Jazz is a primarily American musical art form, one that initially took shape in African American communities in the early 20th century, but which over the ensuring century spawned a variety of styles and subgenres. There is Dixieland, bebop, Cuban, Brazilian, jazz-rock, funk, big band, swing, and on and on. Jazz is notoriously difficult to define, but certainly one of its key elements has been and remains improvisation.

In European classical music the performer’s primary goal is to play the composition as it is written. But in jazz, the skilled performer will interpret a tune in a variety of ways. How the performer interprets the tune will vary depending on their mood, on the audience, on the interactions with other musicians, on their personal experience. Jazz is not a “better” genre of music than classical, but it is different.

I sometimes wonder if there is not a little bit of jazz in my sermon preparation – which is to say, speaking more broadly, my worship preparation, because for me the sermon never stands alone, it must be integrated with the rest of the service, the music, the prayers. For me, worship preparation is seldom linear. What usually happens is I am struck by something in a passage from the Bible, or I have an experience which I am trying to make sense of, or something comes up with a member of the congregation, or maybe it is even as simple as seeing a bumper sticker that grabs me. I will take that sermon seed, let it head me in a direction, and then set it aside while I do the work of research, of checking what the scholars have to say about the reading or the topic. I will try to figure out what it meant to those who first wrote it down or heard it, and wonder what that might have to say to us. Maybe a piece of music will come to mind, or I will find a piece of writing, perhaps a poem, that puts it in a new light.

And then all this just sits there, in the file, on my desk, in my head, and then, surprisingly often, inspiration strikes – there is that “aha” moment and the initial structure becomes clear and an initial theme will take shape – and then, after a while, variations set in.

Give me a for instance, well, okay. Take today’s service. We knew the Original Dissonance Jazz Band was going to be here, and we knew that they do jazz. Donna Murphy and I sat down, and the Rev. Bob Gardiner joined us for some brainstorming, and after a time we have some ideas for the music, and then it strikes me that Psalm 98 might be helpful here, including its reference to making a joyful noise. And then at some point we get Down by the Riverside, that old camp chestnut, and Wade in the Water, and then, -- this was a few weeks ago, you see – and then, nothing.

And then this week the chorus from Wade in the Water is going through my head: ‘Wade in the water, Wade in the water, children, Wade in the water, God’s gonna trouble the water.”

And I think of you, and I think of our old baptismal bowl, and I think of – my father.

I am starting to realize, not as a theoretical matter, but as a practical matter, about the benefits of having strategies for coping with the challenges of aging. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a robust, hearty and hale man, a fellow who retired to the woods of the Pocono foothills and kept active through logging the woods for cords of firewood, well into his late 80’s. He had a terrible time with arthritis, and would start each day at about 5:30 or so down in the basement of the farmhouse he shared with my grandmother, riding a stationary bike for 30 minutes, loosening up the joints which had seized up overnight.

My father had a different strategy—the hot tub. For the last decade of his life most evenings before bedtime he would be out back of the home he shared with my stepmother down on the Chesapeake, sliding down into the waters of a hot tub, turning on the jets, letting their massaging waves soothe a body spent from fighting the lymphoma.

This brought to mind John 5. Let us listen for the Word of God….

“I’ve had a good run”, he said with just a hint of satisfaction, “It’s been a good life.” Not much, you might say, but I knew better. For this man who had grown up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a single child who at an early age had been sent away to a military school which he never talked about, but which must have been difficult for him; for this veteran who fought with the US Army through Germany, and was only spared from the war in the Pacific by the atom bomb; for this engineer from Lehigh University who was the antithesis of a soccer Dad; for this man who was no philosopher and who rarely expressed his feelings to his family; well, this was a sermon, an oration, a valediction. And I knew, as we reclined together at peace in those swirling waters, that we each had known a measure of healing there. The next day I left, knowing I would never see him again, alive, and yet we were both at peace with that.

I think this is what John is telling us through this passage about the man at the healing pool in the temple. God troubles the waters, and there there is healing, and yet how often it is that we cannot get to them, for whatever reason. In this case, we have someone who has been ill for 38 years. A long, long time. And he hangs out by a pool in Jerusalem that is a sort of hot spring, with waters that on occasion bubble, the waters are stirred up, and the popular belief is that only the first one into the pool can be healed. Alas for this fellow, in all those 38 years he could never get into the pool first!

Jesus’ first question gets to the heart of the matter: do you want to be healed? Interestingly, the man doesn’t answer the question – instead, he trots out the excuse that others get into the water first. For him, healing is impossible. He can’t get beyond his own presumptions about how healing can come, and, as a result, he doesn’t get healed.

The text leaves this as a matter for our imagination, but I’m guessing that Jesus is a little bit exasperated here. But he is not going to let this fellow’s failure to see outside the box keep him from the healing he needs, and keep Jesus from demonstrating that healing is God’s gift, available to all. And so Jesus commands him: rise, take up your mat, and walk. And he is healed.

And this gets me to wondering, and maybe you wonder as well, why so many folk – why so many times us, ourselves – have a hard time asking for healing. Why we refuse to think outside the box, why we assume that we cannot be healed, why we just resign ourselves to situations which we are convinced just cannot ever be changed.

The wonders of Facebook have brought this home to me in recent weeks. Facebook, for those who have not discovered it yet, is an on-line application on the world wide web which allows you to easily find and reconnect with people you may have lost contact with over the years – including folk from college and high school. But it works both ways – once you are on Facebook, these people can find you, and then they ask if they can be your Facebook friend. But here’s my issue – I remember what jerks they were in High School, it all comes rushing back over me, and even though forty years have passed, I want to say no, you weren’t my friends back then, so why would I want to your friend now? Its absurd, really, seeing how most of us were not at our best in our high school years, and most of us have changed dramatically since then, and isn’t 40 years a long time to hold a grudge? But then there was this part of me which enjoyed holding onto the hurt, relished finally being able to get back at them. Jesus’ question is a question for me – do I want to be healed?

This is a question for me, and maybe it’s a question for you as well, and maybe it’s a question for us as a nation as well. Do we want to be healed? Its not news to any of us that this nation’s health care system is a real mess – the scandalous cost of prescription drugs, the runaway annual increases in premiums for those blessed to be able to afford health insurance, the millions of our fellow citizens who are uninsured and who are one illness or hospitalization away from bankruptcy, the burden on hospital emergency rooms from having to serve as unreimbursed medical clinic to the poor. Jesus’ question is a question for us – do we want to be healed?

But God’s going to trouble those waters, and God wants us to be healed, and God beckons to us and says, come on in, the water’s fine. And rise, and take up your mat, and walk. And come on down, down to the riverside, where you and I, and this church, and this nation, and this world, can be healed.

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