It Starts With Desire
Love Never Dies, prt. 6
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
May 9, 2010
Thomas Merton said, “a life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” I’d like to talk to you about desire today, as we move into John chapter 5. Let’s get right to the text.
John 5:1-6 (BBE)
1 After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now in Jerusalem near the sheep-market there is a public bath which in Hebrew is named Beth-zatha. It has five doorways.
3 In these doorways there were a great number of people with different diseases: some unable to see, some without the power of walking, some with wasted bodies.
4
5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him there on the floor it was clear to him that he had been now a long time in that condition, and so he said to the man, Is it your desire to get well?
That’s it. We’re going to look today at just these first five verses. In fact we’re going to look mostly at the one question Jesus asks here. “Do you desire to get well?” It’s worth doing a whole sermon on because I think it’s easily overlooked. Just like Jesus asked this question, we need to ask it of ourselves, and of those who come to us for help. “Do you desire to get well?” Let’s look at this question.
Obviously to ask this is to ask the question, “Is this really what you want?” First, I think “getting well” is not in fact what most people want. Most people don’t even realize they are sick. I mean, they do when it’s physical, but not when the problem is emotional. They think they are normal and everyone else is wrong. Reminds me of when people used to believe the earth was at the center of the universe, and the church came out and said, “You may not disbelieve this.” Questioning the idea that the earth was the center of the universe was heresy! The most natural thing in the world is to believe that everything is revolving around us. And don’t miss the church’s involvement here. This was a spiritual issue. The point was, “Look how special we are. Everything that exists revolves around us, and if you don’t believe that, then you don’t believe that God treasures and loves humanity.” Please do not miss that, because to this day the church still does that. “If you don’t believe in a literal 6 day creation, then you do not believe God created the earth.” “If you do not believe that life begins at conception (which I do believe, by the way!), then you do not value life.” “If you do not believe that everyone is going to hell except those in your group, then you are not a good (whatever –believer in our religion)” This is the myopia most people suffer from. They are not able to self-criticize. I mean, people are critical of themselves, but not of their assumptions about way the world works, or the way God works, or the way other mysterious thing like love and forgiveness work. They will cling to their ideas about these things until death if they can. Most people do not think there is anything wrong with them.
This is an extremely difficult thing to see in ourselves. Extremely difficult. Like I said, people will cling to their ideas about things for dear life. And we cling to them so tenaciously because we are unable to see them for what they are. We see them as issues of right and wrong, when nearly always they are simply ideas, interpretations, and perceptions. Let’s say I have a couple who has come to my office seeking counseling. How often do you think it is that both partners come to me asking, “Where have I gone off track? How can I change? Where am I not seeing clearly?” I’ll tell you this: I’ve never had a case like that yet. Never. How often do you think they come to me with one of them asking how they can change, how they can learn to see things differently? I’d say maybe 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time, both partners have come to me believing what? That the OTHER person needs to change. In other words, my ideas, my beliefs, my values, my expectations, my judgements -- that is all normal. It is completely natural. It is reasonable. It is “the standard.” When something happens that gets my feelings out of whack, I naturally conclude that one of the other bodies in orbit around me has gotten out of joint. This must be the case since I – in the very center of everything – never have to move. It is everything else that moves around me!”
Please hear me. This is the fundamental perspective of life. This is the way most people think. That is why Jesus hammers over and over again on the idea of “repentance.” Repentance means to turn around and go in another direction. In order to do that, you have to see and acknowledge that the direction you’ve been going in is the wrong direction. That is extremely, extremely difficult for people to do. It’s hard enough to even see it, much less to be able to bring ourselves to admit it once we see it.
So Jesus asks, “Is this what you want?” We would think, “After 38 years of sitting there paralyzed, I’m SURE that’s what he wants!” But that’s not actually obvious at all. The people I see in my office – whether it’s couples, individuals, whatever – they are there for one reason and one reason only. They are in distress. They are miserable. Life is just not working for them. If they are married, life is hell for them (I don’t usually don’t see a couple until after they get to this point). If they are single, they are dealing with anxiety, or depression, or guilt, or regret, or apathy, or something else that is making it extremely difficult for them to function. In about 70% of my cases I can tell in the first one-two sessions (45-90 minutes) exactly what has gone wrong and exactly what is probably going to have to happen in order for it to get better, as well as giving pretty good odds for whether it can get better at all. Yet despite the level of distress and discomfort people are living in, and despite how easy it is to see the problem and explain it, people usually do not want to change. You know why? Because they don’t see how their current way of thinking is causing the problem. They just don’t see it. I have had cases where it takes me six months to even get a person to the point where they understand that they have to take responsibility for themselves – that a change is even NEEDED. So after six months of work, we can actually start addressing the issue they came in with. I know therapists who’ve had clients for YEARS who still don’t get it.
Now it is critical that I am not heard as talking about “other people.” Realize, my friends, that when I talk to you about my clinical experiences, I’m talking about the people who actually overcame the massive barrier to calling and setting up an appointment with a “shrink,” and came in and bared their soul to me and said, “Can you help us?” Please realize I’m talking to you about people who are significantly more willing than the average person to seek help. So when I say people don’t usually want to change, I’m talking about you and about me. I’m talking about our resistance, our mental barriers, our blind spots, our sins! Jesus’ question, “Do you desire to get well” is a question, first and foremost, to us – to you and me. It is perhaps the first question Christ asks us because that’s what repentance is. Repentance is knowing we need to change, and doing it.
Last on this point, why do you think the prophets in the Old Testament usually ended up dead? Because they constantly asked the kinds of questions and made the kinds of statements that forced people to confront their need to change. People don’t like that! Why do you think Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi and Jesus ended up dead? Because they constantly asked the kinds of questions and made the kinds of statements that forced people to confront their need to change. People don’t like that! Most people want to sit down at their computers, grab their mouse, and have all their icons exactly where they were last time they used the computer. They don’t want any icons out of the place, or the screen resized, or a different wallpaper background. And they certainly don’t want to sit down at their PC and discover that someone came in overnight and changed it to a Mac. And I suspect Mac fans would be even more angry to have their Mac switched out for a PC. This is mine. This is how I am comfortable. This is how I think. Don’t ask me to change, to get used to something new, to try something different. And while this is perfectly fine with our computers, it’s deadly to us in our personal relationships and spiritual understandings, because the whole computer has to go! The whole way that we think and understand and put things together has to go – this is what Paul called “the flesh,” and what today we often call “the ego” or “the self.” And those who constantly question the system, constantly remind people that maybe things aren’t as they appear – well, humanity has little tolerance for them. It’s way more comfortable to get rid of them.
So let’s get this question of Christ’s straight. Do you desire to get well is where brand new life begins for this man, for you, and for me. Is this what you really want? Or do you just want me to change your partner? Are you willing to learn to live a new life? Are you ready to handle the new challenges that will be presented to you?
