Acts 16:9-15, John 5:1-9
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
There is something in the stories we read today, about the immediacy of the reactions of the sick man by the pool of Beth-za’tha and the Apostle Paul’s decision to go to Macedonia. We it seems are of a very different mind-set today. Maybe it’s the culture of our time, maybe it is just our inbred resistance to blind obedience, something that seems to be a part of our American way. I can imagine a sick person (in our time), laying by a healing pool, having waited for the opportunity to get into the pool for 38 years, being approached by Jesus; and let’s say that the person recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and as a healer; I can imagine the sick person when told by Jesus to get up, looking at Jesus and saying, “You mean me?” and then, “Are you sure, I haven’t walked for a long time, can I think about it? Let me just steady myself first”. In our time, in our culture, almost no one would get right up, no matter how wonderful the result might be; maybe it’s that “paralysis of analysis” thing; we have to think everything through. It’s almost as though we want to argue about everything.
The sick man from our story in John’ Gospel and Paul in our story from Acts did not have this problem; Jesus told the sick man to get up and he did so immediately; Paul had a nighttime vision of a man from Macedonia calling for him to come to him; Paul interpreted the vision as a call for him and his followers to go to Macedonia and preach to the people there. And what did he and his followers do? They got right up, got on a boat and went there. I’d be looking for another explanation to the vision, like maybe I should stay put and wait for a man from Macedonia to find me. If I decided to go, I would first check prices for the best deal; I would carefully pack my things and then when I had convinced my followers, who would also be asking questions, checking prices and gathering together their things, then, maybe weeks later, we would go.
No one today, just gets up one morning and decides and then leaves on that same day. It took our Church Council, doing its due-diligence, three months to, in the end, decide to stay with our current insurance carrier. How many meetings and discussions, and how long did it take for us to decide what colors to paint the inside of the church? The result was good, but the point is, we do not get up and just do anything. It’s our way to question and angst over every move that we are going to make. And this is being said by a person that often acts spontaneously, sort of. If it is local, I’ve been known to visit a person, who just moments before, came to mind; if it is local and if I’m in the right frame of mind. I attribute such visits to the Holy Spirit’s urgings, because of how often, I seem to show up at a time of need, a need that I knew nothing about.
Is it possible for us, to when we hear Jesus’ word, to just get up and do as his word directs us? Is it within us to respond to the visions put before us by the Holy Spirit and not question, and not delay? One person, here, told me how she was moved to forgive a family member, by what she heard here in church and how it has made things better for her, much as the sick man, by responding to Jesus’ words, was healed.
It’s not easy for us to just accept the word of God and immediately act upon it. I often wonder how often I have failed the Lord, by not moving immediately to make a certain visit, or phone call, because I was being stubborn that day or because I just wanted to sit and think about it, or because I couldn’t fit it into my busy schedule or because that day I was simply lazy. It’s not our way to jump to, and do things.
We want to plan; don’t get me wrong planning is good. But we also use planning as an excuse. How many of us have missed opportunities, how many opportunities has the church missed, because we first had to moll things over, and plan things to the “nth” degree, when such planning may not have been (so) needed. We as the church, it seems, have to walk a fine line between spontaneity and planning. Spontaneity comes in response to the Holy Spirit’s call to action. Planning is necessary for those things that involve the organization, we call the Church; we need to plan for our financial stability, we need to plan for the care of our church building and grounds, we need to plan our educational and fellowship programs, we need to plan ways to reach out to the community to share Jesus’ word and we need to plan our programs of outreach that share Jesus’ love with the community.
There are times when the sharing of Jesus’ word and love needs to be done, when the Holy Spirit calls us, when there is no time to plan, when planning may keep us from making known Jesus’ word and love as the Holy Spirit sees the need. I was just a student at the time, but there was a situation when my pastoral supervisor, was looking at the clock, doing some church work, when he should have been listening to the Spirit’s guidance (by way of a funeral director) and starting the funeral service, not as scheduled but as needed, before the emotions took hold and the mother of the deceased teen ran out of the church and the teens sister as well. As emotions rose, the service was now delayed because the family needed to search for their missing family members.
God’s time, is sometimes, right away! We need to listen for what the Spirit has in mind for us and our church, and be ready to act when the moment is now, much as our soldiers learned to act immediately as ordered, responding in battle with immediacy. We remember those today who gave up their lives doing as was needed without delay, without questioning their leaders (leaders who were flawed human beings). Can we learn to follow the Lord (who is not flawed) with as much fervor and commitment and a desire to share, not injure, but share Jesus’ love? Today and each day, share Jesus’ love, help those that you can, forgive those who hurt you, give to the ministry of Jesus as you are able and share the good that you have experienced and learned. The opportunities are there, begin doing this today.