Father Steve White’s sermon for the the sixth Sunday in Easter (Year C), May 26, 2019.
There is a small town in Arkansas that I've spent some time in called Newport. It's part of the Mississippi delta region, a rural, flat place that has a lot of closed down Sinclair and Esso Service Stations, trailer homesteads, grain silos, cars on blocks and acres and acres of cotton, soy, sorghum, and, of course rice.
Newport is located on the White River, a feeder branch of the Mississippi, and has a population of a little over 7,000 souls. It's been around since 1875 and became the Jackson county seat in 1892. And that is about the most important thing that has happened to the town for 141 years.
It is a town who's motto, if they had one, would be, “You know, that's good enough.”
They have a walking bridge across the White R iver that has access from one side only. The other side is fenced off. If there were no fencing, the bridge would open up to the poorer side of town, but poor people walk enough already, so, meh, who needs that? One entrance is good enough.
They tried to be a player on the world stage of Mother of Pearl clothing buttons made from an abundant supply of river mussels. After surviving the Great Depression, they fought off the invasion of the zipper and doubled down their production capacity.
When a plastic button firm wanted to buy the Newport Button Company, the town leaders gathered together and said no thanks. Plastic was a fad, and these river mussels would be around forever.
And that's good enough. Today, all that's left of this industry is the occasional tell-tale shell with a perfectly round hole where a button had been punched out.
Then in 1945, after the war, a young entrepreneur came to Newport and for $25,000 he borrowed from his father and $5,000 he saved up in the army, he bought a Ben Franklin franchise. He became a great success, was active in the Rotary club, a Presbyterian deacon.
He had put down roots. But when his lease was up, he discovered that there was no renewal clause to his lease, and the town fathers would not allow him to renew it, so his Ben Franklin business, which had grown to be a huge employer, was bought out by his landlord for pennies on the dollar.
He later wrote about how shocked he was at the unfair treatment the town gave him. He and his wife wanted to raise their family in Newport, and he had dreams of opening a chain of businesses and building his headquarters there on the banks of the White River.
But now it was gone.
Run out of town, he never came back personally to Newport. He found another place to set down his roots. By the 60's, his roots were supporting the beginnings of an empire.
And in 1969, Sam Walton opened a Walmart back in Newport and was able to put the old Ben Franklin store that had been snookered from him out of business.
But Newport stayed true to it's motto: Having a single Walmart store and not the international Walmart headquarters is good enough.
And almost as a way of honoring the ironic connection between Walmart and Newport's attitude toward life, the new Super Center has only one set of entrance doors instead of the usual two, on on either side, because, hey, we're Newport. One set of doors is enough.
But the problem with good enough is that it leaves so much on the table, leaves so much on the table without the will to reach out and take what's there for them. It's good enough, but it isn't anywhere near whole.
Jesus is in Jerusalem and he goes by the Pool of Bethesda. This pool, fed by an underground spring, is down, off of the street, and is surrounded by porticoes offering some shade and shelter.
Legend said that on occasion an angel would trouble the waters of the pool and the first person into the water would be healed. So, the pool and the surrounding area had become the gathering place for anyone and everyone with some sort of sickness, but especially the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.
All gathered watching the surface of the water for the smallest sign of the rippling of the waves. A small bubbling from the underground spring or even a slight breeze could cause a stampede of invalids trying to be the first into the water.
And Jesus asks this man lying over to one side, “Do you want to be made whole?”
I'm afraid if I were that man, I would have said, “No thanks, I think I’ll just stay here on my pallet and wait for the waters to ripple.
I’ve been here a lot of years and I know how the system works and I know all of the other people nearby. I’m probably not going to get better, but – you know – I’ve gotten used to being here, so thanks all the same, Jesus but I’ll just lie right here.”
It's scary to be responsible – response-able – able to respond to God’s call, able to respond to the word and love of Jesus.
When we cease being a victim – “I can’t get to the water Jesus; there’s always someone else who gets there first” – and start being respons-able then we become strong enough to walk beside others who are in pain and need help.
We no longer make excuses; instead we walk forward to new life in Jesus Christ and go to work serving, healing, hoping, and living a life of joy and fullness.
But so often one of the ways the Principalities and Powers, the Systems of Domination, keep us under their thumb is by keeping us busy, tired, and diverted.
I know this happens to me all the time. I become numbed to the call of Jesus Christ to serve God and serve the hurting because I don’t have time. I go home after work and collapse in front of Netflix until it is time to go to bed and repeat the process all over again.
For so many of us weekends are when we want to get out of town or do something else.
So we live life to the minimum.
And we squeeze our church community in where we can and when we can and if we can. And we say we want change when we actually want to remain the same – we just want to feel better about it.
We know that to get up and follow Jesus will involve us in people’s lives in ways we’re not sure we want, because to be whole means to be re-membered, re-connected with God and with God’s people and God’s creation.
No more isolation.
No more living my own private life where no one bothers me.
To be whole means to get off of the couch and get involved. It means to work our tails off, often doing behind the scenes work that is tedious and overlooked.
We know that to walk out of the door and say, “Here, am I Jesus! Send me!” is an invitation to maybe getting crucified like Jesus, so maybe our couches and our pallets don’t look so bad.
No wonder so many of us are reluctant to being made whole. And no wonder we have neither the courage nor the will nor the energy to say, “No!” to the many ways the Powers grind us all down. No wonder we are reluctant to say “Yes!” to Jesus Christ and the embodiment of his Abundant Life.
Well, in our Gospel reading, this man has the guts to be whole.
He takes a deep breath and nods to Jesus, “Yes, I want to be whole, healed and well. I know it will take time Jesus. I know it will take work and lots of unlearning old pain-filled habits accumulated over the years, and learning new habits. I know it is not going to be easy, but yes, Jesus, make me a whole person.”
And Jesus does. No questions asked. No stipulations. No checking to see if he is truly deserving or not. Jesus just heals him. Grace. And the man picks up his mat, leaves good enough behind, and walks out of the door to new life. To wholeness.
Are we willing to follow him?