Sermon for Sunday, May 25, 2025 || Easter 6C || John 5:1-9
Last week we talked about embracing new life and new ways of being. This embrace of newness aligns us with the God who says, “Look! I am making all things new.” I told you that I found the idea comforting – the idea that I was continually being made new; even at 42 years old, I am in the process of becoming the newest version of myself. And so are you, no matter your age. What I failed to talk about last week was why we so often don’t embrace new ways of being. And that’s where we are going to start today in this accidental sequel to last Sunday’s sermon.
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Earlier this month, I talked about the concept of negligent inertia – that is, the all-too-human tendency to stop innovating once we hit upon something that works. This makes sense to us. Why keep trying to improve something that works just fine? The trouble is we live in an imperfect universe governed by entropy, the idea that systems will evolve toward a state of randomness and disorder. Just look at your pantry at home for a microcosm of the concept of entropy. You can organize your pantry, but in a month or two, most of the items are on the wrong shelves, half a box of pasta has somehow spilled on the floor, and none of your tupperware has matching lids.
A similar thing can happen when we fall into negligent inertia. We keep doing things that work just fine because there’s no reason to keep innovating. But too often “just fine” turns into “sort of okay” which turns into “what other option do I have.” And this is not a question. It’s a statement. There’s no curiosity, no desire to change. “What other option do I have” is the shrug of “this is my life now.” Back when I was in seminary (and I’ve told this story before), I played a particular video game waaaaay too much. When I first started it was really fun. I got into the world, exploring and learning the mechanics. This was the innovative stage, the discovery. Then I kept playing and kept playing – hours every day – just because it was the thing I did, not because I was enjoying it. It was a form of addiction, a cycle I could not break out of until a nasty bout of flu kept me from the game long enough for me to detox.
Folks who suffer from more serious and life-threatening forms of addiction often follow the same pattern. A drink here or there…ah, this tastes good…I like feeling like this…I want to feel like this more. Why doesn’t everyone want to feel like this all the time? I need more and more to feel like this…And soon my life is bent around the feeling and how to get it. Fine becomes okay becomes “what other option do I have.”1 People in recovery support one another by being another option, by working hard every single day not to fall back into the inertia of addiction.
Apart from the seriousness of addiction, every one of us follows patterns in our lives. We could not live any other way. Without patterns, the glut of information that we take in would overwhelm us. And so, without realizing it, we embrace heuristics – mental shortcuts that keep us from having to actively think about every single decision we make. Such patterning is not bad – it’s actually essential – but sometimes we do need to stop and examine the patterns we have adopted because they can lead us towards suffering.
Case in point: I had to delete the Facebook app from my phone because I fell into the pattern of doomscrolling Facebook every morning when I woke up. I could have been praying or meditating or reading or writing. But I was doomscrolling. (If you don’t know what doomscrolling is, it’s when you mindlessly flick your finger down and down a social media feed without really taking anything in.) Needless to say, it’s not the most lifegiving activity. I bet you can come up with a similarly lifeless activity in your own experience.
No matter what, because of negligent inertia and entropy, we all have patterns in our lives that have gone from fine to okay to “what other option do I have.” And our society has similar patterns writ large. What is resistance to measures that will combat climate change if not the dull grasping at the idea that capitalistic markets have to keep growing and expanding and consuming? The suicidal economic machinery of the world that will kill this planet is a global shrug that amounts to “what other option do we have.”
And this is where Jesus comes in. Honestly, I should have invited him in earlier in this sermon. Jesus arrives at the pools of Bethsaida and meets a man who has reached the “what other option do I have” stage. When Jesus asks him the question, “Do you want to get well?” the man does not answer “yes” or “no.” He rehashes the reason he has been unsuccessful at getting into the healing waters after all these years. He has fallen into a lifeless pattern and all he can see is another day and another day and another day of sitting by the pool but never entering it.
Into this paralysis (not the paralysis of his body but of his spirit) Jesus speaks a Word of Life. Jesus does not say, “I heal your body” because that would allow the man to remain in his inertial pattern, continuing to rehash his 38 years of no other options without noticing that Jesus had cured his illness. No. Jesus says, “Get up.” And somewhere in the seconds between Jesus commanding and the man obeying, Jesus’ gift of healing floods through him, allowing him to obey the command. Just like Lazarus in the tomb when Jesus says, “Come here!” instead of “I raise you from the dead,” Jesus’ command is one of motion, of movement, of kinetic energy that starts this man on a new path.
To each of us, Jesus offers the same command. “Get up!” When we listen to this command, we allow Jesus to disrupt the lifeless patterns that we have fallen into over time. We stop doomscrolling, stop drinking, stop nursing old grievances, stop whatever it is that pulls us away from the lifegiving energy that Jesus offers us. And to combat the entropy of an imperfect universe, we embrace the enlivening pattern of obeying Jesus command anew every single day. We hear him say, “Get up!” And we do. We feel our feet press into the ground. We feel our hearts pumping our blood. We feel our spirits yearning to live the abundant life that Jesus invites us to live – for ourselves and for the life of the world.
This week, I invite you to listen for Jesus’ command to “Get up.” Pray about the thing in you life that has gone from fine to okay to “what other option do I have.” And with God’s help, turn that statement back into a question. “What other option do I have?” Recognize that in our personal lives and in the life of the world, other options abound – new choices, new patterns, new ways of being. And rejoice that we have the opportunity to get up, pick up our mats, and walk.
- There’s a gut-wrenching five-minute animation that has been viewed 30 million times on YouTube about addiction that I invite you to watch. Also, I got some of the language for this paragraph from Leo’s dialogue about being an alcoholic on The West Wing. ↩︎
Banner image is a picture I took in 2019 on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. These are the ruins of the pools of Bethsaida.
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