Rev. George Miller
Feb 6, 2022
John 5: 1-18
Today we take a walk down memory-lane.
For those of us alive in the 70’s remember the Heinz Ketchup commercial? The one that played the song “Anticipation”
as the ketchup slowly made its way out of the neck of the bottle onto the
hamburger?
It was a brilliant commercial. The
ad took something that could be seen as a negative- waiting- and turned it into
a marketable part of the product.
The idea behind the commercial was that Heinz ketchup was good enough to
wait for and the anticipation was part of the process.
Anticipation is like an emotion that can heighten an experience:
Kids waiting for Christmas day.
Teens waiting for the new MARVEL movie.
Workers waiting for vacation. Us waiting
for when our northern sisters and brothers to return.
Then there’s the waiting that is not so pleasant of an experience:
Wait till your Father comes home.
Waiting to see if you’ve been accepted into the college you want.
Being unemployed and waiting to hear back if you got the job.
Having a biopsy done, waiting for the results to come back.
What’s unbearable is when they say, “You should hear back from us in 5-10
business days,” and you’re left waiting, wondering, “Just how many days is
that, and does today count?”
Anticipation is when you know something good is just about to happen. Waiting is when you’re hoping or needing something,
anything to take place.
This waiting reality is so strong that Broadway and Hollywood have made a
whole genre out of it. It’s called the “I
Wish Songs.”
The Grandpappy of all is “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The grandchild would be “Part Of Your World”
from “The Little Mermaid.”
In the 90’s, “Just Around the River Bend” from “Pocohontas” was my jam.
Recently, Broadway did a revival of “Once Upon An Island.” The main character sings “Waiting For Life To
Begin.”
Waiting For Life To Begin.
Anticipation.
How does this apply to today’s story?
Here we have an account of Jesus meeting a man by a healing pool of water. Not only is he lame, he is waiting, constantly
waiting.
Waiting for his chance to get in, waiting for his chance to be healed,
waiting but every time a possibility comes his way, someone else gets in.
Waiting; living this way for 38 years.
Seems like such an unusual number.
Why 38? Most of the time, numbers have a clear meaning in scripture. We know the numbers 3, 10, 12, 40, but when have
we heard the number 38?
Maybe there’s a meaning if we do some math. 3 plus 8 equals eleven. Not sure if that helps. 3 times 8 is 24. Well, that is double the disciples (and it is
my birthday), but that doesn’t seem to help.
38. 38?
Well, Noah endured 40 days and nights of rain while trapped in the ark.
The Israelites endured 40 years of traveling the wilderness before
entering the Promised Land.
Jesus endured 40 days in the dessert, before he emerged and began his
ministry.
But 38? I wonder…I wonder…
I wonder if 38 is meant to create that sense of anticipation, a sense of
waiting, a sense that just round the riverbend, something good is about to
happen, and his life is about to begin.
Noah, Jesus had to face a day 38 in order to get to day 40. The Israelites had a year 38.
I don’t know if we ever hear about or know what day or year 38 was like.
But they had to have a day 38, a year 38, before they could get to Day 40
and 41 so their new lives could begin.
Maybe I’m grasping at straws. Maybe
the author is foreshadowing that after 38 years of waiting, anticipating, something
good is about to happen to this man, and it is an encounter with Jesus that
becomes the moment.
Maybe when we hear that he’s healed, what we can think of is that he has
met Jesus, he is made well, and look at that!- his life, his new life begins.
And did you hear what he does on the 1st day of his new life-
he enters into the sanctuary, and gives God praise.
The man is made well, so he walks into worship offering God praise.
I wonder how many of us can relate to today’s story?
How many have spent time waiting, anticipating? How many have spent too many countless days,
night, weeks, months, years waiting, yearning for an experience of healing, wellness,
a restart, a redo?
How many here have felt that in some way, some fashion, you have had an encounter
with the divine, an encounter with the Holy, an experience with the Living Christ,
and it is like things have been made clear, mountains have been made flat,
roads have become straight, old angers, insecurities, worries have lessened
their grip?
How many have known what it is like to wait, and wait, and wait; to wait
to so long it feels like 38 years, and then to one day, somehow,
you find yourself in the presence of Christ, you have gained the ability
to move forward, leave behind that sense of being stuck, and experience a new
kind of wellness, a new kind of life?
Who knows exactly how healing happens?
Who knows why this man and not another; why now, and not 30 years ago?
Today’s tale shows us a person waiting oh so long, and after 38 years, he
is able to enter into year 40 in which he can metaphorically
step off the ark,
step into the Promised Land,
step out of the dessert full of demons, and he’s able to step up and embrace
the fact that his life is about to begin.
What have you waited for?
What are you waiting for?
What are we, as Emmanuel UCC, waiting for?
What is the community waiting for from us?
While we wait, how do we wait and anticipate with Christ?
And after we have waited, how do we recognize that it is of God?
And knowing that it is through God in Christ that wellness has come, how do
we offer praise and worship?
And what does it look like to say that our life is capable of beginning
over and over and over again?
For this, let us say, Amen.
