Unexpected Salvation

Below is a sermon delivered to my preaching class on Tuesday, April 29, 2008.

Every family has its favorite video clips that they play over and over and over. My guess is that most of them are clips of little children doing silly things, but actually my family’s universal favorite is of my parents, taken just a couple of years ago. Courtney and I sat down to eat a nice meal in celebration of my father’s 49th birthday. We had traveled over to southern Indiana and met them halfway for an evening of enjoying dinner together. Then, camera in hand, we began to sing “Happy Birthday” to Dad. All was normal until we sang “happy birthday, dear grandpa.” It took just a second for it to sink in, but their responses were classic. Mom’s eyes about bugged out of her head and Dad reared his head so far back we thought he might fall right out of his chair. With my mom’s scream and my Dad’s utter shock, it has become one of those moments that we relive time and time again. Well, this morning our text tells us an account of a very pleasant and very unexpected surprise – one of those moments when God just breaks in and surprises you with how He works. I invite you to turn with me as I read from John 5:1-14.

John 5:1-15 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie-- the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 4 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" 7 "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." 8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat." 11 But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.'" 12 So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?" 13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

This is a salvation story and a rather mysterious one at that in that it doesn’t fit the normal pattern of salvation stories. I fear that we have the tendency in the church to sometimes remove all of the mystery out of salvation. After all, this is what we do here in seminary – we examine these eternal truths in books, take tests on them, memorize original languages, and create sciences like “soteriology” (the study of salvation). But, of course, if you think that you live in a world where the deepest mysteries of the universe such as salvation can be put under a microscope, dissected, and maybe even cloned, you are going to be gravely disappointed. I, for one, am thankful that the deepest mysteries of God remain hidden from the wise and learned and have been reveled to little children for God’s good pleasure. The invalid at the well may well have laid there for 38 years thinking about the moment of his healing – how it would happen, when it would happen, what it would be like once it happened. And, in fact, he had worked out a plan. It was a simple 3 step process: 1) sit by the well, 2) wait for the right moment, 3) get into the well. Nice and neat. Easy to understand. It reminds me a bit of our “4 Spiritual Laws” or our “Roman Road” or the “ABC’s of Salvation,” but that’s another sermon. Enter Jesus, the Savior of mankind, who approaches the man and asks him, “Do you want to be made well?” Notice that the man does not answer the question. Instead, he turns to his own agenda. “Well, you see, sir, I have the plan. It’s a good plan. I’ve been thinking about it for years. Now if you could just give me a hand...” Stupid, silly man. He thinks the pool is going to save him! He thinks Jesus is a means to an end – a person he can use for his own agenda! He has put all of his gambling chips on the wrong square! Now we might chide the invalid for missing the point – for putting his faith in a puddle of water instead of the Son of God – but notice that Jesus doesn’t do this. What does Jesus do? He simply speaks a word to the man and saves him. Forget the pool. The pool is not important. Yes, you’ve had your hopes set on the pool for 38 years, but I say to you: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk!” Notice this: the man didn’t even have faith and he didn’t even call upon Jesus for salvation. But in an act of total, gracious, God-like giving, Jesus speaks the word of healing into this man’s life for which he’d been waiting for 38 years. Folks, we have our own agendas. We have our own particular ideas of what it means to be saved and how to get there. For crying out loud, us Wesley scholars divide the process into nice, neat stages and slap labels on them like “prevenient grace” and “justifying grace” and “sanctifying grace” and “glorifying grace.” But salvation cannot be reduced for a formula. Jesus has his own agenda and won’t be boxed in. We may have our eyes dead set on that pool over there, but thank God that Jesus has his own agenda.

Second, God’s healing comes at unexpected times. Notice also that the invalid had his own timing in mind. This pool, we are told by the Scriptures, was occasionally stirred up by an angel. When Jesus came to see him, the invalid essentially invited him to sit with him and wait for the right time. But Jesus operates on a different time. The invalid wanted control – his plan, as he saw it, was just right. But Jesus brings healing to the man on his own time (and, in fact, got in deep trouble for doing so since it happened to be the Sabbath day). Friends, we like to control the timing of our own salvation. In fact, we have a long history of preaching that you can come now and come as you are and be saved. I don’t want to preach against that tradition right now, but can I suggest that the timing of our own salvation is not in our hands, but in God’s. John Wesley once said, “A man may be saved if he will, but not when he will.” In the age of microwave popcorn and instant coffee, we have come to believe that we can have what we want when we want it. But God doesn’t work that way. The agenda is his and the timing is his.

Finally, God’s healing involves unexpected results. Notice here the results of the invalid’s healing. We have no record of rejoicing, parties, going out and telling all of your friends, perpetual happiness and joy. No. We, instead, have a very different picture. No sooner than he had picked up his mat, than the man meets the pharisees who start to grill him with questions. “You’re breaking the law! Don’t you know what day it is? Who did this to you?” and so on. (Sometimes these pharisees can be real jerks, huh? Not even a pat on the back or a “good to see you up on your feet.”) Not only this, but we even find Jesus offering a hard word: “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” I don’t know about you, but this story doesn’t fit my script very well. You see, my script is pretty simple: a messed up guy gets saved and goes away rejoicing as happy as can be and then dances off into heaven with not a care in the world. But this man’s script is different. No sooner is he healed than he has to face another form of opposition. He trades in his sickness for ridicule and persecution and stern warnings about newfound responsibility. Yes, salvation is much more complicated than we would like to think and it involves suffering, endurance, and opposition.

Allow me a brief example from my own life. About a year ago, I began to earnestly pray to God for patience. I am naturally a rather impatient and irritable person and earnestly desired God to change me. I had been praying this persistently for several weeks, when one night my infant daughter woke up at 3 am and started screaming her head off for no apparent reason. Unable to calm her after what seemed like hours on end, I cried out to God: “Please just make her stop!” And then it hit me. It was like God said to me, “Now, Greg, let me explain it to you ‘cause you’re not getting it. You ask me to make you a patient man, but then when I try to teach you patience you ask me to stop. Now which do you want? Do you really want to be patient or don’t you?” Friends, we have to think really hard about the question Jesus asked the invalid, “Do you want to be made well?” Because if we say “yes,” we can be sure of one thing: we are in for a wild ride. Our own agenda is going to have to take a back seat. Forget about the pool. God is in control now. He decides how we are saved, He decides when we are saved, and He promises us that our future will not be sugar coated.

We’ve now seen that when Jesus is involved, the unexpected happens. This mysterious figure approaches us in the midst of our suffering and confusion and asks us “Do you want to be made well?” His methods are unconventional, his timing is unpredictable, and we can expect that the journey of following him will have its surprises because he is the One in charge, not us.

And he still heals people. Allow me to transport you to an unexpected place where unexpected healing is happening. Over 5,000 miles south of Wilmore, Kentucky lies the capital city of Asuncion in Paraguay. A landlocked nation in the central part of South America, Paraguay is among the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. In the slums of Asuncion, children wake up each day to rummage through piles of trash trying to find something to salvage or exchange for food. But God is present in these slums. Jesus passes through and unexpectedly says to these children, “Do you want to be made well?”

A gifted musician and conductor by the name of Luis Szaran has begun a ministry in these slums called “Sonidos de la Tierra [Sounds of the Earth]” in which he invites young children to come and learn how to play a musical instrument... completely free of charge. For hours on end, Luis who happens to be the conductor for the Paraguayan National Orchestra, spends his time conducting a ragtag group of kids in playing Beethoven and Mozart. Children who once had no purpose in life can now feel special and important with a violin or cello or flute in hand.

To most listeners, the music may sound like just music. But for the Christian, we know that it is much more... it is the symphony of God’s salvation being unexpectedly played in one of the least expected places on earth. Children with no purpose are now given a voice. Oscar, a boy of no more than 14 years old, has already begun to compose his own music. This is the salvation that Jesus is bringing into the world through unexpected means (even music!), at unexpected times, and with unexpected results.

“We worship you, O God, who makes us well.”