Victim No More

Studies in the Gospel of John #12
John 5:1-15

And far away, he saw the skyline of New York…. Broadway, the way that led to death was broad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and few there were who found it. 

But he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people walked;…, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark, and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and homemade gin.

In the narrow way of the cross there awaited him only humiliation forever; there awaited him, one day , a house like his father’s house, and a church like his father’s and a job like his father’s where he could grow old and black with hunger and toil.

The way of the cross had bent his mother’s back; they had never worn fine clothes, but here (Midtown Manhattan), where the buildings contested God’s power and where men and women did not fear God, here he might eat and drink to his heart’s content, and clothe his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to the eyes and pleasing to the touch.

And then what of his soul, which would one day, come to die and stand naked before the judgment bar? What would his conquest of the city profit him that day? To hurl away, for a moment of ease, the glories of eternity!
(From, Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin, 1953, pages 31-32)

5: (1) Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. (2) Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. (3) Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. [4] [b] (5) One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. (6) When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
(7) “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
(8) Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” (9) At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, (10) and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
(11) But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
(12) So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
(13) The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
(14) Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” (15) The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Psalm 73
A psalm of Asaph.
Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. 3 For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. 5 They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. 7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits.
8 They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression.
9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.
10 Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.
11 They say, “How would God know? Does the Most High know anything?”
12 This is what the wicked are like— always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.
13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence.
14 All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments.
15 If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children.
16 When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply
17 till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.
18 Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin.
19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors!
20 They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.
21 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,
22 I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

James Baldwin’s protagonist in his novel, John, is a young Black American African boy struggling with the issue of the goodness of God, the relevance of being devout in his faith in Jesus Christ as the savior of the world, and the call to holiness of life, “Without which no man (or woman) can see the Lord” as expressed by his church.

James Baldwin raises a larger question for us as young teenaged John stands on a hill in Central Park, looking off in the dimness to the lights of Midtown Manhattan New York, site of the “great white way” known to us as “Broadway.” For Baldwin, “Broadway is a triple entendre for Black faith. It is the “broad road that leads to destruction,” it is a metaphor for the antithesis of Black life (the “Great White Way”) and it is also a symbol of the “good life” on earth that seems so elusive to “the saints” of his small world in the uptown community of Harlem.

Is the life of faith one of deprivation, poverty, suffering, sickness and ultimate death and victimization at the hands of those whose comfortable, safe, healthy, well-fed, well-dressed, self-assured life is symbolized by the “Great White Way?” Are these the only choices available to those who choose to take their faith, their heritage and their people seriously? Is the only comfortable, safe, warm and secure reality that of the “white pagans” all around them? Must one sell her/his soul and surrender the claim to the eternal life of God in order to life “the good life?”

The composer and singer of Psalm 73 raises the exact same questions before God in a worship context. But he begins his complaint, his celebration of the paradoxes and contradictions, yes, even the absurdities of life with the affirmation:

“Surely God is good to Israel.” When we understand the name Israel, what it means, and how through the promise of Abraham it can be applied to all who live under its name, we can better unpack this Psalm and respond to Baldwin’s concerns.

God is good, is beneficial, is benevolent, is loving, is full of care and compassion, for all who strive through life following “El” God. Many of my colleagues and friends are highly critical of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel.” Progressive evangelical social activist Jim Wallis has even gone so far as to label it a “heresy.” One of my friends on Facebook pointed out to me that it is a “heresy” because it puts and undue amount of emphasis on one aspect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the faith of the Judeo-Christian community to the exclusion and lack of emphasis on other critical aspects of that faith.

I believe that Jim Wallis and some of my colleagues have a valid issue which those who adhere to “Prosperity Theology” need to grapple with. And yet I do believe that we need to understand why the Black American African community has so eagerly embraced this message. Its major proponents in our community, Revs. Creflo and Tammy Dollar and Rev. Frederick Price, Sr. have received much criticism, but I do believe that while they may indeed overemphasize money and success to the exclusion of God’s sovereignty and exclusive claim (Lordship) over our lives, their message can be a much needed corrective to the “victim mentality” and “victim theology” of slave religion.

The idea that because we belong to Christ, we have nothing to hope for in this world, no earthly blessings to anticipate, but rather poverty, suffering, disease, oppression, failure and death is no more an authentic feature of the Gospel than the idea that if we are truly faithful God will bless us with riches and material prosperity. If God is “surely good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart,” then surely there needs to be some positive expectations about our future, our well-being, our health, our plans, etc.

Imagine, that just as Israel was about to go into seventy years of exile, an exile and oppression, which God had prophesied and brought upon them because of their stubborn resistance to him—their desire to worship idols, to be just like the Gentiles around them, to have what they have, to look like them, talk like them, dress like them, eat like them, enjoy what they enjoyed, worshiped what they worshiped, go to their schools and rank each other on the basis of standards they have set, positions they had created as well as art and music and organizational tools and formulas they had created, God also assured them through the same prophet—

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).”

Oppression, suffering, hardship can so break us down that we can sometime substitute it for the reality of life. The life of a victim is not God’s will, it is not God’s intent, and it is not God’s plan. God’s plan for us, no matter what we may presently be going through, and no matter how long we may have been going through it, is to give us hope, to give us a future, to prosper us, to be good to us--because GOD IS LOVE. God is good to us because WE ARE pure in heart.

Baldwin’s own father is portrayed in the aforementioned auto biographical novel as abusive, using his own beaten, defeated situation in life to enforce a theology of failure on his family. Only when his sister seems broken and contrite and in fear of death is he happy. He hates John because John believes in himself, his innate abilities, and his gift to right and create and to think beyond the limitations of “Black existence” in Harlem.

Too often the righteousness of the so-called people of God is not God’s righteousness, but our own. Our own censorious sense of who we are and what God expects of us is substituted for that purity and righteousness which comes from God alone, through the offering of his son Jesus on the cross for us. It is not OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS, but GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS that we are to depend on, celebrate, give praise for and seek to share with others.

When Jesus came upon the pool of Bethesda, the hundreds of people who lay on pallets around it were all laid prostrate, not by their ailments, but by their victim mentality. There was even a twisted, victim-oriented theology associated with healing at this pool. God was said to send an angel to trouble the water, and the first person to get into the pool while the water was troubled would be healed.

Of course this is a victim-oriented story. What kind of vengeful, vindictive God would only make it possible for one to be healed, if someone would get her or him into the water? This kind of works-righteousness religion is the man-made, not of God. God is love. God would never have set up such a scenario. I would suggest the story was developed in the context of a victim mentality. No one could ever be healed because no one could “get up” to get themselves into the water when the pool was troubled.

Because a culture of victimization becomes comfortable, and even is accompanied with such absurd theological rationalizations, it is difficult to break through. So before Jesus said or did anything he asked the man point blank, “DO YOU WANT TO BE HEALED?” This is a very important question. Do you want to be free of your victim mentality, your victimization, of always seeing yourself as a failure and a loser? “Can you really contemplate seeing and understanding yourself as anything other than a victim?”

The man answered “Yes, but . . . .” Jesus did not ask him to repeat the absurd victim story; he did not make any reference to it, but the man did anyway. So Jesus annoyed with his response simply said to him, “Get up, pick up that smelly, musty, urine- stained symbol of your misery and victimization, and walk away with it. Get away from this pool and away from the victim mentality that has trapped you here for 38 years. The man picked up his bed and walked away.

Low and behold, before he could get a few feet away, here came the keepers of victim theology, the works-righteousness crowd of the church. Where do you think you going boy? Why are you carrying your pallet on the Sabbath instead of laying on it? You can see that their theology of the Sabbath was a victim theology. However miserable you find yourself on the Lord’s Day, however sick, however broke, however hungry, however homeless, remain that way. This is God’s will. Imagine how petty, how stupid, how seriously stuck with “majoring in the minors” self-righteous proponents of poverty theology, suffering theology, deprivation theology and failure theology can be.

Jesus had authority to tell him to carry his sick bed on the Sabbath because the Sabbath was made for us to REST. We find our rest in God when we let go of all that would hold us down, hold us back, paralyze us and give us a sense of hopelessness, frustration and failure. Jesus was not a victim. He was victorious.

Jesus was not victimized by Satan’s schemes, by the challenges of loneliness, by the challenges of the cross, by the challenges of being misunderstood, by the threats of Rome or the traitorous machinations of Israel’s so-called leaders. Likewise neither do we have to be to walk the straight and narrow road that leads to life. We are, through Christ, through the incarnation of God’s unconditional love, “victims no more.”