Hearing today’s gospel, I was reminded of the story of the prodigal son. While it’s probably one of the best-known Bible stories, it’s a story that is heard differently in different parts of the world. In one place, the emphasis falls on the son who wastes his inheritance and disrespects his father. In another, the focus is on the father’s reckless love for his children, while in yet another, the story’s interpretation revolves around the famine that took place and how the son began to be in need but “no one gave him anything.” (Luke 15:14, 16)
I expect the same thing happens when we hear this gospel story, the story of a man whose illness was measured not in months or even years but decades. We never get his name, but in his gospel, the Evangelist John tells us the man is in Jerusalem at a pool where the infirm would gather. He describes their physical conditions –blind, lame and paralyzed. And then he tells us that healing happened there at the pool. The common belief was that the first people into the water when it was stirred would be healed.
But the main character in today’s gospel has been afflicted for 38 years and has never been healed.
We could hear this story and focus on what the man had or hadn’t done. Where was his family? Was he so miserable that no one wanted to help him? Or were others judging him for being unwell? Later in John, when Jesus heals the man born blind (Ch. 9), the disciples asked if his blindness was caused by sin. People in Jerusalem may have seen the man’s suffering as punishment for some unnamed sin.
Jesus asks the man a question, which in the NRSV reads, “Do you want to be made well?” With this question, the story could be heard as a testimony to a faith healing. Except the man never answers Jesus’ question. He never makes a profession of faith. He never even gets in the water. The man doesn’t do anything differently to prompt the healing to happen when it does.
In fact, instead of answering Jesus, he replies with what is probably a well-worn story of how nobody helps him, and other people jump the line and go into the pool ahead of him, stealing his chance. It’s a story of scarcity, where there’s only enough for a few and where the narrative is shaped by what he doesn’t have.
But we have another option, and it’s one that’s usually pretty good when we read Scripture. And that is to focus on what the story tells us about God.
In the gospel of John, “to be made well” through Jesus Christ is to be given the life abundantly given [to] all creation by God.[i] Healing won’t always look like a physical cure or relief from symptoms, but “healing from Jesus brings life and freedom.”[ii] And in the gospel, we see that, even though the man never answers Jesus, Jesus restores his freedom and life, as well as his body, telling him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” (15:8) He is no longer left behind or forgotten, physically broken or unwell. [iii]
The Gospel first shows us that God’s actions happen in God’s timing and not ours. The man presumably had sought healing frequently during his 38 years of illness and yet he had never been delivered from it. There’s not an easy explanation for why he waited so long and it’s easy to get stuck on the question of why some people suffer more than others and wonder where God is in the midst of suffering. However, in this gospel, God is there.
The question Jesus asks can also be paraphrased, “Are you convinced that you are already made whole?” Because God loves us, God desires healing and wholeness for all creation. God has already acted out of God’s love for this man, showing us that God’s love is greater than our human imagination, rites or rituals.
The question the Gospel leaves us with is not whether God will heal, but what is the healing you are waiting for?
Because wholeness is more than physical health.
Wholeness includes our spiritual health – our relationship with God and our understanding of God’s unlimited love and grace for each one of us.
It includes our minds and intellect – how we learn, enrich our lives and experience the world.
It includes healthy personal relationships with family and friends whom we love and who love us.
It includes our emotional and mental health – our compassion for others, our resiliency in difficulty and challenging situations in our own lives and our ability to ask for help when we live with addiction or depression.
And it includes our vocational and financial well-being, remembering that each of us is gifted and called to participate in God’s kingdom and find fulfillment in our work and learning to see the world as a place of God’s abundance, and not of scarcity: to see the world as a place where God provides what we need.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus heals not only physical ailments, but attends to the wholeness of each person. In John’s gospel alone he ministers to the Pharisee Nicodemus (John 3), the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) and the woman accused of adultery (John 8). For these people, healing wasn’t physical. For Nicodemus, it was having a safe place to ask questions about the kingdom of God; for the woman at the well, it was being known and loved even when she was an outsider; and for the woman who stood accused, it was receiving forgiveness and a new beginning.
Whole and healed, each of us is freed to participate fully in the new life God gives us and to share how God’s love transforms our lives and the way we live in the world.
Let
us pray…
Good and gracious God,
Thank
you for your abundant love that cannot be contained. Thank you for
accomplishing in us what we cannot do on our own, healing our wounds and
restoring us to new life in your Son Jesus Christ.
May
your grace flow over and through us.
Send
us into the world, whole and healed, as witnesses to your love and mercy.
We
pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Jarvis, Cynthia A.; Johnson, E. Elizabeth. Feasting on the
Gospels--John, Volume 1: A Feasting on the Word Commentary. Westminster
John Knox Press. Kindle Edition
[ii] ibid
[iii] ibid
