Waiting on God

                                        Waiting On God                                                           John 5:1-9*

            known as the belle of Amherst,of her dozens of odes and sonnets, none speaks more accurately to the human condition than the sonnet which begins Heaven is what I cannot reach.Emily Dickinson, was  right  was she not?when she said that heaven- sometime- is  what I cannot reach, it was Emily's way of saying that so often the thing we want most in life dangles just out of reach.

            If I had to guess, nobody understood this more clearly than this wretched fellow whose story is told in John chapter 5.Every day all day long,for thirty eight years heaven is what he couldn't reach.The thing he         wanted most was wholeness and health, but wholeness and health dangled just out of reach for this helpless man who lay on Bethesda's porch.His helplessness was compounded by his loneliness.Most of       us have somebody,but he had nothing and nobody.Every time he started out somebody beat him to the water.False starts at the wrong time,           determined struggles at the right time, but it was still no      use.Something always got in his way, on his way to the water.The realization of his fondest dream and his strongest desire , dangled elusively out of             reach.He had waited all these years for things to work out        living a solitary life:Friendless,helpless,always waiting for things to get better,dreaming of some far off day when he would be whole, again and happy again,and life would be simple again.Then one day     Jesus   went walking on that troubled porch, with its capacity crowd of cripple people,and said, take up your bed and walk.He had finally gotten what he had so badly wanted.Not in the magic bubbles of  swirling        water,but in the surprising presence of mysterious stranger.Bethesda's porch offers an unforgettable and inescapable commentary on life in the real world.Secondly,most of us, most of the time,            are on the porch longer than we want to be,But finally there is a useful beauty that can be born in the tragic corners of bethesda's porch.

 I...Bethesda's porch is a chapter that offers unforgettable and inescapable commentary on life in the real world.

    Life in the real  world is captured and framed in this snap shot of Bethesda's porch.In the real world ,some of us receive the miricle.We

     receive  the brightest answers to life's darkest questions.Some find the absolute fulfillment of their most ambitious dreams.In the real world sometimes  we get

    the answer for which we've prayed, and longed and waited.Just like the man on Bethesda's Porch, we receive the deepest answers to life's darkest mysteries, and we dance

    and skip just like him.Everything worked out the way we had hoped...We leave the porch with singing in our hearts and laugher on our  lips.When life behaves

    like this, it's being beautifully fair.There is a beautiful side to the fairness of life.So, if the question this morning is: is life fair? then I'd like to say, yes.

    Because when life is being her fair self, she can be beautifully fair, but, then, she can also be brutally fair.That leads me to my second point:

II.Sometimes, some of us ,we stay on the porch longer than we want to be there.The porch is never empty.

   A.

    Now it doesn't mean we're not getting off, but it at least means that we're not getting off untill He gets ready.Sometimes life can be brutally fair.We're the ones,

    the other people in the porch crowd snapshot.Sometimes we are left on the porch to wait and wonder and struggle and hope, trying to make sense of life

    on Bethesda's porch.It's during these times that we choose to live with why? or what?, sometimes alternating between the two.

     (ILL).I think I hear Job's experience talking to us:Even if God would have explained Job's life to his liking,his situation to his satisfaction,and his agony

            to his appoval, that would have done nothing for the challenge Job faced;the challenge, of living with empty chairs at the breakfast table,empty rooms

            on holidays,empty numbness on birthdays(hypothetically, we say, If God could explain.We know that the immensity of the The One is greater than the

            the capacity of the other)so,Why woudn't help Job, and it won't help us either.The pertinent question, then, is not why?, but what?you

            see, in the depths of our tragic experience What we need most is the courage to face the challenge of living in a world made radically different today by

            what has happened on yesterday, and the strength to stoop over, and sift through the wreckage, and pick up the peices,and see what can be made out of what's

            left.

      1)Bethesda's Porch is never empty, and we may be still on it, but we can sift through the wreckage not because we understand it all,but because He

           gave us breath.That means, He's still with us.If the God of my birth still gives me breath, that means He still wants me to be.And if He still wants me

           to be, that means that I still have future inspite of everything I've lost in the past.

     ILL) I've lost some things, you all,but i've lost them in the process of living.I haven't been on  the side line.I've been in the game. My uniform has gotten dirty

            because I've been playing, but because the God of my birth is still giving us breath, that means He intends to use my brokeness.

     ILL) IN Thornton Wilder's little one act play THE ANGELS THAT TROUBLED THE WATERS,He elarges the porch cast to include a physician.The

            doctor has come to the the pool after suffering, for years, the burden of some sin of the past.He's poised to step in the water as the angel is poised

            to start churning the water, when the angel says to him,"get back physician, this isn't your moment.But the physician begs the Angel," I'm getting

           weak in the work and too tired to go on.But the angel says, It's your very remorse that makes your voice tremble in the hearts of men.The very angels

           themselves can't persuade the wretched and woeful in this mean world as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.Draw back physicisian.

          it's not your time.In love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.He was a better person with his wound than he was without it.It was his wounds that

          enabled him to walk beside others who had been hurt.It was his scars that enabled him to help people no-one else could help.He was better on the

          porch with his pain than he was of the porch without his pain.That's not to say that God sends us trouble to make us better... But sometimes, and I close

          with this last point, sometimes:

III. Sometimes, a useful beauty is born in the tragic corners of Bethesda's Porch.John 5:6 (MSG) When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?" 

   A.Here is what's useful and beautiful about those tragic corners on Bethesda's.The Lord knew he was there, and he how long he had been there.You see, God sees us.We are not the victims of cruel circumstances.

      ILL).Hagar(beer la hai roi)...There are some things that are painful,and they are aweful, and they are hurtful, but in the hands of God,they're useful.Look at Jacob's family:The hard reality, the dysfuctionality,and the

      cruel brutality.

      1.Jacob had live with the hard reality, that much of the cruel brutality in his family was prepetuation of a dysfuctionality he'd seen growing up.he'd probably sworn to himself that he wouldn't be like his daddy.

        But in truth, he got it on both sides...