What immobilizes you? Think about something concrete—not like concrete concrete, even though that’s a pretty good immobilizer. “Concrete” as in something real, something actual, something you can name that prevents you from doing what you want to be doing, what you think you need to be doing, or what you feel called to be doing. What immobilizes you? Is it something external or outside you that is doing the preventing? Maybe it’s something internal, something inside you. Maybe we are what stands between us and the accomplishment of something we want, we need, or we feel called to accomplish. Then again, maybe not. Maybe it’s something outside of us.

Let’s talk about fear. Has fear ever immobilized you? You can’t move, you’re afraid to breathe or to make a sound? Even if you can’t instantly identify a situation where that actually happened, I’ll bet most of you know—thanks to your dream life—what that feels like. Have you ever dreamed that you were unable to move at the very moment when you really needed to move? Your legs or your arms didn’t work? The car you were in wouldn’t start or wouldn’t do more than crawl along? You were able to fly away from danger in your last dream, but it doesn’t seem to be working this time? Can I get an Amen?

Kids have typically responded in one of two ways when I’ve asked them, “Have any of you dreamed about forgetting to do homework or to study for a test?” The first response has a majority of hands going up, although some of those hands just kind of ease up because the people belonging to those hands look a bit freaked out—like someone has just read their minds. The second response has those with their hands up looking around and suddenly realizing that they aren’t alone, that others have had the same kind of dream. You forget to do homework, don’t go to class for an entire semester and find yourself at the final exam without a clue, forget the combination to your school locker, or head toward the pulpit on Sunday morning and realize that you haven’t prepared a sermon. You’re immobilized—you can’t do what you’re supposed to do because you’re not prepared to do it. Or, maybe you’re naked. It happens. Hopefully, just in dreams, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

For 30 years I traveled a good part of the country teaching and doing leader training. 3,386 fifth, sixth, and seventh graders and their parents went with me through a weekend human sexuality study called Created by God.  As I think back over my 168 events, it tires me all over again. But it’s a good kind of tired—a satisfied kind of tired, a job-well-done kind of tired, a “maybe you-made-a-difference” kind of tired.

But there’s another kind of tired that precedes all of that. It’s the tired that you feel trying to convince leaders, or churches, or families of the need for this kind of experience when they’re so often reluctant or just plain afraid  to say the word “sex” out loud. This tired is the tired you feel attempting to overcome inertia: Matter at rest is just as pleased as punch to stay at rest. Like wanting to stay in bed when you either have nothing to get up for or are dreading something that you have to get up for.

Fred Craddock, a preacher, pastor, professor, and storyteller, told of the first church he served—not far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee at the time when atomic energy was turning Oak Ridge into a boom town. According to Craddock, “Every hill and every valley and every shady grove had recreational vehicles and trucks, people coming from everywhere, pitching tents and; living in wagons, families and children paddling around in the mud in those parks—all there temporarily in order to find work.”

Craddock described the church he was appointed to as “a beautiful little white frame building, 112 years old, kerosene lamps on the walls, pews hand hewn from a giant poplar tree, and an organ in the corner which one of the young fellows had to pump while Ms. Lois played it…just as slow as anybody.” He asked the leaders to stay after worship one Sunday and said to them, “We need to launch a calling campaign in all those trailer parks to invite those people to church.”

You’re church people. You know from personal experience about inertia and can guess how they responded. “Oh, I just don’t know. I don’t think they’d fit in here. They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.” First they argued then they decided to vote on it the following Sunday after the service where a motion was made. “I move that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in the county.” Is there a second? There was. One of the minority voting against the motion was Fred Craddock who was quickly reminded by one of the members that he was just a kid preacher and didn’t have a vote.

Craddock and his wife moved back to that part of the world years later and he took his wife to see that church. A new interstate made it difficult to find the church, but he found it—state road to county road to the little gravel road. The church was still shining white and the parking lot was full—full of motorcycles and trucks and cars. Out front was a great big sign: Barbecue—all you can eat. Who’s going to pass that up? Inside they found the hand hewn poplar pews up against the wall, electric lights where the kerosene lamps used to be, and the organ shoved into a corner. At aluminum and plastic tables people sat eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs—all kinds of people, and Craddock said to his wife, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church, otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.” Somebody had gotten smart and inertia was overcome.

Abram and his wife Sarai—who has already been labeled as “barren” just to let readers know that God is up to something big—and Lot, the son of Abram’s late brother, took off from Ur with Terah, Abram’s old man, and headed for Canaan. No explanation why, they just did. Maybe they were looking for someplace where folks didn’t play “connect the dots” with “barrenness” and “godlessness.” Anyways, they get as far as the land of Haran, which interestingly enough is also the name of Abram’s brother. I guess there were only so many names to go around in those days. That’s where they decide to settle and that’s where Abram’s father, whose idea this move had been, up and dies. They should have seen it coming—after all, the man was 205 years old! Today, when someone reaches 100 it’s major news and generally it prompts us to think about all of the change that has happened in the world over all those decades—all that a someone 100 years old has witnessed.

Now imagine just the opposite. The world when Terah died was exactly the same as the world when he was born. No change. 205 identical years. 74,825 identical days. Talk about death looking pretty darn attractive! And this is just what Abram had to look forward to!

So here he is, in some strange country, grieving over a dead father whose idea it had been to come here, with a wife unable to bear children, and a nephew who the Bible describes as a less than model nephew, and no clue what happens next. When God said “Go,” Abram was packed and ready. It was when God said, “I will make of you a great nation,” that Abram had every reason to say, “What?” His “great nation” at that point was a barren wife and a loser nephew. But Abram went. You’ll note that the Bible never suggests that Abram was the sharpest knife in the drawer. It didn’t seem to matter that this God had never spoken to him before. Abram went. Why? Because this God painted a picture for Abram of something different, something totally unexpected: His own land and his own personal great nation. Abram picked himself up and went.

Fast forward several generations to a man at the pool of Bethzatha who had spent 38 years suffering rather than Terah’s 205 spent living. Those 38 years, spent lying around and waiting, might as well have been 205. The one verse that some ancient Bible scholars included and others left out helps to complete the picture that this man had in his head. Maybe the information in that verse was general knowledge when this story was first told so there was no need to repeat it. Someone says “Pool of Bethzatha” and people automatically think of waters being stirred up from time to time by what they believed was an angel, and the winner of the race to the pool came away healed.

The man Jesus met at the pool had given up. The pool and his illness had become his life. That’s who he was and he had little hope his situation would ever change. Every time the water would start to swirl, he’d begin the painful crawl to the edge so that he might position himself to fall in. But he never made it. Someone more mobile than he or someone with a friend to help would win. Someone who needed healing less would be the one healed. That’s the way it was—the way it always was. 38 years. No change.

Until Jesus painted a new picture—not of a man pulling his worthless body across the dirty pavement one more time, but of him standing in place, picking up the filthy mat that had cradled him all those years, and walking away from what he had seen and heard and had touched, tasted, and smelled for 38 years. Walking away.

What immobilizes you? Maybe you as a person, maybe you as a congregation. Where are there needs not being met and what is preventing you from seeing that need, embracing that need, responding to that need?

Funding. Space limitations. Lack of vision. Too many demands on too little time. Age. Just as soon as we have the money, the people, the staff, the space, the vision, the commitment, the time, the energy, the interest, we’re going to do it. Until then, it’s tough to move. Then Jesus, the Great Interrupter, enters the scene to paint a new picture, to create a new image. “Rise!” he says. Take up your pallet. “Pallet” sings better than “mat.” Your bedroll, that place where you hide when life seems too hard, where you’re immobilized and afraid to face the day or the pain or the prognosis or the bullies or the phobias or the work load or the cost or the responsibilities. Jesus cuts to the chase. Rise, take up your pallet and walk. No more waiting, no more excuses. Picture it done, then do it.