On Sunday, September 20, the first of four services celebrating the appointment of our four new district superintendents was streamed from Bethany UMC in Red Lion. (View here: tinyurl.com/DSinstallCB) This service celebrated the appointment of Rev. Catherine E. Boileau as the new York District Superintendent. Following is an edited version of her installation address.
Scripture references: John 5:1-9, Romans 8:31-39
Rev. Catherine E. Boileau, York District Superintendent
I am grateful to be here in this place today, in this moment. For this place is an Ebenezer for me. You remember what an Ebenezer is? “Thus far has God brought me.”
It is not just because I served here. There is something that happened here, right down there on a piece of this communion rail, that makes me think of the man lying by the pool at Bethsaida.
You see, when I came to Bethany, it was not in the usual way. I was introduced by a District Superintendent, but not appointed. I arrived broken in body, struggling with an illness which had led to my going on disability. By all counts, it was an illness that meant I would not be able to be in full time ministry again for a long time, if ever.
And so I was here, like the man lying by the side of the pool, unable to find that magic pill or enter the swirling waters of healing. Unable, even with one of the best and most compassionate physicians, to find a way to reverse the damage that the illness had done. Like the man lying by the side of the pool for all those many years, I was certain that without God’s help my story of illness would remain unchanged.
There are, of course, two important differences between my story and his story. The first, thanks be to God, I was only sick for a handful of years, not 38. Can you imagine; lying beside that pool for 38 years? No wonder the man lost his hope.
And the second difference, is that unlike this man, I never was alone. I had a circle of people called the church— friends who stood with me, who never gave up on me, who fought for me in prayer on days I could hardly pray for myself, and refused to give up on me. A friend and colleague named Mike Druck promised to fast from chocolate the entire time I was on disability, more than 2 years. My District Superintendent, Roger Mentzer, battled in prayer for me, refusing to accept that I would not be able to return full-force into pastoral ministry. I had a Lead Pastor named Charlie Salisbury—perhaps you have heard of him? At the end of the day I would cry and fuss because I was exhausted after preaching a sermon, and he would say, “What you can give me in a 10-minute conversation on vision is worth a whole week of everything else.” I had a people housed in this beautiful space called Bethany, who received me and embraced my gifts, even when I felt that I was less than I used to be, and who prayed for me.
It was, in fact, at that very spot I now call Ebenezer, during a healing service one night after we had prayed for everyone else, that they prayed for me. And the waters of God began to move when they had seemed to be so still for so long. And miraculously, not by my doing, or even by my wonderful doctor’s doing, the healing waters of Christ began swirling into my broken body, and I began my journey of healing.
Now it is true, that my healing took a long time, but looking back, it started in that moment, and throughout it all, I was never alone. And just as Jesus visited that man by the side of the pool at Bethsaida that day, here is my testimony: that Jesus also has visited me. He visited in the fullness of Psalm 103, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits.” In the fullness of who He is, Jesus came to me in my physical healing, but He also came in spiritual healing and the forgiveness of sin.
Unlike this man, I have never been abandoned. The Body of Christ has always been around me and is with me even in this moment. We are scattered today all around the globe, but unlike this man, we in the people called church are never alone.
So let’s look at the gospel text.
As we read the story in John 5, there’s no explanation of why Jesus would seek out this man to be healed. I love this healing story because it is clear that it doesn’t happen because this is a man of stellar faith. It’s not even because this man is likeable. In fact, quite the opposite; the man is lost in the bitterness of his condition and his sense of abandonment. Maybe you’ve met someone like this, who after years of disappointment, offers the same series of laments: Nobody comes. Nobody’s here. Oh, if only...
Jesus looks at the man and asks the simple question: “Do you want to get well?”
Listen again to what the man says. “Well every now and then an angel comes and stirs up the pool, and nobody comes, and I can’t get there, and…” He never even answers Jesus’ question.
This is not an example of stellar faith. Even as we move further down in the text, even after the man is healed, and people ask him, “Who healed you?” The only response he gives is, “I don’t know.”
This isn’t the Samaritan woman running around and saying this Jesus is amazing and told me everything about myself!
This isn’t the Syrophoenician woman who says even the crumbs under your table would be enough, Lord. Heal my child.
This is not faith like the centurion who says just give one word, Lord, and my servant will be healed.
This isn’t even Mary and Martha wrestling in faith and saying I know Lord that at the end of the age there will be a resurrection and our brother will be raised.
This isn’t stellar faith, nor even ordinary faith, but a lament that things aren’t working the way this man thinks they should. If only. He doesn’t offer anything that would attract us to him.
But we’re not Jesus. And let the record show, that of all of the people gathered by the pool that day waiting on a miracle, it is this guy, that Jesus chooses to visit. It is this guy, with nothing to offer, not even a mustard seed of faith, that Jesus chooses to heal.
Which is what makes this story such a story of grace. And reminds us that Jesus doesn’t choose people because we are so lovable, but because Jesus is so loving.
And that’s what gives me hope.
This isn’t the story about how right we do things, but a story about how right God is. A story that reminds us that God visits us not because we have it all together, but because God is a God of compassion who is steadfast in his love.
This is a God who loves us and is willing to look beyond our lack of faith, our selfishness and our brokenness; who looks beyond our grumpy days, or the days we can offer nothing that would attract God to us. Because Jesus loves this man and love us, nonetheless.
Why I love this story is because it reminds me that my story is also a story of grace. God didn’t heal me because I was so deserving or because I did things better than anyone else.
God didn’t call me to ministry—here’s a fact—or even into this ministry, because I’m brighter, more faithful, or have it more together than someone else. God called because that’s the work God is in, loving the broken, healing the wounded, and seeing us through the eyes of what can be restored in us rather than what is lacking in us.
And here’s what I learned as the church loved me when I didn’t have much to offer, and when God loves us as a simple act of grace: that whenever everybody else abandons you, when you feel you are less than yourself and part of you has been destroyed or left behind, when everybody else sees you as less than; Jesus never will. And when everyone else abandons you, Jesus never does.
I want to say to those of you who might [read this] — that if everyone else has abandoned you, Jesus will still show up for you.
Jesus doesn’t wait ‘til your life is together or you overcome the addiction or you have things figured out. Jesus shows up for you just as you are. And God’s people called Methodist are here to love you too.
If I have one prayer for us, York District, as we start this journey together it would be that we would see people, really see people, as Jesus sees people, as Jesus saw this man. For when Jesus saw him, it changed everything. And when we see people like Jesus sees people, it will change people’s stories as well.
We are so good at seeing the label or the lifestyle or the category or the race—arranging people into our categories—and never really seeing the child of God who is in front of us.
Oh church, if there was ever a way we could witness to the incredible compassion of our God in this current chapter in history, surely it would be to look at every person and to really see them.
In my journey, I once had a friendship with a man I’ll call Danny.
Danny had been a part of our community for quite a while but when he visited us in a community ministry, he would stay at the back. Before people left for the evening, I let them know that we would be happy to pray for anyone who came up to the front, but Danny never came forward.
I congratulated myself on being respectful of his space, until one day he burst out, furious with me. “I stayed, and you didn’t pray for me.” I apologized.
After the community meal that evening, Danny stayed and began to tell me his story. One story fell out in jagged edges and Danny was full of rage and tears. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” he said. “I can’t remember how many years it has been since I have cried.”
Danny had endured more wounds than I will ever know, but the one that hurt him most was that because he mostly lived on the streets, no one would look at him. I could understand why. Danny was big and strong and his face showed his pain, an intimidating presence to be sure. But there behind the pain, was a heart that was kind and protective and wanted to be loved. Of all the wounds in his life, here’s the one that mattered most to him now, No one ever looks at me.
My husband and I were at Sheetz the next week, when who should I see but Danny. Danny, who was yearning for people to see him. In my somewhat over-exuberant personality that sometimes can be a blessing as well as a curse, I loudly called out his name and ran to him with exitement. The Sheetz was crowded and everyone stopped to see this spectacle I had just made of both of us. I spent a few minutes talking to Danny, then as I left said to my husband, “Oh, what if I embarrassed him? I hope I didn’t scare him off.”
The very next week, I felt a tap on my shoulder. The kind of tap when someone teases you and walks on the other side to pretend as if they weren’t the one who tapped you. Grinning broadly, there was Danny. And a long term friendship was born.
I’d like to tell you that our friendship was like a Hallmark movie, and all Danny’s problems (as well as my own) disappeared, and that it wasn’t full of mistakes and jagged edges and struggles. But, I wasn’t there to fix all Danny’s challenges just as he was not there to fix all mine—yet we are truly friends.
Danny has taught me many things, not the least of which is there power that is released in a human life and heart when we allow people to be truly seen. And counted. And valued. And loved.
York District let’s pray for the eyes to see people as Jesus sees them.
That’s one prayer I have for us today.
But here’s the other. In order to see it, let’s flip our vision from the eyes of Jesus to the eyes of the man, the man who doesn’t see Jesus at all.
Here’s Jesus, the Lord of life, the ‘Niagara Falls of living water’, who has come all this way to stand with this man in his lament at the pool, and say, “Buddy, do you want to be healed?” And the man is so busy looking at the pool, remembering a past time when an angel came and stirred up the waters, that he misses the reality that it is God who is standing right there with him in this moment. He’s waiting for an angel, but God has shown up. Just for him. The same God who created heaven and earth. The God who formed him and made him as he is, who gave him gifts and graces to be shared, the God who put the stars on their course and the sun and the moon on their paths, the God who was on his way to a cross to die for both his sins and for his healing. That God. And all the man can do is look at the pool and sigh.
Oh if only. If only, some angel would come. If only, someone would carry me. If only.
As if God’s love and power are so limited that only the first one in the pool can be blessed. As if God is capable of running out of compassion or power. As if God is a God who is so limited that He will only come once in awhile to bless His children. As if God, like us, is limited.
The problem is the man is so focused on the pool of what has been, he doesn’t see Jesus at all.
Church, let’s be honest. We pray for the [eradication] of coronavirus and healing of our churches and our culture but if we are honest, sometimes we spend far too much time looking at the pool of where we have been rather than looking at the God who stands before us. Who wants to do a new thing.
Ah, if only, we say.
If only. If only we had the right pastor or didn’t have to wear masks or we could gather together, then God would move.
If only. If only the angel will come, as it once did, and we can go back to doing things the way they are, then God will move.
When God saw us, really saw us, lying by the side of the pool, in our sin and death, God did not send an angel, but so much more than an angel. God came in Jesus Christ. That was the man’s only hope, and ours.
It is true that sometimes God does send us the angel and miracles happen that we can’t explain. Just as I can’t explain why my healing came that night on this spot.
When those blessings come every once in a while, we give God thanks, but it is not an angel we need to be looking for.
It is not the pool of water that we need most, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified who is always our hope; the same Jesus who is the same yesterday today and forever. Instead of looking at the pool of what God’s done in the past, let’s lift our eyes and put them square on Jesus; the Jesus who doesn’t need an angel to stir our hearts because He is greater than our hearts, and he doesn’t need a pool because his blood has made us clean and by His stripes we are healed.
So let’s pray these two things in this new chapter together:
Let’s pray for eyes to really see each person in our path.
Even if they voted for a different candidate.
Even if they’re from a different cultural or ethnic group.
Even if they disagree with you about the theology of the church.
Let’s pray for eyes to see every person as God sees them.
And...let’s pray to take our eyes off the pool.
Because God is still God and the same yesterday, today and forever.
Because God is larger than coronavirus, and larger than any challenge that we face.
Because God is not limited to go back and repeat, time after time, the miracles of the past.
Because His mercies are new every morning.
Let’s get our eyes off the lament and all the excuses of what can or can’t happen, and back on to the living God, who right now, right here, is standing in our midst.
For if God is for us, what is coronavirus or all our other challenges to stand against us?
If God is for us, then let’s not watch too much at the pool waiting for an angel to come like one did in the past,
but let’s fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our less than perfect faith.
For, if God did not hold back his son but gave him up for all of us, will He not give us all good things?
And if we do fix our eyes on Jesus, then maybe we will hear Jesus say to us, as he did to the man that day, “Church, do you want to get well?” “Come, take up your pallet and walk.” “Come, take up your cross and follow me.”
And here’s the promise I am holding to, and invite you to believe as well: “That neither death, nor life. nor angels, nor principalities, not things present, nor things to come, nor powers, neither height nor depth, nor any other created thing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
So let’s pick up our pallets and walk, York District.
Let’s rock this next chapter.
God is already in our midst, and God is with us, not against us.
Amen and amen.
