“Healing happens as we create space and help each other be brave enough to let the feelings out. When we see conflict as something to be embraced instead of avoided.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, May 26, 2019.
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Wade in the water.
Wade in the water children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Who are those Saints all dressed in Red?
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Must be the ones that Moses led.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water.
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Wade in the water.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Harriet Tubman used to sing this song on the Underground Railroad to teach people escaping slavery to wade through the water so the dogs would lose their scent. The more troubled the water, the harder for the dogs, the greater their chance of making it to freedom.
Troubled water is a gift from God.
Wade in the water, children.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
The song comes from two pieces of scripture. The first is Exodus 14 — God troubling the Red Sea waters so the Israelites could cross from slavery to freedom..
The second is the Gospel we just heard, where an angel of God would trouble the water of the pool of Bethesda and the first person to step in the troubled water would be healed.
Healing comes from wading in troubled water.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water, children.
My mom grew up at China Lake, a U.S. Navy secret city in the Mojave Desert, where her dad was working on the Polaris missile. At China Lake, all the work was top secret. You never talked about anything. You kept it all inside. You didn’t trouble the water.
One day, my grandfather was supposed to be on a plane heading to some conference and at the last minute he gave up his seat to someone else. The plane crashed in the mountains with no survivors.
Nobody ever talked about it.
My grandfather never spoke of it.
My mom knew better than to ask.
Because at China Lake you didn’t say anything about anything.
It all just stayed … inside.
You’re not supposed to trouble the water.
My dad was born in England in the late 1920s. When Britain entered World War II, his big brother, Jack, joined the RAF and one night, his plane was shot down and everyone aboard was killed. My grandparents closed the door of Jack’s room and never talked about it. Because in that culture, that’s what you did.
The truth felt too terrible.
You kept calm and carried on.
Kept a stiff upper lip and didn’t talk about it.
It all just stayed … inside.
You’re not supposed to trouble the water.
We all learn from our families and cultures of origin. Every generation looks at the one before and sees the ways they want to be like them and the ways they swear they will never be. And years later, when we look back, we see pieces of all of it alive in ourselves.
I remember watching The Breakfast Club when I was in high school, and there’s this scene where Emilio Estevez turns to Ally Sheedy as they are sitting in their Saturday detention in the high school library trading details of their home lives and Emilio says:
“My God, are we gonna be like our parents?”
to which Ally Sheedy replies:
“It’s unavoidable.
It just happens.
When you grow up, your heart dies.”
I knew my parents’ hearts hadn’t died. I knew they had huge hearts. They still do! It felt more like something was holding them prisoner. It wasn’t about fault. They were just like everybody else. We all are shaped by culture and those who come before. They had been taught not to trouble the water. And I wasn’t going to let that happen to me.
And … it just happens.
A few months ago, my family was watching John Mulaney’s standup comedy special and John goes on this riff about his own family and cultural upbringing. He says:
“You know I am Irish, and Irish people they don’t tell you a thing. Irish people keep it so bottled up, like, you know, the plan with Irish people is like, ‘I’ll keep all my emotions right here … and then one day I’ll die.”
Now, I know that I feel. I know that I feel deeply. And … I have been shaped by my culture and family of origin same as my parents and their parents and everyone else. Ain’t nothing but a family thing.
I know it’s much easier for me to wade into other people’s feelings and compartmentalize my own. To even use prioritizing other people’s feelings as a way of defending myself against feeling my own.
So, it was no surprise that when John Mulaney said: “I’ll keep all my emotions right here … and then one day I’ll die.” … as if on cue, every member of my family – I swear even the dog — turned and looked right at me, raised their eyebrows and smiled.
And all I could do is shake my head and smile, because I know it’s true. And that’s not all I know is true.
I know that John Mulaney is right. Keeping it all inside is how we die. Not just someday, but every day.
As John Green said in The Fault in Our Stars, “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” And it not only demands to be felt, it demands to be expressed. And we need to learn to express it and to hold each other and ourselves in love as we do. And when we express pain and all the other feelings, it might feel like it creates problems … but it doesn’t create problems, it reveals them. Reveals them so healing can happen.
When the uprisings happened in Baltimore, Ferguson, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Chicago, New Orleans and more over the extrajudicial killings of young black men, ignorant politicians, pundits and preachers talked about how the protesters were “creating division.” No. They were revealing division. That pain, that rage, that division had been there for a long, long time.
Martin Luther King nailed it when he said: “The riot is the language of the unheard.” Pain demands to be felt and heard … and feeling it, expressing it, is the only way healing is going to happen. You gotta trouble the water.
Those water-troubling protesters, the women standing up for their basic human right to health care and pay equity, and so many others are prophets offering us a gift of courageous truth. Because when pain isn’t brought out in the open where it can be acknowledged and met with deep, abiding love … healing will never, never happen. Keeping it all inside, keeping the water still is how we die. Not just someday, but every day.
It’s why I go to therapy every week.
It’s why I stand with and hold space for oppressed and traumatized people as they scream in the streets.
It’s why I really try to help us have the real conversations that will let the pain be felt and expressed because I know that’s the only way healing is ever going to happen.
It’s why I’m preaching this sermon because I do all of this so imperfectly, and one of the things they don’t tell you about preachers is that we preach most what we most need to hear for ourselves.
It’s why I love this Gospel story, and why I love singing “Wade in the water.” Because healing happens when God troubles the waters.
Healing happens as we create space and help each other be brave enough to let the feelings out.
When we see conflict as something to be embraced instead of avoided.
When we are able to listen to and hold the pain of our and each other’s lives, and have empathy and compassion for each other and ourselves,
When we let God breathe through us and give us the courage to reveal the division that has been there for a long, long time.
Healing happens when God troubles the waters and instead of being afraid of those troubled waters, we wade right into them.
Have the courageous conversation.
Cry with our creator and one another.
Speak our own truth and receive each other’s truths with love.
Healing is not a bridge over troubled waters.
Healing is a wade through troubled waters.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
We’ve gotta wade in the water.
Jesus asks the one who has been sick for 38 years, “Do you want to be healed?” That question is everything!
It is so easy for us to become comfortable with our pain. We can hold it, caress it, love it, guard it with our lives. We can become so comfortable with our pain we will even defend our right to be in pain instead of seeking to bring it to healing.
Sometimes it’s because as uncomfortable as the pain is, it’s more comfortable than the fear of venturing outside it.
Sometimes it’s because the small power of victimhood is the only power we’ve ever felt, and we are scared to give it up because we’re afraid it’s the only power we’ll ever have.
Sometimes it’s because the water-troubling truth we have to tell to begin to heal is so terrible we feel that rather than the truth setting us free it might actually kill us.
Sometimes it’s because we truly don’t believe we deserve healing, we believe instead the lie that the pain is all we are worthy of … that the pain is all that is worthy of us.
Sometimes it’s because we’ve been carrying the pain around for so long we are just too damn tired to move much less wade into troubled waters.
Jesus stands among us and asks: “Do you want to be healed?”
It is perhaps the most important question of life. It’s a question we each need to answer for ourselves … and at the same time we desperately need each other to help us answer. It’s a question that is the heart of the mission of the church … and yet it’s a question churches tend to avoid asking because it’s scary. Because it invites us to wade into troubled waters that might reveal what many of us don’t want to see, troubled waters we fear might take us under, troubled waters that not everyone is going to want or be ready to wade into.
Progressive churches, we are especially great at welcoming in people who have lived on the margins of church and society, saying “there is a place for you here” … and stopping right there. We need to remember that there is deep trauma on those margins that doesn’t just magically disappear but that we bring into the community as we gather.
And so, we have a choice to make.
Are we going to be a community where we are welcome to come and stay with our trauma and our pain as long as we don’t express it … or maybe only express it in secret corners or in sporadic outbursts that the community generally ignores?
Are we going to be a community where in the name of embracing values of respectability and niceness instead of radical inclusion and courageous justice we keep the water still?
Where we pretend to ourselves and project to the world that somehow we have managed for the first time in human history to assemble a diverse collection of human beings who all get along perfectly and who don’t need to talk about huge, painful issues in our lives and in the life of our community?
Are we going to be a community where together we help each other “keep all our emotions right here … and then one day we’ll die.”
Or will we be a community that helps each other wade into troubled waters.
A community that when Jesus looks at us and asks: “Do you want to be healed?” joins hands and says with trembling voice, “Yes! Yes, I want to be healed. Yes, we want to be healed.”
And then we will not pick up our mat and leave – because, sorry Jesus, it might be that easy for you, but for us, healing is never that easy. We will join hands and, together, help each other get ready, help each other get courageous, help each other wade into that water that God is troubling?
The troubled water of speaking our truth in love.
The troubled water of showing our wounds instead of hiding them.
The troubled water of having the courageous conversations about how we have hurt and continue to hurt one another.
The troubled water through which God will lead us all to freedom from the prisons that hold our hearts.
The troubled water through which God will lead us all to be Christ’s beloved community of healing and health, justice and love.
We will wade into that troubled water because we are a community of radical inclusion and courageous justice …
and we’ve been hurting too long.
We’ve been silent too long.
We’ve been tired and afraid too long.
We’ve been needing healing too long.
All Saints Church, God’s gonna trouble the water … and together we are going to
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Who are those Saints all dressed in Red?
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Must be the ones that Moses led.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Who are those Saints all dressed in Blue?
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Must be the ones that are making it through.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God’s gonna trouble the water.
Amen.
