Liturgies with a Limp

It was another day around the pool of Bethesda. The usual crowd gathers beneath its covered walkways, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, and the chronically ill. Weary hopefuls with worn faces watch the water, waiting for something to happen. A tradition had grown around the pool. The belief was that when the water was stirred, the first person in would be healed. It doesn't seem fair, does it? The strongest person wins, the one with the quickest legs, the closest mat, or the most attentive friends get the miracle. But what hope is there for the person who cannot move? Among the collection of sufferers was a man who had been disabled for 38 years. 38 years of watching, 38 years of hoping, 38 years of seeing other people reach the water before him. We don't know whether he spent his 38 years beside that pool, but he had been carrying his affliction for nearly four decades. Long enough for hope to grow weary, long enough for disappointment to become familiar, long enough to wonder whether healing was something that happened only to other people. Have you ever prayed for a breakthrough that long? I have. Some prayers appear so often that I almost blush when I think about how many times God has had to hear my prayers. They have become liturgies with a limp. I walk with God, waiting, hoping, praying, and trusting one more time. Prayer is partly a battle for our attention and partly a battle for our persistence. We ask and we keep on asking, we seek, and we keep on seeking, we knock, and we keep on knocking. But one thing I've learned with answered prayers and unanswered prayers, it's not a scorecard, it's not a competition, it's an invitation into relationships. Maybe prayer is less like reaching for a destination and more like learning to dance. We follow God's lead. Even when our steps feel clumsy and the rhythm seems off, we remain in his arms, even when we can't tell where he is taking us. In Graeme Green's play, The Potting Shed, Father Califer says, Faith is not something that one loses. We merely cease to shape our lives by it. And that line, to be honest, it haunts me. I have moments of doubt. I'm prone to wander, as the hymn says, but the faithfulness of Jesus is greater than my uncertainty. The danger is not that one difficult question will destroy my faith. The danger is that I'll gradually stop shaping my life around what I say I believe. I can continue saying that God is faithful while living as though I am completely alone. I can say that Jesus is near while staring endlessly at the water, waiting for an angel, and sometimes I can become so preoccupied with the miracle I expect that I fail to recognize the Savior standing beside me. Then Jesus entered Bethesda. He walked among the sufferers and he stopped beside this particular man. Jesus knew how long he had been there. He knew every disappointment, every frustration, every attempt. Every morning the man had awakened beside the pool unchanged. And then Jesus asks him this strange question. Do you want to be healed? At first the question seems obvious, but Jesus often asks questions whose answers reveal more than we intended. The man never directly answered yes. Instead he explained his situation, Sir, I have no one to put me into this pool when the water is stirred. When I'm coming up, someone goes down ahead of me. In other words, I have no one to help me. I'm not fast enough. Somebody always gets there before me. I've tried. I failed. It's never going to happen. I recognize that voice. I also waste time explaining to Jesus why I am a lost cause, but that is a waste of breath when you are speaking to the one who gave Saturn his rings, filled the oceans, and carved mountains with his fingers. Jesus didn't debate the man's explanation. He didn't offer a theory about water. He didn't help him move his mat closer to the pool. Jesus simply said, Get up, pick up your mat, and walk, and immediately the man was healed. The legs that had failed him carried his weight. The mat that had carried him for years was suddenly resting on his shoulders. He walked away from Bethesda, carrying the evidence of what Jesus had already done. For 38 years, he thought he needed water. What he needed was Jesus. That doesn't mean every prayer will be answered as quickly or as dramatically as his. Some faithful people carry unanswered prayers to the end of their earthly lives. Some healing comes suddenly, some comes slowly, some will not come until Jesus makes all things new. The miracle of Bethesda is not a formula promising that every illness will be healed, every disability will disappear if we pray long enough. It's a revelation of who Jesus is. He sees the person everyone else has stopped noticing. He enters places crowded with disappointment. He is not limited by our weakness, our resources, our history, or our inability to reach the water. And even when his answer is not the one that we requested, his presence is never a consolation prize. Jesus Himself is the gift. Luke tells us that Jesus taught his disciples that they should always pray and never give up. So bring him your prayer again today. Bring him the name you have whispered for years. Bring him the marriage, the diagnosis, the wandering child, the private sorrow, and the door that has never quite opened. Bring him your doubts, bring him your exhaustion, bring him your journals filled with the same requests, written a hundred different ways. We all enter the throne room broken. That's precisely why we come. And maybe beneath every other prayer there is an even deeper one. Make me a lover. Teach me how to love. Let me love in the language of Jesus.