A Sermon preached on Easter VI, May 22, 2022, at St. Augustine’s
Acts 16:9-15, Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22:5, John 5:1-9
And Jesus said to him: “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6)
My mind sometimes works in strange ways, so one thing that came to my mind when I read Jesus’ question was an episode in the Monty Python film the Life of Brian. Brian encounters a man begging for money, who says to him, “Okay, sir, my final offer: half a shekel for an old ex-leper?” “Brian replies: “Did you say "ex-leper"? “That's right, sir, 16 years behind a veil and proud of it, sir.” “Well, what happened”? “Oh, cured, sir.” “Cured?” “Yes sir, a blooming miracle, sir. Bless you!” “Who cured you?” “Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business, all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as a by-your-leave! ‘You're cured, mate.’ Blooming do-gooder.”
Clearly if that leper had been asked, “Do you want to be made well?” he would have said no!
But I don’t think this is the reason why the sick man in today’s gospel story gets asked the question or why he answers rather indirectly. It is an unusual question. Quite often we have heard of people come to Jesus knowing both that they need healing and believing Jesus can heal them. In Mathew’s gospel a leper approaches Jesus saying: "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." (Mathew 8:2) In Luke’s gospel we hear about the woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years, no one could cure her, and so as she is afraid to even ask Jesus “she came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her haemorrhage stopped.” (Luke 8.43-45)
In the case of our sick man, it is not clear that he wants to or even believes that healing is a possibility. His reply to Jesus is not a simple yes or no. He offers an excuse. “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.” (5:7) You see, this wasn’t just any pool. It was rumoured that angels came periodically and stirred the water, and whoever got in first received miraculous healing. Not surprisingly, people flocked from near and far for a chance to participate in this miraculous phenomenon.
But our sick man seems to have become resigned to his fate, and possibly even a little comfortable in his situation. Getting healed at this pool is a bit of a lottery if only the first person gets it. And if you have no one to help you then of course you are at a considerable disadvantage. Having to move fast when you are lame is very difficult. But as it turns out, this man does have someone to help him: Jesus. Once again, we see Jesus reaching out not only to the sick, to those needing healing, but also to the disadvantaged, to those who neither have the family, nor the money to get help. Jesus does not help him by getting him into the pool, but by healing him immediately, just with the power of his word. The word “stand up” or “rise” is by the way the same verb used for being raised, as at the resurrection. That’s not a coincidence. The man has not just been made well; he has been raised to new life.
Jesus came to save and heal the whole world, to make the whole world new. The individual healings, like the one we heard about today, are of course expressions of his compassion and love for those who cross his path, but they also act as signs both of a wider need for healing, and of the offer of healing and wholeness in Jesus. The question “Do you want to be made well?” was also addressed to all of Israel. Sadly, the answer given by those in power was a clear NO! And in an attempt to silence the one asking that uncomfortable question and thereby reminding them of that need, they had him killed.
“Do you want to be made well?” is a question the risen Jesus still asks us individually and collectively today. And far too often the answer is still NO. Our sick man in the story at least knew he was ill, even if he doubted that he could or would be healed. In the episode from Acts we also heard this morning Paul has a vision: “There stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’" (Acts 16:9) The people there were aware of their need for help, saving, and healing.
That is also our Christian teaching, as St. Paul told the Christians in Rome, “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24) The world is broken and needs healing and each of us has the propensity to sin. But this is not something we like hearing – that we fall short, that we are less than perfect, that we are incomplete.
Some people do not accept that there is anything wrong, or anything that needs improving. If you live in the rich part of a rich country, it is easy to ignore the problems both of poorer people in your country, and of the poorer countries around the world. If you have health insurance and expensive doctors it is easy to forget that many people do not have this access and that their illnesses are often exacerbated and prolonged unnecessarily by poverty and a lack of affordable care.
And if there is something wrong – with me or society – we do not need another, especially not a supernatural other, to make us well, to solve our problems. There are all sorts of ways to self-improve, to get better, and human progress – medical and technological – will solve all our problems. Well, the myth of progress has been proved to be just that, a myth - in the sense of a fallacy. History has not ended with the victory of a single, fundamentally better system of government, as Francis Fukuyama predicted in his 1992 book[1], the benefits of technology are often outweighed by the costs, like climate change, and human greed and the desire for power are as strong as they were in Jesus’ day, but now much more dangerous.
The final chapters of the Book of Revelation contain one man’s vision of what the healing of the world can look like, in the new Jerusalem. This new world is full of beauty, delight, tenderness and glory,[2] full of life, and free of anything evil and destructive. God and the Lamb are at the centre, the tree of life is for the healing of the nations. It is a vision of restoration and reconciliation, a return to the status at the very beginning of creation, in the Garden of Eden, before sin entered the world. God and the Lamb are at the centre and there can be no healing without them. We are not complete, not whole, and not healthy without God.
So, Jesus’ question must be our question, “Do you want to be made well?” We have Good News for the world, but uncomfortable news. We all fall short of our potential as beings made in the image of God. God’s Creation is good, very good – but only if we care for it, not if we exploit and spoil it. Our Good News is not only that we all need to be made well, whole, healthy, free of sin, but that we know how, by believing in and following and becoming like the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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