I am not a scholar when it comes to history, but I appreciate and value it. I agree with the Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The past has lessons we need to learn, it seems to me. Even the ancient past—the more I read the Old Testament prophets thundering against Israel and Judah for completely missing the point about what God wants while getting caught up in all sorts of selfishness and inequality, I can’t help but wonder if we as a species have learned ANYTHING from the past in the last nearly 3000 years. It’s all the same mistakes yet again, and not for the first time since ancient Israel and Judah. As 20th century American novelist William Faulkner said, ““The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

And yet, we are not doomed by the past. We CAN learn from the past, and the past doesn’t not have to predict what is going to happen. The cycles of human practices CAN be broken. Jesus, in the depths of his forgiveness on the cross, and the vindication of God’s approach to love demonstrated in the resurrection, acts so that none of us has to be imprisoned by our past. The past shouldn’t be forgotten, as there are lessons to be learned, and mistakes we need to remember so as not to make them again. But the past can be—and is, as we allow it to be—forgiven. In fact, God in Christ HAS forgiven what needs to be forgiven. Maybe our own struggles are in allowing that forgiveness to take hold—by receiving that forgiveness, and by forgiving ourselves.

Perhaps that self-forgiveness, and that willingness to let God’s love fully take hold, is what happened for the man by the pool at Beth-zatha. For thirty-eight years the man had been ill, lying by the pool. Thirty-eight years is a long time (and a strangely specific amount of time . . .). Jesus heals him of his sickness, tells him to take up his mat and walk, and the man does. The recent past is gone and no longer has hold of him. The distant past (the first few days of that long thirty-eight years, perhaps) is also gone. With the love of God poured out by Jesus on this man’s life, he is not imprisoned by his past. He is freed from its bonds, and free to start a scary new life—scary because it IS new.

We, too, are given a new start, freed from those things in our past that have imprisoned us. They may have been circumstances beyond our control, or they may have been circumstances we were complicit in. And we may have felt a certain “nobility” in enduring whatever our unfortunate circumstance might have been. But Jesus frees us from that “stuck-ness” for new opportunities, not predetermined by where we have been before and what we have done before.

Easter changes things! It changes what our past stops us from doing and frees us from that. It makes new things possible!

NEW TESTAMENT 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

OLD TESTAMENT Isaiah 64:8

8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

PSALTER Psalm 103:11-13

11 For as the heavens are high above the earth,
   so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
   so far he removes our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion for his children,
   so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.

GOSPEL John 5:2-9a

2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ 7 The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ 8 Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.