Open to Possibilities

It’s hard work staying open to possibilities.  It’s heart work.  To do it, we must live with the tension between what is, and what could be.  To be able to name what is when it’s ugly.  That gap is painful to witness.  It’s easier to say, “Oh, well, too bad, nothing can be done.”  To shut that door and move on, with certainty and low expectations.  If we have low expectations, we won’t be disappointed.  

When we speak about a possibility, long for it, strive for it, we remind ourselves what we value.  We serve as witnesses to other people about what may be possible.  Then maybe they can take the risk and open themselves to possibilities they hadn’t been able to hope for. We challenge business as usual, and sometimes we get in trouble for it.  As we take actions that are out of our comfort zone, we embody those possibilities.  We make those ideas into visible signs.  Like the idea of publicly welcoming gay people to our church with that little flag out front.  It’s an adventure!  And we discover community with open-hearted people who see the possibilities and believe they’re worth striving for, even if they’re long shots.

Living with possibilities will lead us to disappointments.  What we long for may be a long shot.  But when we’re open, we may notice some other possibility we never even imagined.  In this this strange way we often create something different than what we intended, but maybe just as valuable.  We can’t know in advance the possibilities God and we may be able to unfold.

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

May 26, 2019

Open to the Possibilities

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.  3  In 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.

If you were reading along in your pew bible, you may have noticed that verse four is missing.  Verse four was apparently not in the oldest manuscripts of the gospel of John, but you can understand why some scribe added it.  It fills in the blanks nicely… “for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.” Talk about rationed health care!

However you take this story, as actual history or as a teaching story, let’s unpack it a little, and use our imaginations.  The pool in this story is a source of hope, of miracles.  But the miracles are rare, so there is a big crowd of people whose disabilities bring them here every day for a glimmer of hope, or at the least a way to pass the time.  They sit around the pool all day, waiting for something to happen.  In those long hours they talk; they’ve learned each other’s histories.  One fellow takes the award for longest time disabled: thirty-eight years.  His name is not given, which means he probably never became a follower of Jesus.  We’ll call him Horace.  Perhaps Horace’s family carries him out to the pool every morning and fetches him back home every night.  Perhaps he very slowly makes his way there himself, settles in, and regales the new people with stories of long ago.  Horace was the pool patriarch.  He had his place, and his business as usual.  To the newcomers he would say, “Better act fast, when the time comes.”

And who’s this Jesus character?  Horace has never heard of the man in his life.  Asking an outrageous question like, “Do you want to be made well?”  Horace is annoyed.  “Don’t you get it?  I can’t.  Here’s why.”  At the same time, the Powers That Be have been telling Jesus, “Don’t you get it? You can’t.Here’s why.”  But apparently Jesus can, and in front of everyone, he does. He tells Horace to pickup his mat and walk, and no one is more surprised than Horace when he does just that. Horace is stunned.  Disoriented. And scared, because the Powers that Be, instead of celebrating his healing, are hassling him about breaking the Sabbath by carrying a mat.  That could lead to his being excluded from the community, and Horace has been excluded enough, thank you very much.   All the time he’s wondering: can this be real? Can this last? And if I am not the pool patriarch, who am I?

All the other people ringing the pool, each with their own stories, each with their own wounds, witnessing this transformation, what was their experience?  

            Shock and disruption…  This healing wasn’t business as usual.  What new order is afoot?  

            Jealousy…  Why Horace and not me?  

            Hope…  Why not me? Maybe there are possibilities for my life that I didn’t know existed.  Why am I sitting here day after day waiting for something to happen? Say, can I see more of that Jesus guy? At least something new might happen.

Whether or not you understand Jesus as a miracle worker, he is a revealer of new possibilities. Psychologists tell us that two things can help us overcome the wounds of trauma.  First, being able to tell a coherent story of what happened.  Horace had that one down.  Second, having agency, the power to act, a purpose for living, and something to live for.  I hope Horace got that.

In the story Jesus did not cure everybody.  He still doesn’t.  He revealed new possibilities to everybody.  He still does.  New possibilities that disrupt old patterns of who belongs and who doesn’t, who matters and who doesn’t, who has power and who doesn’t.  New possibilities for abundant life despite disability or hardship or oppression.  

As the story continues beyond what we read, the religious authorities don’t like Jesus healing on a Sabbath.  That’s a pretext.  The religious authorities don’t like Jesus messing with business as usual, opening new possibilities for encountering sacred power outside of their control.  I hope you know better than to make this story about Christian religion versus Jewish religion.  The Powers That Be, then and now, are interested in power and control.  Sabbath observance was just an excuse for power and control in this case.  By now Powers claiming to be Christian have oppressed far more people than Powers claiming to be Jewish ever have.  

The Powers that Be control the stories we live by.  They define right and wrong.  Powerful people who are invested (literally) in business as usual are by definition right. Who dares question them?  and those who offer new possibilities are wrong, foolish, crazy... The Powers define what is possible: that is, what we believe to be possible. Their power depends on us not seeing new possibilities. 

When I first read about HR 763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019, I thought, “That’ll never work.  Big oil will never allow it.” And if we all think that, it’s guaranteed to be true.  But I caught myself.  I opened myself to the possibilities.  This legislation is a long shot.  It’s only one possibility for reducing our carbon emissions.  But it’s a possibility.  And the only way we will begin to free ourselves from our fossil fuel addiction that is killing the planet is to challenge business as usual, to see that a different world is possible.  It is possible. 

Here is how bible scholar Walter Bruggeman describes the work of a prophet.  “To maintain a destabilizing presence, so that the system is not equated with reality, so that alternatives are thinkable, so that the absolute claims of the system can be critiqued.”  We in this church have become prophets, because we see a new way. We are open to the possibility of letting go of fossil fuels, for the saving of the earth.  

I am also open to the possibility of cost-effective low-income housing that offers dignity to its residents. I know UCC minister Vern Joseph.  I know his work as the head of Retirement Housing Foundation, RHF is a UCC-affiliated nationwide non-profit corporation based in Long Beach.  RHF builds and manages retirement and family housing.  Their elderly residents are hospitalized at strangely low rates. Someone did a study to try to figure out how they manage to stay so healthy. Vigilant staff help, but that’s not all.  It is intentional caring community.  Dignity and purpose.  It’s not that hard.  Can you think of about twenty people you know personally that should live in such a place?  Vern will be happy to build some for you if you have the money and zoning permits to make this possibility a reality.  National money for affordable housing is gone. But there is plenty of money in California at the moment, and our neighbors have formed a YIMBY group, People for Housing.  Yes in my backyard.  Because loving your neighbor means helping them find a home.  It is possible to house low-income people in health and in dignity.  Now you know. Together we are open to this possibility.

It’s hard work staying open to possibilities.  It’s heart work.  To do it, we must live with the tension between what is, and what could be.  To be able to name what is when it’s ugly.  That gap is painful to witness.  It’s easier to say, “Oh, well, too bad, nothing can be done.”  To shut that door and move on, with certainty and low expectations.  If we have low expectations, we won’t be disappointed.  

When we speak about a possibility, long for it, strive for it, we remind ourselves what we value.  We serve as witnesses to other people about what may be possible.  Then maybe they can take the risk and open themselves to possibilities they hadn’t been able to hope for. We challenge business as usual, and sometimes we get in trouble for it.  As we take actions that are out of our comfort zone, we embody those possibilities.  We make those ideas into visible signs.  Like the idea of publicly welcoming gay people to our church with that little flag out front.  It’s an adventure!  And we discover community with open-hearted people who see the possibilities and believe they’re worth striving for, even if they’re long shots.

Living with possibilities will lead us to disappointments.  What we long for may be a long shot.  But when we’re open, we may notice some other possibility we never even imagined.  In this this strange way we often create something different than what we intended, but maybe just as valuable.  We can’t know in advance the possibilities God and we may be able to unfold.

In our personal lives and our relationships as well, the sacred may be inviting us to step out of a narrow and life-denying story that we have told ourselves.  You can call it resurrection.  You can call it Creative Transformation.  But God is in it.  What it isn’t is the same old sad story, business as usual, nothing can be done. The sacred invites to reach for new possibilities.  Maybe we are stuck and can’t see a way out. Maybe we think, well, that is just the way things go, that is just the way I am.  Can’t change it. But how do we know what is and isn’t possible?  

Our low expectations and our attachment to business as usual can be habit-forming. We may not want to get our hopes up. We may not want to give up the misery we know for unknown possibilities.  Or we may simply be trapped and not have any idea how to imagine a new possibility. 

I wonder how many of you are familiar with the work of Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step groups that use the same principles for various addictions.  I don’t know because it’s anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous was created in the mid-twentieth century by a couple of drunks who crashed a small group program at a Methodist church called the Oxford Movement.  The church folks got tired of the drunks so the drunks went and started their own meetings.  They were looking for a remedy for a condition doctors did not know how to treat.  To broaden their welcome, they took the overtly Christian trappings out it, called God their higher power.  But make no mistake, they were looking for a spiritual transformation.  You can’t make transformation happen, but you can seek the possibility of transformation, and it’s a possibility worth striving for. They say it works if you work it, and it’s a lot of work.  And that’s a paradox, because how is a person who has made a wreck of their life supposed to work anything properly? 

Total immersion is often recommended: daily meetings for 30 or 60 or 90 days, and doing whatever a sponsor tells you.  You can fire your sponsor.  But if you’re serious about the program, you have to get another sponsor, and do what they tell you.  At meetings people learn the AA principles, but mostly they share their stories of recovery, so others can come to believe that a transformation might be possible for them. Your story of what is possible can change, especially in the presence of people who believe in you.  Don’t want to do the work?  The AAs have a remedy for that: Pray for the willingness.  I like that. I can’t do this, God.  I’m not sure it’s even possible.  I’ll pray for the willingness to do the right thing, to show up for what I value.  In this way, step by step, maybe millions of alcoholics over the years have found sobriety. Another thing AA say is, “Act as if.” To new members they say, act as if you’re sane and responsible and sober and considerate. If you act as if, repeatedly, you will be.

A young friend of mine recently celebrated seven years of sobriety.  When she came into AA, she had lost everything: her driver’s license and her job, and all self-respect.  I met her about five years ago and I have had the privilege of watching her grow from a bundle of raw nerves who was acting as if every day by the skin of her teeth, to become a responsible employee and wife and soon-to-be mother.  It was a lot of hard work on her part, one day at a time, with a lot of support from friends and mentors, and a higher power. She has shown me it is possible, in supportive community, to rebuild a life.  

So when we find ourselves saying, “I can’t,” or “That’s just not possible,” let’s catch ourselves and ask, “Is the sacred inviting me to be open to new possibilities that I can’t yet see?”  Can we pray for the willingness to do things differently?  Can I live in the tension between what is now and what might be? Are we willing to act as if the old story that has imprisoned us no longer applies, and a new story of life and hope is starting on our watch?  May it start on our watch.  May we be open to new possibilities for life and love and hope.  Amen

Here are some other bits from last Sunday's worship...

Unison Prayer (Paraphrase of Psalm 67 by Christine Robinson)

            Bless us, O God— whisper in our hearts and light our times.
Help us to understand your love and your law and bring them to bear on the world’s ills. Let all the people of the earth praise you with all their diverse voices.
Let them call out the ten thousand names. Let all nations praise you with the best of their ways.  Let us all enjoy each other’s wisdom.  Let the peoples of the earth bless the earth and heal her together.  Bless us, O God, with your presence in our hearts,
And in the soul of our nation.

 Creed

 a poem by Laura Martin, Associate Pastor, Rock Spring UCC, Arlington VA

I believe in the held (musical) note,
And in the space of silence after.
I believe in the slow rise of creation,
In the light of late May.
I believe in the weight of peonies,
In the fragile,
In the imperishable.
I believe in the shark’s tooth found on the beach,
In the sweep of constellations,
In the history of my own muscles.
I believe in the conversations of shadows
And the dust shaken from courage.
I believe in the first and the forever,
In the you and the Us,
In the already and the still coming.