Getting Outside the Box (Sixth Sunday of Easter)

Sermon Reflections

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Last Sunday, I was pointing out the fact that people often get hung up on what seems like mysterious symbolism in the Bible.  That especially happens when we read the book of Revelation, but the symbolism in the Gospel of John has also been a source of great wonder for biblical scholars for the last 2000 years.  And this is particularly the case with numbers.  Do the numbers John mentions have some deeper, symbolic meaning?

And so from antiquity, biblical scholars wondered about this Pool of Beth-zatha (or, sometimes it’s rendered the “Pool of Bethesda”) which had 5 porticos. 

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 coming down and stirring up the waters, and that whoever stepped down into them first would be healed…

But John also mentions that this pool had 5 porticos (which are like covered breezeways).  And so for centuries, biblical scholars debated the theological and symbolic significance of the number “5”.  There is actually a lot of symbolism in John’s Gospel, so many scholars believed that this number must have had a special meaning. 

Towards the end of the 20th century, though, modern archaeological digs were conducted on the remains of 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, 5 porticos!  It was a box, bordered by four porticos, with one bisecting it in the middle (which was unusual in that time, and that’s probably why John mentions it)…

So if there is any symbolism here, it is that this guy whom 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.

But Jesus didn’t ask him if he wanted to get into the pool.  He asked him if he wanted to be made well. Yet 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 become so obsessed with the crises in our lives and the world around us 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, and that’s often the first step in getting out of the box…
  • 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 out 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.

But thinking and living outside of our boxes is frequently not any easier for us than it was for that guy by the Pool of Beth-zatha. That’s especially true when the boxes we’re used to don’t work anymore, or don’t work in the same way. At those moments, it’s important to:

  • Listen for the opportunities God is giving us instead of simply focusing on the 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!  I’ve been especially attentive to this as I set up my new shop and often instinctively place things back “where they were” but maybe don’t need to be anymore. Yet often, the way forward begins with imagining new set-ups, instead of searching for the way back to the pool …
  • Focus on the goal instead of the vehicles that have brought us to our goals in the past… I still remember a story from a long time ago about how Kodak, which originally began as a company making cameras, got into trouble because the company kept focusing 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 reach the goals we believe God is leading us towards (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 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.