Outside the Box (Sixth Sunday of Easter)
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In the fall of 2019, a bunch of us from Prince of Peace were on a Holy Land tour, and we got a chance to see the “Pool of Beth-zatha” (or at least what’s left of it) on our tour of Jerusalem. It felt very much to some of us like being in a familiar place, because the other transliteration of the name is “Beth-esda”, so we had signs all around us welcoming us to Bethesda!
In Jesus’ day, the Pool of Beth-zatha was a spring-fed pool of water, and it’s very close to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It was a place where John says many sick people with incurable diseases hung out, because of the belief that there were some healing properties in this spring. If you look at an annotated copy of the Bible, you’ll see that verses 3b-4 were a later addition that explained the legend of an angel of God stirring up the waters, and that whoever stepped down into them first would be healed…
John says that this pool had 5 porticos (which are like covered breezeways). And for centuries, biblical scholars debated the theological significance of the number “5”. There so much that’s symbolic in John’s Gospel, that this number must have had a special meaning. At the end of the 20th century, though, modern archaeological digs were conducted on the pool and on the ruins of the massive Byzantine era church which had stood on top of it. And the archaeologists discovered that the number 5 signified that there actually were, literally, remnants of 5 porticos! It was a box, bordered by porticos, with one bisecting it in the middle (which was unusual in that time.)
But that means that this guy who Jesus encountered in today’s Gospel reading was literally sitting in a box. And he had been in that box a long time.
Have you ever been told that you “gotta think outside the box”? Thinking outside the box means imagining possibilities you hadn’t considered before. Thinking outside the box means being willing to do things very differently than you’re doing them right now. And thinking outside the box usually means ditching a tried and true system which – even if it isn’t working anymore – at least you understand.
And that’s why thinking and acting outside the box is easy to say, but not so easy to do. Yet, it’s actually what Jesus asks the man sitting by the Pool of Beth-zatha to do.
This man, like many others, figured that the pool was his only hope of moving forward in his life. It was his “box”, or system, if you will. And so when Jesus comes along and asks the man if he wants to be made well, the man doesn’t really answer the question. Instead, he starts complaining to Jesus that the system hasn’t worked for him. He wants to get into the pool, but somebody always beats him to getting there first.
Jesus didn’t ask him if he wanted to get into the pool. He asked him if he wanted to be made well. But the pool is the only system the guy knows. And it was hard for him to think outside of the box of the pool because:
- The pool was a system he was familiar with, which he knew worked – or at least, it had worked in the past; clearly, somebody or some number of people had become better because of getting into this pool of water … (and since it was a thermally fed spring, it was probably nice warm, bubbly water, and hey, I feel better when I sit in a hot-tub, too…!)
- He was tired, frustrated and angry that the “box” hadn’t worked for him – he tried to find others to help, but he hadn’t been able. Maybe Jesus would? In any event, sometimes you get so emotionally caught up in how badly things have been going that you really can’t even focus; and that seems to be what was happening with this guy;
- Even though he knew the box wasn’t working for him, it was the only “box” he knew, and he just couldn’t envision any other action he could take. After all, he was apparently unable to even walk, so what else could he do?
But as Jesus begins to have a conversation with this guy, he invites him to “think outside the box” of the pool. And in this case, that means that Jesus invites this man to:
- See an opportunity instead of just a crisis. For many people, that’s the first hurdle to thinking outside the box. We’re so caught up in the crisis that we can’t see the possibility of an opportunity. Indeed, this guy seems caught up in his own personal crisis as he complains that he can’t get into the water. But he doesn’t tell Jesus to go away. And so perhaps on some level, he’s at least receptive to listening and considering another way…
- Focus on the goal of the pool, instead of the pool itself. Jesus asks the man if he wants to be healed. That is, he invites him to remember that the goal really is about being healed, not in getting into the pool. And sometimes, thinking outside the box begins with focusing on the goal, instead of on the vehicle you think you need to get there…
- Try something completely unimaginable. “Stand up. Take your mat and walk.” It was crazy! The guy knew he couldn’t do that. But he tried it anyway. And one of the reasons this story is considered a miracle is that the guy actually tried something he surely considered ridiculous instead of just telling Jesus to get lost. But because he did, he was literally able to walk outside of the box…
And the reason this story is read during the Easter season is to remind us that often the way of hope and new life is found by heeding God’s call to think and act outside the box. After all, nobody expected that Jesus could die and rise again. It was completely unimaginable. And yet, Resurrection was experienced by people who could see that God acts “outside the box.” And often, to begin experiencing the hope and new life of the Resurrection in our daily lives, Jesus invites us to think and live outside the boxes we’ve been living in as well.
Over these past couple of years, lots of us have had our “boxes” yanked away from us. Or at least, the “boxes” of our routines, the ways we had always done things, and the “systems” we expected to always be there for us, have often failed to be there, or don’t work so well anymore.
Thinking and living outside of those boxes has frequently not been any easier for us that it was for that guy by the Pool of Beth-zatha. But in our time in which so many “boxes” have ceased to work for us, it’s increasingly important to:
- Listen for the opportunities God is giving us in the midst of crises we face: too often, we can get stuck in anger and frustration that the “pool” isn’t working like it used to instead of looking for a new way forward; after all, many of the “boxes” in my life are boxes I constructed because, at the time, they worked! But the old boxes don’t work forever, and too often we look for the way back to the pool, instead of being open to a new way that leads to life and healing …
- Focus on the goal instead of the vehicles that have brought us to our goals in the past… (even before Covid, I remember a story a while back about how Kodak got in trouble because the company continued to focus on making the film instead of taking pictures…) Too often, we can get nostalgic for the “pools” that were, instead of the goal the pool was supposed to help us accomplish…
- Be willing to try a completely new way to live into the goals that God intends for us (and, again, this begins with making sure we’re not just looking for a new way to get back into the pool!); in this story, Jesus tells the guy exactly what to do, and it works! But often, in our lives, we don’t know exactly what Jesus is asking us to do. But Jesus’ promise of new life and forgiveness is the call to listen, to try things that may at first seem completely ridiculous, and even to be willing to fail, in order to find the way forward that God is giving us…
Thinking and living outside the box is always challenging. And yet Jesus’ promise of life and healing remains for all of us. And the goal of life is not to look for the magical “pool”, but to listen for the opportunities for hope and new life that Jesus is still calling us to. The goal of life is not to set our hope on any kind of “pool”, but to focus on the healing which Jesus offers. And the goal of life is not to find a way down into the past, but to look for and explore the new ways of standing up and living that Jesus promises lie ahead for all of us.
Amen.