May 22,2022: The Definition of Insanity
The Definition of Insanity
John 5:1-9
Rev. Rhonda Blevins
After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 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?” The ill 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.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.______
You know what the definition of insanity is, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
This maxim is often attributed to Albert Einstein. It wasn’t Albert Einstein. Wherever this quote originated (I’ve seen a couple of different ideas about this), this quote remains popular because most of us are caught up in some kind of cycle of “insanity”—doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We get locked into habits that run counter to our hopes and our goals: with our health, in our relationships, in our workplace . . .
What habits are keeping you from some hope or dream or goal?
Today in our scripture text we meet a textbook example of someone exhibiting the “Definition of Insanity.” For 38 years, this man has been unable to walk. Now, we can have empathy for this man while at the same time recognizing he’s locked into a pattern that isn’t helping his situation at all. You see, he (for some reason) thinks that by sitting beside the pool at Beth-zatha, he might one day be healed from his infirmity. This pool was thought to have magical healing powers. And so every day, this fellow sits poolside, hoping for a miracle.
Why did he think the pool at Beth-zatha had magical powers? Something interesting about our scripture text today is that the earliest Greek manuscripts (the manuscripts used for most modern translations of the Bible, like the NRSV we read from) don’t give us an explanation for why this pool is believed to have magical powers. But later manuscripts, like the one used for the King James Version, offer an explanation. A scribe somewhere along the way added this explanation in . . . you can read it in John 5:4 in the King James Version: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”
So local mythology about the healing waters of Beth-zatha sent all manner of people to sit by the pool and wait for the whim of the pool-stirring angel. And whenever the pool would begin to bubble, the first person in would be healed.
So our friend sat poolside day by day. Waiting. Waiting for the whim of the pool-stirring angel. Hoping to be the first into the pool to be healed. But he wasn’t alone. The guy with chronic halitosis would jump into the pool at first bubble . . . or the kid with acne . . . or the nearsighted woman. Being unable to walk made it difficult to be the first one into the pool.
And yet he sat. Day by day. Week after week. The definition of insanity. No wonder he was frustrated.
Do you ever feel frustrated? You keep doing the same thing over and over and nothing changes?
Think of Charlie Brown and Lucy playing football. Charlie wants so desperately to kick the game-winning field goal. He doesn’t trust Lucy to hold the football, but she says something to convince him to trust her. So the ball is snapped to Lucy, Lucy places the ball on the ground, Charlie Brown runs and kicks, and just as he kicks, what happens? Lucy pulls back the ball, and Charlie Brown lands flat on his back.
This gag was a favorite of the Peanuts creator, Charles Schultz. It appeared every fall for years. Over 45 times! And yet Charlie Brown keeps running. Lucy keeps pulling the ball away. Chuck lands on his back. For 45 years. The definition of insanity.
Do you ever feel frustrated? You keep doing the same thing over and over and nothing changes?
There’s a meme I saw that captures one of my frustrations: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Guess I’ll stop cleaning the house.”
Back to our scripture lesson. Our friend just keeps going back to the magical pool every day. Some days the angel takes the day off and the water doesn’t bubble up at all. Other days the water bubbles up and Hangnail Hank gets into the water first. Our friend goes home frustrated. Repeats the cycle the next day.
Until one day.
Jesus is in town. He sees our friend hanging out at the pool, enacting his daily, disappointing ritual. Jesus knows he’s been there a long time. Jesus asks him a question: “Do you want to be made well?”
How would you answer this question? Do you want to be made well? Do you want wellness? Healing? Health?
You’d think his answer would be a resounding, “Yes! Are you kidding? Of course I want to be made well.”
That’s not what happened.
Instead, our friend offers an excuse: “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.”
Womp, womp.
“It’s somebody else’s fault.” Isn’t it always someone else’s fault? Most of us are masters at projection. We imagine the problems in the world are “out there,” external from us in some way. We have difficulty understanding our part to play in the problems, the suffering we experience as well as the suffering we see in the world.
Think of it this way: our friend kept looking at the “miracle pool” day after day after day. Who knows how many days during his 38 years of infirmity he cast his gaze on the pool. And when one showed up who could legitimately offer healing, his focus was where? Still on the pool. Still on others who wouldn’t let him go in first. The pattern was so fixed in his brain he couldn’t even recognize the source of healing when it was standing right in front of him.
Is that true for us? Maybe we say we want to be well, we want health, we want healing. But are there ways we’re stuck in patterns of thinking and doing that run counter to what we say we want? And more pointedly . . . is there anything you find yourself gazing at day after day that runs counter to the wholeness, health and wellbeing you say you want?
Now here’s where grace comes in.
Our friend never answers Jesus. He never says he wants wholeness and healing. He just offers an excuse.
Jesus heals him anyway.
“Take up your mat and walk.” And he did!
In Acts 3:8, we see Peter heal a man at the Temple who then went “walking, and leaping, and praising God.” There’s a children’s song about this event.
This is not our friend. Our friend took up his mat and walked through the Temple, but there was no leaping. There was no praising God. In fact, our friend was so grateful that when the Temple authorities asked who dared to heal him on the Sabbath, our friend outed Jesus to them. He turned Jesus in.
And isn’t that just like God:
· Giving good things to us when we’re too caught up in our own stuff to even know to ask?
· Offering us healing and wholeness, life and breath even when we’re incredibly ungrateful?
Today I offer four questions, in the way that Jesus asked our friend a question. These are for reflection as you leave here, as you’re sitting at lunch, as you go through your week. Here they are:
1. Do you want to be made well?
2. Are you doing anything counterproductive to wellness?
3. In what ways have you already been made well?
4. How might you express gratitude for all that God has done through word and deed?
I close with a prayer written by Joanna Fuchs:
May you be well.
May you be cleansed and purified
of all that isn’t health.
May every cell in your body
wake up and fight.
May the powerful light of healing
move into every part of you.
May you return to being purely you.
May you be well.