Stand up, pick up..

.. start walking.

Sunday the pastor at Encompass preached a sermon on the account in John 5 (excerpted below) of Jesus healing the guy who was lying on his mat by the pool of Bethesda.

The guy was quite a whiner and had a real defeatist attitude about his illness (I might, too, after 38 years of it), thinking he was stuck being that way forever.

Jesus asked if he wanted to get well, and he sort of went "but, but, but..."; finally Jesus simply said:

1) stand up,
2) pick up after yourself,
3) start walking.

Later on He added 4) stop sinning.

So the pastor made the point that we all have these negative images of ourselves that we carry around and wallow in at times. Bad things may have happened to us, through our own mistakes or the cruelty of others, and we carry those things around for so long that they *become* us.

We personalize our afflictions. We let the scars from the wounds disfigure us, and then define us. We listen to the words in our heads.

I'm a victim (of corporate greed, of discrimination, of abuse, of cancer...) I'm an alcoholic. I'm an under-achiever. I have low self-esteem. I'm fat. I'm old. I'm dumb. I'm sick. I'm ugly.

The pastor's point was that Jesus says the same thing to us, today – stand up, pick up, start walking, (and stop sinning.)

We all (including those of us on worship team) wrote on slips of paper the one thing that keeps us "lying on our mats, sick" at heart. Then we laid the notes on a mat that the staff took, rolled up, and threw out.

What I wrote down was: (well, never mind.)

Some of you already know that it has a lot to do with what I see in the mirror. (That phrase I wrote down) is my self-image, or has been since grade school. And I've spent years either subtly trying various means to prove otherwise, or surrendering to it in a destructive attempt to validate it.

Endocrine medication, counseling, key relationships, exercise, and a new faith journey, have all helped me see that I am not (what I wrote down) anymore. I’m really okay as is, and I think that now I can stop either: going out of my way to try to prove that I’m okay, or giving in to the memories of all the words that said I'm not..

It was a good insight for me. And I'll never hear this passage again without thinking that *I* am the man Jesus healed that day.

John 5 (New Living Translation)

Jesus Heals a Lame Man

1 Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 2 Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. 3 Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches waiting for a certain movement of the water, 4 for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had. 5 One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

7 “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

8 Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”

9 Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, 10 so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”

11 But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

12 “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.

13 The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. 14 But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” 15 Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.