Surviving Hard Times When You Can't Get Out of Bed

The Good News when your "git up and go" "got up and went":

These are hard times for many folks.
The country’s economic turmoil has affected so many different aspects of life around us:
life-time savings have been decimated,
home mortgages lost,
jobs lost,
credit much less available,
uncertainty becomes a staple of life.
Of course, that’s just one aspect of the hard times many are experiencing:
we deal with personal loss,
health issues,
and bad things that just happen.

In the midst of these hard times, your preacher looks for ways our faith speaks to our experiences.
We are reminded that the faith espoused in the Old Testament was born and bred and honed and nourished and thrived during hard times.
And, we remember that Jesus was born into hard times and the early believers spread their faith during hard times.
The gospel message speaks directly to the hard times the folks experienced some 2000 years ago, and breaks through the cultural barriers into the world in which we live and move and have our being today.

So, I am engaged in this series of sermons about Surviving Hard Times.
These sermons are grounded in the implicit message that runs through most of the New Testament, made explicit in 1 John 5:4 :
It is our faith that enables us to overcome hard times.

Today, we want to consider what the Good News is when you just can’t get out of bed –
you know, when your “git up and go” feels like it “got up and went”.

They used to refer to that feeling as melancholy – I have seen references in old books as a person described as experiencing melancholy.
These days we might call it depression – although depression is a clinical diagnosis of acute feelings, we still use the word to describe our down times, when we’re in the dumps, when we just don’t care much about what’s happening around us, when we are disillusioned.
Sometimes we might call it listlessness.

The feelings of listlessness that most of us have from time to time may or may not be severe enough for professional clinical care, they are becoming more and more common as the years go by.
We are told that we are living in “the age of melancholy”,
and that depression has become an epidemic in this country,
becoming so pervasive that is known as “the common cold of mental illness.”
It is on pace to become the world’s second most disabling disease, right after heart disease, by the year 2020.
In fact, it already is number the number one disease among women the world over according to The World Health Organization.
It is common enough to be experienced in severe terms by one in every five persons over the course of a lifetime.
Psychologists describe this as “a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that leads to intense sadness.”
And sometimes, we just can’t get out bed.

We get tired of it all.
Despair takes affect.
Cynicism becomes the prism through which we see the world.
Self-pity predominates.
We have less energy.
We are unable to concentrate.
We sit in front of the tv and after a while realize we have no idea what the score is, or who’s playing, or even what we’ve been watching .
Nothing seems to matter anymore.

It seems to me that during hard times like these, we need to know that we are not alone.
It comes as little comfort to hear that some of the most positive and most talented people the world has ever known suffered from bouts of melancholies such as these.
People like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Beethoven, Martin Luther, Tolstoy, and so many others have written about times when they just couldn’t get themselves out of bed.


So, we have this story that John relays about Jesus meeting up with this man at the pools of Bethesda.
The story is told and we are called to remember the story because these pools were known to have apparent medicinal properties.
People would come from far and wide to dip in the pool of water as a treatment for whatever ailed them.
And, as you might expect crowds of people gathered around the pool – waiting for their turn to dip in the water.
And John tells the story that one day Jesus visits the healing pools of Bethesda.
And there were wall to wall people crowding each other for favored position to better reach the water’s edge.
And Jesus notices this one guy – just one guy out of so many there – each one with a different story about why they were there and what they wanted.
Jesus just walks up and starts talking to this guy lying on a mat – obviously unable to move much at all.
And he learns that this man has been at this pool for over 38 years!!!!
Waiting to dip into the healing waters of the pool.
38 years!!!
He had been coming to that pool for longer than Jesus himself had been alive!!
He had been there for as long as anyone could remember.
For nearly 14,000 days he had dragged himself to the pool – but never getting in to the pool.
Why did he keep coming back?
Who knows.
You might think he would have given up before now.
But, no-o-o-o, he still came day after day after day after day.
Coming to dip in the healing waters, but never doing it.

So, Jesus asks the obvious question:
“So, do you want to get well, or what?”
I see this as a faith question.
Maybe the man couldn’t get in the water because he really didn’t want to get well.
Maybe the man was reluctant to get in the water because he didn’t really believe it was going to work.
Maybe the man was too discouraged and listless and despondent – too mired in self-pity and despair – to get up off his mat and move toward the water.

“So,” Jesus said, “do you want to get well, or what?”
The man had to answer the question –
do you believe you can get well?
When the man expressed his belief that he could get well, Jesus just told him, “Well, stand up, pick up your mat and go home.”

Now, understand that no one suggests that Jesus did any magic here, no potions were give, no spells intoned, not even a touch made, no prayers said.
Just a declarative sentence in the imperative:
Get up, pickup your mat and go on home.

And, the story is, he did.
Notice, the man didn’t even ask for Jesus for healing.
He didn’t even know who Jesus was.
Indications are he never even heard of Jesus.
But, he did what Jesus said.
Was the conviction in Jesus’ voice?
The assurance?
The authority?
For whatever reason, after stating that he did have faith that he could get better, he acted on the suggestion made by this stranger whom he had never seen before at this pool.
He got up.
He picked up his mat.
He walked around the pool talking to his friends.
And totally lost track of Jesus and where he was – not even knowing who he was.

The message here seems to be for you and me that it is a matter of faith.
Overcoming hard times is a matter of faith.
A giant theologian from another era, Harry Emerson Fosdick, could write:
A vital faith in God gives a man available resources of interior power.
We never produce power.
We always appropriate it.
That is true from the harnessing of the Niagara to taking a walk in the fresh air.
We never create power – we assimilate it.
So, a [person] with a real faith in GOD senses around his [or her] spiritual life a spiritual presence as truly as the physical world is around his body.
He knows of the deep well of staying power that divine companionship can replenish."
The man at the Bethesda pool suffered from depression so great that he was unable to get off his mat to move the few feet to waters’ edge.
And, Jesus helped him tap into the power that dwelt within all the time –
first by affirming the belief that such power was there – yes, I do want to get well.
And then by acting on that belief – by getting up and picking up his mat and going home.

When Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist was asked, “What would you advise a person to do if they were experiencing deep depression and unhappiness?”
If you are listless and melancholy and feeling deep despair that effectively immobilizes you, Dr. Menninger said: “If you are really severely depressed, lock the door behind you, go across the street, find somebody in need, and do something to help them.”

You see, Karl Minninger knew what we know.
There is healing power in doing for others –
Power we can harness with little effort.
Power that has powerful effect on our health.
Do you want to get well? Jesus asked.

The question is for you and me as well as for the man at the pool.
Apparently, the greatest therapy in the world is moving off of our personal comfort mats and going to do something for another.

Some of you knew Evelyn Kimbel.
Evelyn Kimbel was a long time member of this church that fell on hard times.
By anyone’s book, Evelyn Kimbel had reason to be depressed and despondent.
Evelyn’s live outlasted her savings.
She went to live in a nursing care facility that promised to take care of her the rest of her days.
And that was fine for her – although it meant sharing a room with another person for the rest of her life.
And it was good while it lasted.
Until the nursing home closed.
Again she had to move – to another facility miles from the first. A place where she knew no one.
And, the thing is, when she first went to each place, she took a look around and asked, “So, what does God want me do here?”
And in each place she found a niche where she brought light and happiness and comfort and joy into the lives of many many others – for the rest of the days of her life.

With Evelyn Kimbell it was a faith question.
What am I to do with my life in this place,
at this time,
under these circumstances?

There is a story you may have heard:
A horseman was out riding one day and came upon a sparrow lying on its back in the middle of the road. The horseman stopped short, dismounted and asked the sparrow what in the world it was doing lying in there on its back with its feet in the air.
The sparrow explained, "I heard that the heavens are going to fall today."
"Oh," said the horseman, "And if they do fall, I suppose you think your puny little legs can hold up the heavens?"
The sparrow answered: "One does what one can," One does what one can."

The sparrow found purpose in his life.
Evelyn Kimbel found purpose in her life.
The man at the pool found purpose in his life.
There is power in living for others.

Jesus said he came in order that we might have abundant life – full life – at all times in all places.

On our website there are links to resources that bring the gospel to bear on how we can live better than we ever thought possible.

It is a matter of faith.
And that’s what we are about here at this church.
When presented with the question, like the man at the pool was,
how we answer determines whether we know abundant life –
or continue to experience a melancholy life.

In the words of the sparrow, one does what one can, one does what one can.

Amen.