Roger Ray, Pastor
Easter 6 May 5, 2013
John 5:1-9
After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay many invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be made well?' 7 The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.' 8 Jesus said to him, 'Stand up, take your mat and walk.' 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a Sabbath.
A very important event took place not too far from here, just to the south of us in Arkansas. Environmentalists are still trying to persuade President Obama not to approve of the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline across important aquifers in the United States. It is a bad idea in lots of ways, not the least of which is that the demand for oil will go down as more natural gas becomes available but also, this is the most polluting form of oil in the world. Still, oil companies can make a fortune exporting oil from our gulf coast to markets in Europe while placing our agriculture and drinking water at risk. But in the midst of all of this, another already existing pipeline in Arkansas burst spilling unknown amounts of this same tar sands on the ground.
Tar sands, much more toxic and dangerous than crude oil, is not regulated or taxed as oil but rather as shale or coal slurry. It is much more dangerous than oil but is not required to be regulated in the same way as oil. So, given that we have been assured that even though Exxon brought us the spill in the gulf a couple of years ago, another spill in Alaska a few years ago, when they tell us that they are really quite responsible and nothing would ever happen to the Keystone pipeline if it were allowed to be built.....when we see this spill in Arkansas, any reasonable person must be skeptical.
We see in this spill in Mayflower, Arkansas that Exxon had no detection equipment to indicate that their oil was running out into a residential area until a guy getting ready for his daughter's birthday party called 911 to say that there was a river of black crud flowing down the street towards his house.
You have not heard much about this because Exxon hired the off duty sheriff's deputies to guard the site and they are not allowing reporters in. Sounds like typical Arkansas bribe based politics until you find out that the reason why networks have not at least flown over the area in news helicopters is because the FAA declared it to be a no-fly zone, just as they did over the Exxon oil spill in the gulf.
The federal government is assisting the oil industry in suppressing media coverage of the affected site. Now, I have watched enough Law and Order episodes to know that it is a very rare thing for a criminal to be given control of their own crime scene. Reporters who have tried to get on the site have been told by police that they will be arrested and jailed on the charge of criminal trespass. I will tell you honestly, my friends, I never dreamed that this could happen in America.
You have heard it said that "possession is nine tenths of the law." People used to say that to stress the sanctity of personal ownership but what I realize is that it is true, possession is nine tenths of the law because the people who write the laws already own everything and they want to make sure that they keep it that way.
The rules are written to serve the wealthy and powerful. If you went into a city park and poured a quart of oil on the grass you would be in big trouble.
If you are an oil company and you spill a hundred million gallons of toxic tar sands on the ground then you are likely to get a tax break and federal subsidies to go out and find some more tar sands. I'm just a preacher.... I'm not a government expert or an environmental engineer or even an economist but in the prophetic tradition of our faith heritage, I'm willing to call foul.
Being prophetic, of course, has nothing to do with predicting the distant future. The prophets spoke truth to power because power will almost always exploit the weak for economic gain. We have, for years, made fun of the Soviets and the Chinese for their bureaucratic governments that are so rife with corruption. We have objected to aid to Central American countries because the governments are so corrupt.
What I have learned about government corruption is the same thing I learned about petty criminals. What is robbing a bank, after all, compared with owning one? You look at what Payday Loan operations do in our state, charging the poor 400% to 2000% on loans and they do this legally. Organized crime generally charges about a fourth as much so, in this case, the banks write the laws and then create these little hubs where they fleece the poor.
Sometimes, men and women, the laws are bad. Sometimes the rules are written for bad reasons to serve greedy people. Capitalism is, in a way, its own religion.... It is a religion that requires that you have enough faith to believe that if left unregulated, the most greedy and powerful people in the world will eventually do the right thing for the most weak and impoverished people in the world..... and in that light, it is a religion that requires a lot more faith than I have ever been able to muster.
Our scripture lesson today is a familiar miracle story from the gospel of John. It is a story that, read literally, presumes that you accept a number of magical assumptions. There was a pool of water that from time to time was disturbed for no visible reason, presumably because it had a source from beneath that would sometimes move enough water to disturb the surface of the pool but the myth around it was that an angel would come down and stir in a little magic and then the popular belief was that the first person in the water would be healed.
Some poor guy who couldn't walk was lying by the pool all of the time hoping to be the one who was first in when the magic was still hot but since he couldn't walk someone else always got in first..... some kid with acne, some husband would throw in his wife that always seemed to have a headache.... And this poor guy never gets to test the miracle for himself.
Jesus walks in on the scene, sees the lame man and heals him.
Now, if you are inclined to read John the way they taught us in Sunday School, you are supposed to say, "Oooooo, aaaaaaah" Jesus must be divine if he can heal people like that. And, of course, since you didn't see it yourself, as soon as you are in sunlight again when you leave Sunday School, it doesn't mean anything to you at all.
But, if you are willing to read these accounts as being what John said that they are.... That they are signs.... Perhaps not to be taken literally but to be read for meaning..... what does this mean? If it is a metaphor, what is the point?
And here we have a mythical source of healing. Let's call it a "hospital."
And you have a poor guy who needs to get in but he doesn't get in because he is being beaten out by a system that doesn't let the sickest guy in. You may have heard about this....if you are sick you can't get a job so you don't have any money and if you have a chronic condition then you can't get any insurance. Who ever wrote the rules to the system is not interested in unemployed, uninsured sick people.
And that is why, in America, more money is spent on breast implants than is spent on Alzheimer's research. The people who wrote the rules for us manage to charge a million dollars for a round of chemo treatments that would cost a couple of thousand dollars in India and, ironically, you would have a doctor trained in the same Indian medical school in either nation. Go figure.
So, if you look at this healing by the hospital, I mean, the pool as a metaphor, then what we see is a prophetic figure who, in the name of God, is not willing for the most sick person in the waiting room to go without treatment while others get botox injections in their wrinkled faces and stomach staple surgery because they just can't stay away from the all you can eat cashew chicken buffet line.
You can read this miracle account as a sign of the way things are supposed to be or you can read it as a story about how in a country far far away, a long time ago, there was magic.
If I were a great preacher I would shut up and sit down right now and let you stew on how you want to read this story but I never wanted to be a great success in a field filled with mediocrity so I'll just go a step farther and tell you how I read this account.
I see this as a sign of the way the followers of the teachings of Jesus are to break the chains forged by the powerful that keep sick people from getting medical treatment. I see this as a sign of how we are to prophetically challenge the system that continues to favor banks over home owners, that favors coal and oil industries over the people who have to break air and drink water to survive, and to challenge a government that is willing to place air and water at risk for a temporary profit or even to give law suit immunity to Monsanto to experiment with such staples as rice, wheat, soy beans and corn without regard for how many people they might kill.
And that, my friends, is what I believe Biblical preaching is all about. Reading the Bible for magical miracle stories is like going to a restaurant and eating the menu. There is power in our faith tradition if we would quit trying to dress up the lions in organ grinder monkey suits and making them look silly.
I understand that to read the Bible the way I'm suggesting might lead a lot of people to not accept the social norms and laws that run our nation..... well, that's at least what I am hoping for.
