The Resurrected Desire

November 7, 2021 • 24th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Readings: John 5:2-29 (The Inclusive Bible)
Riot Mueller, guest preacher

Greetings Church of the Village.  It is an honor and a privilege to deliver the Sunday service message to you and I do not take it lightly. When the series of “Troubling Texts” was presented--the topic of desire was already on my mind and heart.  My friend Mack had recently told me about an exercise he led with the young adult group at his Church in New Orleans.  He had taken a reading from Esther Perel, renowned therapist who I have known from her couples therapy podcast, “Where Shall I Begin?”  The reading was on eroticism, a topic she writes about frequently and read it aloud to the group. And then he read it aloud again--this time replacing the word “eroticism” with the word “Christ.” Wow. People had all kinds of responses--as perhaps you too are having.  There was resistance, anger, confusion, trauma, blockages, fear, excitement. 

Let’s do a brief version of that now...Eroticism. I speak of it often—not through the narrow definition of sex that modernity has assigned to it—but in the mystical sense. “Eroticism reveals to us another world, inside this world,” Octavio Paz wrote. “The senses become servants to our imagination, letting us see the invisible and hear the inaudible.” Eroticism is an elixir of vibrancy, curiosity, and spontaneity that makes us feel alive. It is the counterforce of deadness, a radiance that reminds us that, despite any darkness we may endure, we are here on this planet right now. And, at all times, we are on the edge of all that is possible, straddling hope and anxiety.

Christ. I speak of it often—not through the narrow definition of Church that modernity has assigned to it—but in the mystical sense. “Christ reveals to us another world, inside this world,” Octavio Paz wrote. “The senses become servants to our imagination, letting us see the invisible and hear the inaudible.” Christ is an elixir of vibrancy, curiosity, and spontaneity that makes us feel alive. It is the counterforce of deadness, a radiance that reminds us that, despite any darkness we may endure, we are here on this planet right now. And, at all times, we are on the edge of all that is possible, straddling hope and anxiety.

A week later, stirring with this knowing that we all have the right to desire, the topic of sexual ethics and being a sexually healthy religious professional was brought into my field education class.  The call from our readings was to bring our whole, human selves into ministry in order to be genuine and fully present as we fulfill our respective callings within the body of Christ.  This includes our sexuality and its appropriately expressed and cared for needs and desires.  We read that each person in a ministerial role of leadership communicated profound messages about God’s love.  Authentically embodying God’s unbounded, indiscriminate, infinite love, demands that we recognize our own limitations and boundaries.  Reading through these I was feeling so inspired, called, full of passion.  We are all trying to get somewhere sexually.  God is moving us forward, we do not always know where we are going but we are trying to get somewhere sexually. Currently, in our society and our humanness our sexual behaviors are tied into trauma.  The responses that people had to Eroticism being read as Christ showed this resistance, the different blocks that we have that keep us from asking for the deep desires of our hearts.  Psalm 37: 4 says take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Yet even this could be a troubling text to some of us who may have Church trauma and may have even been told that you are not allowed to take delight in the Lord simply because of who God made you to be.  It may be hard to accept the desires of your heart because of stories you may have been told about what was or was not okay based on your race, gender or class.

In the reading for sexual ethics, I read the competencies and goals set out by the UMC in 2012 for teaching people in ministerial preparation, like me.  I felt proud and passionate about the list including “becoming knowledgeable about human sexuality and one’s own sexual self” and “appreciate how sexual integrity contributes to spiritual wholeness and how it is vital to ministerial formation and personal health.” I reflected on my pastor in New Orleans giving a few sermons directly referencing experiences he had answering questions from his teenage son about sex and his own work with a coach getting him to feel his feelings.  But then it hit me like a flood.  I answered like the man waiting for healing in our story today, “I don’t have anyone to put me in this water.”  These goals, these competencies are not for me as a queer Lesbian to attain.  The message of homosexuality not being compatible with Christian teaching flooded me.  The Church is not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends--but the desire is beyond just not rejecting or condemning people.  How can I even begin to name my deepest desire, which is a gift from God, if a piece of my identity is incompatible here. 

So we turn to the Gospel.  In today’s reading, we have the story from the Gospel of John that tells of a man who had been very sick, paralyzed, injured for 38 years waiting at the edge of these healing waters.  When the water was stirred, the first person to enter the pool would receive healing.  Jesus walks up to him and what is the first thing he asks, “Do you want to get well?” The sick man replies, “I do not have anyone who can put me in the water.  When I try to get in someone else has gotten ahead of me.”  Jesus replies, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  Immediately the man is well.  When confronted with all of the blocks, stories, and traumas that each of us are holding Jesus comes into our lives and asks, “Do you want to get well?”  Life, salvation, love is for everyone because we all have desires.  Now let me be clear and perhaps I should have said this earlier--when I speak of desire we are talking about thirst, hunger, curiosity, a deep wanting for something to happen.  This is for everyone, desire is written over 100 times throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament--many more times than there are prescriptions for marriage or sexuality.  And when the Scripture references something so much it is a key to us that there is something there for us.  We have to talk about our lives as they actually are.  God does not want you to have secrets. Why because God wants you to be free of everything that is burdening you.

Can you stand to be healed? Do you want to get well?  I for one, relate with the sick man.  His response is I do not have the support, I need someone else to do this for me, I want to be dropped in this water.  And even when I do try and get well, someone else goes in and gets the wellness before I do, so why even try?  Desire calls for ACTION.  Jesus comes in and gives this ACTION.  Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.  Healing happens, now we can do stuff.  I hope the message is getting across that you have the right to desire.  Now what do you do this this? How do you desire? What do you desire? Is this desire in accordance with God.  In my walk I have seen that only God is sufficient and my life is in one piece.  Jeremiah says, “I have known you since your mother’s womb.”  God is sending you your own personal deep desire as a Gift and it is a co creation with God to take ACTION.  Desire reveals to us another world within the world.  My friend and colleague Rin Rice told me when studying this scripture together that sometimes desire looks like taking up the mat so we can feel the ground again.  So we can sink our feet into the dirt, the earth and get grounded.  Return to ourselves.  Return to Union with God who is rooting for us and wanting us to listen to that deep desire that we each have. 

Authentically embodying God’s unbounded, indiscriminate, infinite love, demands that we recognize our own limitations and boundaries. The leaders after they say the man healed told him that it was not okay that he did so, it was the Sabbath and no one was supposed to be working on the Sabbath.  We must recognize our own limitations and boundaries.  How often do we arrive at a deep desire and a voice inside of us says, “That sounds all well and good but I can not do that because...insert critical internal voice here.”  Or the external authority, laws, social niceties are telling us that our desire is too much or will rock the boat.  Where do you predict that we will be in 100 years? I am not sure we know the answer to that but I do know that it is not where it is today.  Perhaps in 100 years, we will be sitting around the healing pools and helping one another be placed in them.  We will be sharing our innocence and the infinite love that we have for one another.  Perhaps our desires for others can help us form a better world or a different vision.  We are all trying to get somewhere.  Healed people heal people. The Scripture today helps us move from having countless desires or countless blocks to desire to having a few to having one.  We move from emotion to passion to devotion.  In this we can discover who we really are and what really matters to us.  Jesus gives us this action.  GET UP! Pick up your mat and walk.  Feel the Earth as you pick up the things that are blocking you from discovering who we really are. Freedom and discipline go hand and hand and asking your desire is a practice.  Ask yourself daily, monthly, yearly, do you want to get well?  And respond to the blocks that may come your way. You are not alone at the pool. You will see greater works than you have seen and you are not judged.  You are welcome here.

Turn yourself on by noticing the warmth of your skin, the cycle of breath, the steady beat of your heartbeat.

(c) 2021 Riot Mueller
All rights reserved.