THORNTON WILDER & THE ANGEL THAT STIRRED THE WATER

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate is a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” John 5:1-6

Life can be brutal, uncertain and it can be racked with grief and silent pain. I knew this life as a young boy. I’ve known it as an adult. I suffered at the hands of an adult, (not my parents), and blocked it from all thought. Home life was unbearably hard at the time too. As a coping mechanism I slipped into mutism at school and was bullied relentlessly. I always struggled with the sense of inferiority and lack. This internal struggle was masked with humor but inside of me I was a tempest of pain and rage and abandonment. Why wasn’t I smart? Why was I a failure? If I hide nothing bad will happen.

Even when I came to faith I still struggled. Church hurt soon found me and, in my pain, I fell away to very dark places and shoveled self-induced guilt and hurt upon myself for years, I distanced myself from my God and in that pain once considered a drastic turn to silence this long bearing hurt I felt. In that time, I learned of a playwright named Thornton Wilder who wrote a one act play based on John 5:1-6.

Its title was the Angel That Troubled The Waters. A physician comes to the pool in hope and longing to be healed of his pain. The angel appears to stir these waters but blocks the physician from stepping into it. The angel tells the physician to draw back, this moment is not for him. But with broken voice he pleads to be allowed into the waters but the angel is insistent that it is not for him.

The angel then speaks to the physician, “Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. Physician, draw back.”

A short time later a man who went into the pool instead of the physician has been healed and is rejoicing, he meets the physician and says: “Please come with me. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I do not understand him and only you have ever lifted his mood, Only an hour to my home… There is also my daughter: since her child died, she sits in the shadow. She will not listen to us but she will listen to you.”

The author and priest Brennan Manning once said that Christians who remain in hiding continue to live the lie. “We deny the reality of our sin. In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others. We cling to our bad feelings and beat ourselves with the past when what we should do is let go. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, guilt is an idol. But when we dare to live as forgiven men and women, we join the wounded healers and draw closer to Jesus.”

I’ve no pretense of moral authority or any false sense of elevated goodness. I’m a regular man who blunders at times, who has been through his own dark nights of the soul. A man who a little more than a year ago finally made peace with my past and I have found significant strength through my own healing process. The scars of life I will always bear, but I can stop hiding the wounds and perhaps like the physician find through my wounds, strength to share this with others who hurt. Life is hard, Christ never promised an easy life free from pain or a life filed with new cars and houses or fame or worldly power or wealth or living in a nice community surrounded by others who think and live exactly like you do. That’s a cheap and plastic religion. It’s hollow and worthless.

Do not listen to the talking heads on TV that empower fear and hostility. Be about the kingdom. Be a healer and be real with others when the situation calls for it. Love others as you would be loved. Your wounds make the way for God’s grace to touch and help others. The unlovely and unwanted and those that look like they have it altogether on the surface but underneath are filled with the storms of their own pain need this. I believe in you. For such a time, my friend you have been called.