ .

tteiee of this basically cerebral definition of religion,
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or, perhaps , we define faith as a vague, confidence that things

will turn out alright for is in the future. \= any event, we do not
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ordinarily, if ever, associate the idea of faith with the idea of adventure,
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And yet, there it is - in the Bible faith means changing | it means leaving
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old attitudes, old behavior patterns, sometimes old places behind and
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striking out into something new, | Abraham and the cripple beside the
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pool had to make a break with the status quo and do something they weren't
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sure they could do or wanted to do,
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i think we know something about how the man beside the pool must

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have felt \ Things may not be as good as we wish; \but sometimes the
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status quo seems preferable to the new, the unknown, the adventuresome.
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And sometimes we make our little bargains with fate and settle for the
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comfort of sitting on the porch,
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T am reminded of a story my father told and insisted was true, although
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E don't think it vas.| it involved a railroad engineer with whom he worked
d who ate bol dwiches d £ hi . h
and who ate bologna sandwiches every day of his Life |= Svery day he

would complain about the bologna sandwiches, how tired he was of them,
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how he hated the taste of bologna. \ one day, the story went, my father
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asked hin why he didn't tell his wife and suggest cheese or peanut_butter.
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And the crusty old engineer told my father to mind his own business ~

he had been making his own lunch for years,

True or not it's a good story and illustrates the way it is possible
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to use rituals to hide the truth or to avoid adventure - even in matters
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so inconsequential as the choice of a new sandwich. \ thae's exactly what
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the man baside the pool had been doing for thirty eight years \ going through

a ritual the purpose of which was to protect him from the risks of getting
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wall.

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There are of course, a lot of rituals that serve that same kind of
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purpose \ For instance, ("Hor are you today "T'm fine, thank you, and
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you?" JWe don't really mean that. We are not really inquiring about the

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relative state of another person's shysical and emotional health.) Nor
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are We accurately reporting how we feel when we respond (‘vine, thank you,"
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In fact, we all know someone who really tells us how they are when we ask: ™™*
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wire
the full story. | and we quickly learn not to agk. {Because that is not

the purpose of the question.\ It is, that is to say, a slightly dishonest -
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albeit harmess - ritual.
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Nok all Sishenee cslualy ore An + lrarw less. Vey
biji_m~@timimwti~tieuweems can actually ocr the way we avoid the

adventure of growing and beconing | Consider, for instance, our great
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concerns for the institutions of marriage and family.) We are in unamimous
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agreement that one of the happiest accomplishments in life is to have a

strong marriage and a healthy ganity | We are,equally upamimous agreement

that both institutions are under considerable pressure today in a culture
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that is no lenger as supportive of both as it once was \ We do an immense
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amount of worrying about ic:| we read books, discuss it, study ic And
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sometimes I wonder if it is not a ritual ~ & going through the motions

of being concerned instead of doing what is necessary. | vow, 2 am I am in
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no way questioning the validity of the Study and/ the aiscussion.\ But to
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work at a marital relationship ~ to really try to make a family joyful,

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life-giving entity involves a certain element of risk and danger \ Tt can

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be an adventure. gy might mean changing some things, such as attitutes
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behavior patterns, schedutes.\ Tt might mean changing comfortable and
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familiar ideas,| But instead of that adventure I think a lot of us
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settle for the ritual. | we may worry and fret and complain, but when
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all is said and done we prefer the status quo to the potential adventure
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of growing as men and women.
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Or consider the matter of our religious expertence.| we're commited
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to the Church, more or Less.|¥et, when we're honest, we admit that we
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wish our faith had more meaning, more vitality. \ ana perhaps we are

using the rituals of religion to avoid any real adventure of faith,
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Charles Schultz incorporates that idea regularly into his Peanuts
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comic strip.) Linus drags his blanket around with him as a source of
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security: | when it is in the washing machine he experiences severe
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anxiety: \when it seems to be lost he is in a euided panic. | Life seems
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impossible without it, | One time Lucy, the eternal protagonist, tells him,
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Linus, you can't depend on that blanket forever, | Sooner or later you'1i

find that our.) And the next picture shows Linus with the blanket over
neod —
hisTextending all the way to the floor.

Well, the comfortable rituals of institutinal religion sometimes
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serve the same purpose as Linus's blanket. \ they provide a sense of
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security \ they help us to avoid any adventure .of zaith. \ praying can be
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an empty ritual when it is confined to che same stylized phrases we have

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taught ourselves to cepeat.\ the ritual of prayer can be the way we avoid
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struggling with the idea that there is a God who cares about us and who
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hears us and who has something to say back to us.
mecretacey La |

Do we dare to pray honestly:\| do we care risk exposing our discomfort,
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and enbarrassuent? [Do we dare engage in honest Bible study? | ox are we
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content with the rituals of adorning our sanctuary with a copy, giving
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it as a gift, and listening patiently as the Minister reads the lesson
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for the day?

8
_ The rituel MM aray be. Cater,
“the realer4

De we dare take Jesus Christ seriously?| deem means an adventure,
_——m Gn] ee

It means to grou; \ to become something more than we axe.\ Tt means to feel
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more» involves becoming sensitive to the hurts of other people:| it leads
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inevitably to a stance of commitment to the welfare of others and involvment
tee, De | ‘ager ing cet

in the world where the common welfare is determined,
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God calls us to chat.| in Jesus Christ he calls us away from the status
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quo and to a life-time of adventure,

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Know & qrcat deal aout Ye

James Dittes suggests that we fp
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Se man beside the pool, the man who spent thirty eight years "on the verge'. @
— A eel : cron

He SORE ¥ wat He suggests that most of us confine ourselves to reading about adventure,

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o& J tA [that we assume that significant life is out there somewhere, that real things
ager —, ‘TUCmneNECR, ——

are happening to some people - but not to us,
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He writes, "Most difficult and impossible of all is that acceptance
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of God and that faith in His acceptance that we talk about so much....
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We are on the verge of this personal faith constantly, so close to it
5 nena

that we are experts in it.\ But that we should actually experience it,
tn a ms, bina

here and now in this hectic, transitional, mixed-up, humdrum kind of life
—— a = sl

that we now lead - what could be so fanciful as that sede Someday the
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sense of God's presence and his call will be clear and convincing to us,

ee
Fannin

but not yet! (Minister om the Spot p 5)

Dittes suggests that, Like the man by che pool. we are waiting for

someone to intercede, someone to help - to pick up and carry us to the
a bs eneiamaiel — 2 tinea

water. Ve are Wah Sor * Lok ba Weg pee +e os,

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Jesus heard the man's story and said simply, (rise, take up your

pallet and wai") But how | Does that mean that there will be no mir-
as a

aculous interceding in our Lives, | that we have it in us - to change,
=e be peel —_a

to be healed, to grow, to experience Christian faith and full life here
=i Maal al oa

and now?

Arthur John Gossyp were, (4. contin at Christ, somehow we find
that we can do what we have always failed to do, | can be what we could
ioe need Lemna , mamenammeel
never be,| can master what has consistantly baffled us,| can reach and
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grip and hold and use what has been utterly beyond us." } (Interpreters!
—, a —

Bible Vol. 8, p 540)

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exo What it requires of us is openness to adventure, |willingness to
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be more that we are. ("D0 you want to be healed?" Do you really want:

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to be healed? ) The how of it all lies somewhere in our response to that

4
question, “ VDo wow wow Aw ‘Son raked Amen
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Father, the status quo is comfortable, and we're not always
anxious to experience the risks of a new adventure, And yet, we confess
to an emptiness, an incompleteless, Give us the courage to dare: give us

the spirit to walk into an unknown future. Help us to hear your Son who

keeps insisting that we pick up our bed and walk. Amen

@ Aesus Came ke Me wan ue hoo. “7YLY Waktasive \ ble calle d aud

Yaa origgled wae ot A. Vas evarlet credit} . had =O Couraar -{e

(Cop wd to \e ve Xe cisk of staud_ ve , vraszished mm Wr owe

whos “Gees. | Te And ack ~ LAA Tey myr mt Soi th - Power, lending, Cows ¢

Were ain As Lak | Bad he be tga Sone le tue Vang! om Nee
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Corti \eoem ™

“Oe euler a,