It is in the gospel of John that Jesus makes clear who he is and why God sent him into the world. " I have come," he says, "that you might have life and have it in abundance." Who am I? When you are hungry and thirsty, I am the bread of life, and living water. When you need a way out, I am the door. When you are lost, I am the good shepherd, and when you feel like there is no life left in you, I am the resurrection and the life."

        The Jerzy Kazinski novel, Being There, and the Peter Sellers movie of the same name tells the story of Chance the Gardener. He is an illiterate, naïve man who has spent most of his life tending to the garden of a wealthy woman in Washington, DC. He gets most of his information from television. When his employer dies, he has to leave the home he has had for years. He walks outside into a world he did not know existed. He had no idea that his once fashionable neighborhood has fallen on hard times. He has lived one way in one place for so long, that he has trouble making his way in the world, until he is introduced to new possibilities.

        That is what happened to the man who encountered Jesus in Jerusalem that day. There is much here that we do not know. We do not know which festival it was that brought Jesus to Jerusalem, we do not know the man’s name or what the nature of his illness was, we do not know how the man got to the porch at the Sheep’s Gate pool.

        Here is what we do know. The moving water was believed to be a source of healing and it was common for people with all manner of physical ailments to come to the pool longing to plunge in when the waters were stirred up. We know that the pool was a place where the vulnerable gathered, it was where the people who could not take care of themselves came seeking healing.

        We know that he had been at the pool for thirty - eight years which is a long time, and in fact, serves to signal to us that he had chronic illness. Somehow the man caught the attention of Jesus. Knowing that transformation occurs when an opportunity to change meets our readiness to change, Jesus senses that today is the day; this man really is ready to be healed has one question for him, and it is a life changing question. If it were a movie, or TV soap opera the question would be accompanied by swelling music and a long pause as we waited for the answer. DO YOU WANT TO BE MADE WELL? DO YOU WANT TO BE HEALED?

        "I would love to be well, but I believe that these waters have healing power when the water is stirred up and moving. The one who gets to the water first is healed and there is no one to put me in the water. Even when I get close to the water, someone more mobile than I am steps in ahead of me. If I were a wealthy man, I could pay someone to wait and watch here with me then when the water moves, they could carry me into the water. But I am not."

        The man speaks to the helplessness and hopelessness we feel when what we need is in sight, yet just out of reach. If only I can just get there, I would be OK. We understand when we cannot quite get there quickly enough, or strongly enough, when we can see the goal, but cannot reach it.

        "Do I want to be healed?" Yes, I do. I do not like lying here waiting to be put in the water. You would think that after 38 years, I would have learned to read the movement of the water or predict the timing of the water stirring, or learned to get close enough to blow on the water and make it move. But what can I do?

        Jesus wants the man to experience what he wants us to experience, new possibilities, new expectations, new ways of seeing our lives and the world. He knows it is not the Sheep Gate pool’s waters that need to be stirred, but it is the man’s mind, spirit, and attitude that need stirring up. The one who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life is there with him and can stir up whatever has been too still for too long.

        Now it is here that these words of Jesus to the man are usually presented with some harshness and a bit of sarcasm. But we do not know the tone of voice and there is no reason to believe that Jesus speaks in any tone other than with love and compassion. He asks him to do three things.

        First, he says to the man to "stand up" – find the power you do not know you have. He was at the water’s edge for so long that maybe he is more convinced of what he cannot do than what he can do.

        When we stand up, we gain a new perspective. We can see more when we stand up, our view is expanded, we can stand up and see what is possible. When we stand up we assume some new responsibility, and we give up on being helpless and begin to make our way and declare our readiness to do something. We may just discover that we are ready to do more than we think we can do.

        Second, Jesus says to the man "take up your mat." The mat was an inexpensive moveable pallet on which one could lie. It was like a sleeping bag which can be picked up and carried. Jesus says pick it up, tuck it under your arm. I take that to mean literally the mat on which he lay, but also symbolically, metaphorically that which said to people around the pool I am helpless and hopeless. Take up your mat.

        Do we wallow in the job we didn’t get; the relationship that ended, the church not growing as fast as we’d like? Is life not moving at the pace we have set? Take it up, acknowledge the pain and heartbreak, do all you need to do to grieve your loss, then do all you can to begin your healing and recovery. But remember and rejoice that we are standing now – our mat is under our arm, and we are ready to move on. It is not easy, some are not ready to get up yet, but for those who are, it is time to move.

        The third thing Jesus says to the man is to simply walk, to move, to step away from the water’s edge into the waiting world. Put one foot in front of the other and slowly, surely, start to move. Get up, pick up your mat, and walk. With those words, the man is healed and he starts to move.

        But there is more. We know that one person’s miracle is another’s blasphemy. The Jewish leaders see the man walking, his mat under his arm and they are disturbed. It is the Sabbath, and while healing was permissible, carrying a sleeping mat was a clear violation of the Sabbath covenant. Jesus returns and encourages the man to sin no more but to live a godly and thankful life because a faithful life is the best response he can make to the healing he has received. Be grateful for what God has done for you.

        So what does this mean for us? I know this story can seem remote and distant from our lives. Nobody lies by a pool of water for years waiting to be healed. But we do tend to lie around and wait for other things to happen in our lives. We wait for more money in the bank, for a better job, better behaved children, more understanding parents, a brighter mood, a greater hope. We wait at the water’s edge when our fullest lives are away from the water somewhere else. We wait all the while getting used to being exactly where we are.

        The question for the man is the question for us. Do we want to be healed, made whole, fulfilled in all the ways God has for us? We have been on the water’s edge long enough. Nobody is going to put us in the water when it stirs, there will always be a faster growing church. Something will that we can almost but not quite accomplish will always seem effortless to someone else. But let’s be active agents of our own healing and wholeness. Do we want to be made well? Yes we do. Let’s get up, get our stuff, and get moving away from the water’s edge.

        Sheldon McCarter is a pastor and my colleague in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has some experience in leading a congregation from the water’s edge into healing and new life. He rightly suggests some things we might consider as we walk in new relationships with ourselves and with God.

1.  We cannot focus on the people who say, stay on the porch, don’t bother trying to do a new thing. We can focus on how it is that we celebrate, share, support, and serve the good news of Jesus Christ wherever we go, to whomever will listen to us.

2.  We cannot get stuck in a tradition that cannot be changed. The man at the pool did not think he could be healed any other way than to fall into the water at the Sheep Gate pool. Jesus got him unstuck and sent him another way. We can cling to those traditions that help us in our journey of growth and excellence.

3.  We can focus on God and not on people whose first response it to resist. You know that as soon as the man got up, there were people who said that since he had already been there for 38 years there was not point in trying to change. They may even have tried to stop him from standing. So it will be with us. This won’t work. We can’t afford it. Why bother? We bother because the man Jesus has told to get up and get going.

4.  We can acknowledge that we are hungry for God’s leading and that we will trust that God wants to satisfy our hunger for spiritual growth and numerical growth, and financial growth with good things. We can indeed taste and see that the Lord is good.

5.  We can learn from our great past, but the future is in front of us and while we can look back at how wonderful we used to be, we cannot go back there and live.

6.  We can declare that this is our time to act, that our readiness to move has met our opportunity for movement, and we are ready with joy and thanksgiving to get up and go.

        How do we move? At the CWF breakfast at the regional assembly, Judy Turner offered an eight point plan for getting things done. She said we can pray, expect, envision, model, plan, celebrate, keep at it, and share. Sheldon had one more point. It is that we can get up and do something.

        The leaders wanted to know why Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. John says in fact that he was persecuted, he was punished for his words and for his healing activity. But listen to what he says. "God is still working, so I am still working", even on the Sabbath. As he works, he reminds us that our healing is not in the pool’s water, it is in the word and the touch of the good shepherd and the one who is the living water.

        Here, now, the word and work has become flesh, human, real, and alive. The living water is here. We are invited to drink deeply of it, bask in its cool, refreshing power, and find the energy we will need to stand up, take up our mats, and to walk boldly away from the water’s edge. Listen, he is talking to us now. Get up, get your stuff, and get going. And as we hear him and as we go, we can sing out with joy, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.