“When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time,

He said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’”

(John 5:6)

The 1988 baseball season opened officially last week. Some of us thrilled to watch on TV as little Jessica McClure, the miraculously rescued child from Midland, Texas, pitched out the ball to start the first major league ballgame.

Every one of us knows how the game is played. The batter steps up to the plate. He has three strikes at the ball. If in those three swings he doesn’t get a hit, he is out. Someone else comes to bat.

And most of us have a feeling that life is somewhat like a baseball game. The great American game has become a symbol of the American way of life. The rules of the game and its colorful jargon have subtly passed over into our philosophy for living. We feel that each of us has his limited number of opportunities afforded. We have our turn at bat. We either get a hit or we don’t. And then we are through. There are just three strikes, no more, and then we are out in the old ballgame.

And looking at life from the human point of view, that is just about the way it is. But the man or woman of faith knows there is more to it than that. Such a limited view of life does not take into account the measure of God’s everlasting mercy whence forgiveness for past failures flow, and opportunities for new ventures and approaching amazing victories crowd in upon us faster than we are able to receive them, if we will only take them; if we only have the faith and the trust in God that He wills it so for us.

“Three strikes and you’re out” — may be the rule for batting in baseball — and, of course, it is; but most emphatically it is not the rule by which the Almighty runs His drama of human history. If after three strikes we are ready to quit, it’s only because we are giving up, not because the Great Umpire has called us “out.”

Jesus, on a certain Sunday, visited the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem where a lot of sick people were. It was a sort of hospital. Bethesda means “House of Mercy.” There, the sick, the blind, the crippled, the paralyzed, were lying in the shelter of five porches which were built around the pool. The pool itself must have been some sort of hot spring for, now and then, there was a mysterious bubbling up of the water caused by the escape of volcanic gases.  Popular legend had it that when the pool bubbled it was being troubled by an angel and that at that moment there was a healing power present in the water, but only for the first person who entered the pool.

We can imagine the commotion in the porches each time the bubbling began — sick people crowding to get ahead of each other and into the pool first. The first one in was healed, no matter what the ailment or injury.

At Bethesda’s pool Jesus found a man who had been sick with “an infirmity” for 38 years. The indication is that he had been at the House of Mercy off and on for most of that time seeking a cure. His trouble? The record doesn’t say.

Jesus seemed to sense the root of his trouble immediately. To the sick man Jesus said: “Do you want to be healed?” A curious question, isn’t it? Here is a sick man who has been hanging around a make-shift hospital for nearly 38 years trying to get healed and Jesus asks him: “Do you want to be healed?” If the question has any meaning at all, the implication is that the man didn’t really want health or wholeness. Rather an unkind thing to imply, but was it true?

Sometimes we say of someone we know that he or she “enjoys poor health.” We are also acquainted with that tendency, so human, to nurse a grudge, or a sorrow, or a slight. Why? Because by cultivating this unhealthy condition of mind, or spirit, or body, we can make ourselves the object of pity, sympathy, or of someone else’s service. It is one possible means of attracting attention to ourselves. It can be used to get other people to do what we want done. We can even resort to it in order to compel a show of affection.

Jesus asked the man: “Do you want to be healed?” Not a silly question at all in his case. Though blunt, it was needed. It went straight to the heart of this fellow’s trouble. He had been fooling others till he had fooled himself. For see what he does. Jesus’ question stirred up his self-defense and self-justification. He begins to make excuses for his sickness: “I have no one to help me down into the pool. While I’m coming someone else beats me to it.”

Poor fellow! Life has misused him so badly! He had no one to help him down into the pool. What chance had he? His principal trouble? Why, he had a “Three Strikes Against Me” philosophy of life — a view of limited opportunities for all, and he, the least favored of men.

We are familiar with his frame of mind, are we not? “I never had a chance,” whines one. “I had to quit school and go to work too young. I could not finish my education. I began life with three strikes against me.”

And another: “In childhood, before my destiny was in my hands, I suffered personality blasting experiences which set my emotional patterns. I’m now the product of those false steps of my parents. I began life with three strikes against me.” Or another: “I’ve had my chances and failed. Nobody had better opportunities or brighter prospects than I, but I frittered them all away. I blew it. I have sinned away my day of grace. I’ve had my three strikes and now I’m out.”

When Jesus asked the man at Bethesda’s pool: “Do you want to be healed?” the man complains: “I have no one to help me. While I am getting up to go, someone else crowds in ahead of me. Life has left me on the bench.”

But the man did not really need that kind of help. All the help he needed was the inner spiritual faith and courage just to rise up, take hold of the life and strength that God offered him in that moment, and walk. When Jesus, the Lord of Life, so commanded him, he walked. When the poor fellow began to glimpse the amazing truth that not even 38 years of failure would exhaust the chances God was giving him, if he just had faith, then he began to live abundantly.

Is not this what we all need most to transform these lives of ours from our past failures to successes, from defeat to victory — the faith and trust in God that He can do what He says He will do for all who trust Him and stop putting the human statute of limitations upon the grace and goodness of the Almighty? Three strikes? And then you are out? Not with God. You are never out until you refuse to believe that He is there opening up new and glorious opportunities for you.

Just see what power to transform life there is just in a man’s own belief in himself. Stephen Wise, the biographer of Woodrow Wilson, said that Wilson believed in himself and clearly perceived the star of his own high destiny. Once Wise asked Wilson: “When did you first think or dream of the presidency?” Wilson’s answer was startlingly simple. He replied: “There never was a time after I entered Davidson College in North Carolina when I did not expect and did not prepare myself to become President of the United States.”

How much greater is that power to transform life when that faith is lodged in Almighty God, His promises to us, and purposes for us!

Recently, I was reading the obituary column in the March 21^st issue of Time magazine, and I came across the notice of the death of Glenn Cunningham, at 78, over in Menifee, Arkansas.

My mind raced back to the time I had first heard the name of Glenn Cunningham. It was a Saturday night in New York, in the late thirties, when I was studying at Union Seminary. A friend of mine from Texas had invited me to go with him to see the Melrose Games at the old Madison Square Gardens.

“Melrose Games,” I had asked him, “What is that?” “Oh,” he said, “that’s an indoor track meet,” and he proceeded to tell me about the principal contestant in that track meet he was so excited about seeing who would run in the famous Wanamaker Mile.

All the way on the noisy subway ride from Columbia University Station to Times Square, my Texas friend regaled me with the amazing story of this young athlete named Glenn Cunningham, who had been badly burned as a small boy when he and his brother were starting a fire in their country schoolhouse in Kansas and the stove exploded on them.

The family doctor, after examining the little boy’s ghastly injuries, had said: “Mrs. Cunningham, Glenn will live, but I’m afraid that he will never walk again.” Hearing the physician’s judgment, the small patient spoke up: “But, Doctor, I’ve got to because I’m going to be a long distance runner.”

Well, Glenn did walk, but not like other little boys, for the burns on his legs and ankles were so intense he couldn’t put his heels down, so everywhere he went, he went on tip-toe, and not at the rhythm of a walk, but a run.

So, that night in Madison Square Gardens my Texas friend and I saw Glenn Cunningham come streaking in far ahead of the rest of the pack winning the famous Wanamaker Mile and setting a new world’s record.

The brief Time magazine obituary that I read three weeks ago added these significant details epitomizing the spirit of Glenn Cunningham and how he continued his long distance race through the remainder of his 78 years: “He was the father of 12 children and he cared over the years for 9,000 troubled or orphaned children at his Kansas ranch.” (Time — March 21, 1988)

What God can and will do for us and through us for others is limited only by our capacity of faith. “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.” For us and our little lives still it is true that our Lord does “not many mighty works among us or through us because of our unbelief.” “Do you really want to be healed?” the Lord asks us today. There is no limit on His giving, save only our readiness to receive.

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

O God and Father of us all — O Thou who are not in the wind and the thunder, nor the lightning, but whose creations they all are — Thou master of the wind and wave and all the storms of life, come near to still the tempests that threaten our security and disturb our world. Quell the storm of tense anxiety and inner pressure of many duties which make perilous and distraught our life’s journey. Speak Thy, “Peace, be still” to our tumultuous souls and lead us into Thy peace by giving us the grace to seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and leave all these other things for Thee to add to our living when it pleases Thee.

Still, O Lord, the storm of timidity, fear, and uncertainty in our shrinking hearts with the assurance of Thy all availing spiritual resources if we will only be still, stop recounting our past failures, and rely wholly upon Thee.

Bring us safely through, O Lord, the storm of temptation that blows from the wilderness of our wasted opportunities and past sinful habits. These wild, selfish passions of ours will obey no other voice save Thine when Thou speakest, “Peace, be still.”

Quell, O Lord, the storm of our sorrow and anguish before that awesome separator, Death, by Thy brave word and pioneering example. O may we hear Thee say to us: “I am the resurrection and the life. Fear not, I am the first and the last. I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.”

O Jesus, Savior, pilot us over life’s tempestuous sea, as in the company of Thy disciples we pray, “Our Father, which art in heaven, etc.”