SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
9 MAY 2010
“Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6)
I did not attend the General Theological Seminary, which is the alma mater of Leslie Reimer and Carol Henley, but I have visited that campus numerous times over the years, and for a short period in the 80s was a tutor there. It is situated on the site of the old estate of Clement Clark Moore (of “The Night Before Christmas” fame) and was purposely designed to look like a piece of Oxbridge in the middle of New York City. High up on the west end of the campus --- or the Close, as it is called, is the Refectory, an enormous oak paneled room with a 40 foot vaulted ceiling. Rather dour portraits of former deans and greater and lesser prelates glare down on students and faculty having their lunch. A professor tells the story of a member of a youth group from New Jersey who was visiting the Seminary. She looked up at the vast interior, and not believing that this space was created solely as a place to eat, asked her guide, “What was this?”
Today’s story takes place in the sheep pool at Bethesda, which used to be something else. It was originally a Roman bath, as evidenced by the remains of the five porticoes there described by the evangelist. Where once it would have attracted toga-clad (or more accurately toga-less) Roman citizens who had come for their ablutions, it had fallen into disrepair, and had become the derelict haunt of invalids ---- the halt, the lame, the leprous, the crippled, the infirm. Since misery loves company, they found some comfort, no doubt, in commiserating with each other about their infirmities. But as the Prophet Ezekiel reminds us, they were “prisoners of hope.” Their hope lay in a cure. The pool was fed by a natural spring, and once a day when the spring erupted, it caused the waters of the pool to be disturbed, and ripples could be seen on the surface of the water. It was a pious belief of the Jews that the disturbance was caused by an angel, and they further believed that anyone suffering from any medical condition could be cured, if he were the first to step into the water after the disturbance.
Into this depressing scene steps Jesus. Now Jesus has a penchant for picking out from a crowd the individual who is especially needful of his ministrations at the time. So just as he elsewhere zeroes in on the vertically-challenged Zacchaeus or the blind beggar Bartimaeus, so today he focuses on the nameless paralytic who had been at the side of the pool for 38 years! We can only imagine that he is a shadow of his former self; his rib cage is visible through his frail skin; he is doubled over, having fallen victim to his atrophied limbs. Jesus approaches this man and asks him what appears to be a silly question: “Do you want to be healed?” Or as the NEB translates it, “Do you want to recover?” Of course he wants to be healed, we think. He has been by the side of the pool for 38 years waiting for a cure. Nevertheless, he doesn’t answer Jesus with a resounding “Yes!” Instead he launches into a long speech saying that he would have been cured long ago, but he needed someone to help him get into the pool, and every time he tries to get there, somebody else beats him to the punch! Mathematicians in the congregation have doubtless already figured out that in 38 years, this scene had been repeated nearly 14,000 times!
The KJV translates Jesus’ question as “Wilt thou be made whole?” which means “Is it your will to get better?” And if the paralytic were honest, he would have to say, “Well, Jesus, give me a moment to answer.” We must not forget that he has been at the pool’s edge for nearly four decades. It is a shaded place, out of the glare of the sun. Presumably someone has been giving him enough nourishment to keep him alive for so long. And there was doubtless an ongoing gin rummy game to while away the hours. Intuitively, he must have been at best ambivalent about being healed, because he knew that once he emerged from the healing springs of that pool, he would have to go out and get a job, make an honest man of himself. Once he became hale and hardy, he would have to earn a living. Perhaps things weren’t so bad poolside after all. He was making it. He was getting over.
This question, "Do you want to be healed?" is the major faith question that confronts us. It is a question for us to ask ourselves. It is the question of a lifetime. Do we really want to be healed? Are we ready for the challenges healing brings? Healing, being well again, takes a lot of adjustment. There is comfort in the familiar. The lame man knows what he's got now; he doesn't know what getting well will bring. We can't close our eyes to the difficulty change can bring. Change — even positive change — always involves loss. It was C. S. Lewis who said, "A familiar captivity is frequently more desirable than an unfamiliar freedom." Moses certainly learned this when the Israelites repeatedly longed for the three square meals they got when slaves in Egypt, preferring that nourishment to the manna that God supplied for their journey to the Promised Land. It is not easy to go from sickness to recovery; from letting a part of your life cripple you, to walking freely without fear.
While this is true in terms of our individual pilgrimages, it is no less true for society. Does this nation want to be healed? Even at a time when we believe we have made progress in race relations, along comes SB 1070, the Arizona law that gives law enforcement officials powers to detain and arrest individuals based on a very low legal standard, opening the door to profiling of individuals based upon their appearance, speech or ethnicity. It is no wonder that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has denounced the law as “Draconian.”
The question behind the issues raised at the adult forum this morning about the Anglican Covenant can well be: “Does this church want to be healed?” Or does it want to issue ultimata and draw lines in the sand guaranteed to reduce the numbers of the faithful who are forced to wear rather tight-fitting theological straight jackets?
Like the paralytic at the pool, there are members of society and of the church who feel like they are victims of one injustice or another. Some Arizonans, obviously, feel that some people are taking away their America! Obviously they have forgotten that but for Native Americans, everybody on these shores comes from immigrant stock! Some Christians believe that their church is being taken away by letting in people who think, act or pray differently than they do. Obviously they have forgotten that such complaints date back to the early church when new Christians complained that their faith was compromised by the presence of those blankety-blank Gentiles. Maybe we can take a page from Peter’s book who addressed such complaints by declaring, quite radically, that “God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith.”
One preacher aptly describes this Gospel story “Jesus crashes a pity party!” Jesus, having listened to the paralytic’s tirade, could have said, “Well, I see your point. These 38 years must have been rough on you, and done irreparable damage to your self-esteem. I’ll come back next week and we can talk about it, and maybe gradually we can work on an exit strategy for you, so you can re-enter the world --- perhaps in a rehab facility or a half-way house for starters.” No, Jesus cuts to the chase. He commands the paralytic to pick up his bed and walk --- now!
He makes the same demand of us. He asks us to abandon our pallets, our security blankets, our crutches, anything that keeps us from developing into the full stature of Christ ---and to exercise those ministries which he has called us to do.
Let us pray:
Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
By feeblest agents may our God fulfill His righteous will.
AMEN.