The Pool at Bethesda

The sermon this morning was out of John 5, the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. The lame man was healed at the pool but missed Jesus. Jesus shows up later to remind him that there are some things worse than being lame…that’s being healed without Jesus.

So Rowland and I thought it would be cool to have a pool in the middle of the auditorium with communion on islands inside the pool. The idea was that we don’t miss Jesus in the middle of our chaos, hurt, our “pool of Bethesda.”

Great idea. We set up this kiddie pool, drape it with black cloth with these little islands that communion is going to set on.

I knew something was amiss this morning when I showed up and Toby was breaking out the shop vac. It appears that the kiddie pool had a small leak. Small enough to drain the entire pool in the auditorium overnight. I don’t know if it was the stress of the situation, but I just started laughing. So hard, I had to sit down.

It was just funny. I mean, we got it cleaned up and communion still worked…but for a few minutes it was just hilarious – all this water in the auditorium.

We recovered fairly well and the rest of the service went great.