Homily for Sunday 11 May 2014--Healing for Body and Soul

Homily for 11 May 2014:  4^th Sunday of Pascha (the Paralytic)

(Acts 9:32-42)

(John 5:1-15)

 

Sometimes when we read this story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda, we pay so much attention to the events leading up to the healing that we don’t pay any attention to what happened afterwards.

But there are two main things worth thinking about in the second part of the story.

Number One is the reaction of the religious authorities.  (The Gospel just refers to “the Jews,” but clearly they are the authorities who are experts in the Old Testament Law.)  They don’t seem to notice or to care that the man has been healed and can walk again after being paralyzed for 38 years.  All they care about is that he is breaking the religious Law by carrying his sleeping mat on the Sabbath.  That counts as work, and work is forbidden on the Sabbath, the day of rest.

Number Two is the reaction of Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t want to be noticed after He heals the paralyzed man, so He blends into the crowd.  But He isn’t finished with the man.  When we encounter God, we have to learn something.  So Jesus goes hunting for the man, and finds him in the Temple area.  Then He warns him, “You have been made well.  Take care not to sin anymore, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Obviously, the religious authorities and Jesus have very different ideas of sin.  The authorities are concerned that the man has violated the Law by working on the Sabbath.  They don’t seem to connect physical healing and spiritual healing.

On the other hand, Jesus doesn’t seem concerned with the Law.  But for Him, the physical healing of the paralytic is just the first step.  He has to make sure that the man understands how profoundly his life has been changed—how his physical healing is just the sign of a deeper spiritual healing.

I don’t think that Jesus means that sin leads directly to illness.  Or that illness is direct punishment for sin. But sin can literally make us sick.  It can paralyze our ability to make moral decisions.  It can make us sick with guilt.  It can poison our relationships with other people and with God.  It can lead us to do stupid and dangerous things.

Very often we don’t think much about the connection between sin and health, between our spiritual and physical condition.  It doesn’t seem that the paralytic does this, either.  Before he’s healed, he just complains that no one will help him, and afterwards he just seems to be glad that he can walk.  He’s focused entirely on his physical condition.

The religious authorities also don’t seem to connect the physical and the spiritual, except for them the spiritual dimension is missing entirely.  They consider only the physical aspect of sin:  it’s just a matter of breaking the law, rather than dealing with what’s in the heart.

What Jesus shows the paralytic—and us, too—is that both of these attitudes are wrong.  We can’t take health—or any other part of physical existence—for granted, and leave God out of it.  And we cannot reduce our relationship with God to following the rules.  We also cannot judge other people and their relationships with God on how well we think they follow the rules.

When Christ comes into our lives, He brings healing for body and soul.  He frees us from paralysis, from sin, from obsession with rules.  But He frees us not just from things; He frees us to do things:  to live holy lives of love and mercy and justice, to be humble and respectful and generous, and to give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.