“To Be Made Well”
John 5:2-9
I want to begin this morning by admitting that I am guilty of what I’ve come to feel is a sin of the modern progressive church: We don’t talk enough about healing. It was central to Jesus’s ministry and it drew people to him—and still, we rarely talk about it, except in spiritual or metaphorical terms.
Because we don’t—and really can’t—know exactly what happened when Jesus “healed” people. There were people with leprosy and people who were paralyzed, folks considered demon-possessed (though they probably had something like epilepsy), and folks considered dead. There was the woman who had been bleeding for 18 years and, in today’s story, a man who’d been ill for 38 years.
But we don’t really talk about it much because . . . well, science. Because science and mortality and because when someone doesn’t get well, we might think our prayers went unheard or unanswered and so what is the point of praying for healing, anyway?
I get it.
And still, I think we do both ourselves and the gospel a disservice when we avoid the things we don’t understand. More to the point, I think we may limit both God and ourselves. Because while we may not understand what healing meant in Jesus’s time or how he healed people, we need to embrace what that the numerous healing stories in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament make clear: which is that God wants us to be well. God wants us to be whole.
But we avoid talking about that because there are people we dearly love who have prayed all the right prayers and seen all the doctors and gotten all the treatments, yet still they suffer. The last thing we want to do is talk about healing in a way that might make them feel they’re doing something wrong or, worse yet, that they’re not worthy of healing.
Let me be clear: Everyone is worthy of healing.
Another aspect of this problem is that we also don’t talk enough about our own needs for healing or our desires to grow and change. Talking about our physical or mental illnesses might actually bring us some emotional and spiritual healing, but because so many in our society associate illness with weakness or bad behavior or, worse yet, not trying hard enough, we tend to keep our suffering to ourselves. And that’s a shame.
Because healing—emotional, spiritual, and sometimes even physical healing—begins with acknowledging the problem. Our friends in 12-step programs have much to teach us about this; Step One is being honest about their addiction. And so it is with any kind of illness, brokenness, or condition: If we want it to change, we must first acknowledge that something isn’t right. Then we must seek help and then, with help, be willing to make changes.
The flip side of that truth is, of course, that the longer we go without being healed, the more we suffer without any clear hope of that suffering ending, the more likely we are to resign ourselves to our current situation and the less likely we are to seek out healing and wholeness, growth and change. Because who wants to be disappointed again?
I wonder if this is what had happened to the man who’d been ill for 38 years. It seems as if he has almost given up—but not quite. Hope still flutters somewhere in his lame body. Unhealed and unaided, still he lies by the pool’s healing waters.
But Jesus isn’t interested in the past. He isn’t interested in obstacles or excuses or details. He simply wants to know the man’s heart. What does he want? Because Jesus is in the healing and making-whole business.
“Do you want to be made well?” he asks the man.
For most of us simply wanting to be healed—spiritually, physically, or otherwise—wanting to be restored to the fullness of life and community will not necessarily make it so. But that desire must be there. That desire must be strong enough to propel us to take a first step toward new life.
Sometimes that will mean asking for help. Other times it will mean forgiving someone who has hurt us and letting go of the anger and bitterness that’s eating us up inside. Sometimes it will mean taking responsibility—and refusing to take no for an answer. Sometimes we have to want wellness enough to risk judgment and rejection. Sometimes we will have to get up and walk when we’d just as soon lie around and feel sorry for ourselves.
It is a blunt question—do you want to be made well?—but it is an invitation, not an accusation. It is an invitation to consider what it is that we truly want and whether we want it enough to take the first shaky step toward it. It is a question that, if we let it, requires us to be honest with ourselves.
Sometimes, says Steve Garnaas-Homes, our answer might be “no.”
Because sometimes “we want to hang onto our hurt. … Sobriety scares us. Wholeness intimidates us.” Life beyond what we’ve grown used to may feel scary and uncertain. We can find “shelter in anger, in victimhood, in helplessness.” There’s comfort in drama. “There’s stability in despair.”
Control, comfort, self-righteousness, predictability, separation, delusion, and maybe some time and money are just some of the things we’re likely to lose if we get serious about pursuing healing and growth.
Do you want to be made well?
“It will be work,” says Garnaas-Holmes. “It will bring on the unknown. You will stand on new legs [and] it will hurt.”
And after the question, which the ill man does not answer with words, comes an unthinkable command from Jesus:
“Take up your mat and walk.”
At once, the story says, the man did—apparently never looking back.
Because Jesus is in the disruptive business of making people well, making systems new, making beloved community out of a motley crew of individuals.
Which, when you think about it, may be why we sometimes avoid Jesus. We know that he’s unlikely to leave us be, that the more we hang out with him the more we will be changed. It may be why we avoid prayer: because the Spirit within us knows that if we get serious about being still and listening, if we are intentional about connecting with our hearts and souls and discovering what we most need and want, it’s likely that something will be required of us.
Because the question is not directed only at us, of course; it extends to others and to the world.
Do we want—really want—peace?
Do we want—really want—to make an impact for good?
Do we want—really want—to put an end to hatred and division, poverty and racism, and the authoritarian takeover of our government?
What, in those contexts, does it mean to take up our mats and walk?
If you read the next section of John, Chapter 5, you will discover that—initially, at least—things did not go well for the man healed by Jesus or, for that matter, for Jesus. Instead of rejoicing in the man’s healing, the religious authorities were furious that Jesus had healed on the sabbath. And when Jesus showed up and encouraged the man to continue his healing process, the harassed healed man told told the religious folks who it was that had healed him, which increased their desire to have Jesus killed.
That’s another thing about healing and other positive change: It is disruptive. When we stop cooperating in systems of injustice, when we change our steps in any dance, systems and partners will pressure us to change back.
The pursuit of healing is holy and sometimes discouraging work—but we need not be alone in it. May we find ways to support one another on the journey, and when healing—of any kind—does not happen in the way or at the pace that we hope for—may we remember that God is with us in the suffering.
May we and all the world be made well. And, until then, may we become God’s partners in promoting healing and wholeness.
