Sermon for the Sunday of the Paralytic

Christ is Risen!

The account of the paralytic in the Gospel of St. John is rife with so much theology and brings to light the journey of many of us in our walk toward Salvation and healing. I like to touch on things that struck me.

To recap, the story of the paralytic starts with a man who is paralyzed for 38 years, and sits near a pool that was thought to bring healing.  38 years!!  It’s hard to imagine, being paralysed for 38 years, waiting for healing.  Jesus approaches him and asked him an interesting question.  He asks him, “Do you want to be healed?” …. Seems odd, but it’s telling, about how God approaches us, which I will talk about a little later.  Anyway, the man tells him that every time the angel stirs the water, someone enters before him and the waters stop their healing powers.  He also accounts that though many pass by, no one will help him enter the pool.  At that, Jesus tells him to take up his bed and walk at which time the paralyzed man gets up, takes up his bed and leaves.  The man is questioned by the Jews about his miraculous healing and muse over him being healed on the Sabath.  Jesus later encounters the man in the temple and tells him not only has he been healed or his sins are forgiven but he is to go and sin no more.  This is a brief account of the story but it raises a few things that I would like to relate.

First of all, let’s talk about paralysis, not necessarily of the physical kind, but of the spiritual.  What paralyzes us from coming closer to Christ?  Is it our aversion of the possibility of giving up our ego and the control of our lives that we think we have?  Is it our possessions and our love of material things and wealth over that of a commitment to Christ. Is it our comfortable life style? Or is it the fear of change, knowing that Christ not only came to forgive our sins, which I would say is an easy thing to assert.  The other part to it is that He asks us to do something as well.  That is to repent.  To change the direction of our lives.  To give up our self, our egos.  To put others before ourselves.  Or even to give the ultimate sacrifice and follow His example …. To even give up our lives for one another.  The Paralytic exemplifies the paralysis we may encounter when we are asked to approach Christ.

As well, Christ asked the paralytic if he wanted to be healed.  There may have been good reason He asked.  Firstly, God will not heal us unless we want to be healed.  In other words, our will must become His Will.  We have been given the gift of free will whereby we can choose our will over that of God’s, usually at our peril.  But regardless, the point being that perhaps the paralytic really didn’t want healing, didn’t want or feared change.  Perhaps he became accustom to the fact that although he was paralyzed by sin, he became used to it, oddly comfortable in the condition he was in.  Perhaps he didn’t really want to be truly healed.  The type of healing that only Christ could offer.  Perhaps, in a strange way, “enjoyed” the attention, the pity and the excuses for staying as he was.  Afterall, he seemed to be laying in the same state for 38 years. Therefore, it begs the same question to each and everyone of us, “Do YOU want to be healed?” There are other examples in scriptures that illustrate that people were comfortable remaining in the “pig stie” as many like to call it.  Of course I am referring to the stories in Mathew, Mark and Luke recounting the Legion of demons cast into the swine by Christ.  The people who saw the account asked Jesus to leave because they wanted to remain as they were, weirdly comfortable, living in misery.

And the very fact that the paralytic remained in the same situation for 38 years that maybe, just maybe, he put his faith in the wrong place.  The paralytic, first of all put his faith in a pool of water.  Then he put his faith in people around him, who were at the pool, that they would help him enter it.  You would think that he may have come realize his faith in both may have been in vain.  It wasn’t until the Living Water, true Physician, the Physician of our souls and our bodies, Jesus Christ, confronted him.  The paralytics eyes became fix on Him with the realization that he truly wanted to be healed.  Do we, in this ever-increasing secular world, put our faith in the wrong places?  Do we put our faith solely in the things of this world whereby Christ, the true healer of our souls and bodies, becomes a second thought.  We live in a world of specialists, experts, various worldly remedies that are meant to heal us and mainly our bodies.  But what about the other half of us… a very important half…our souls. Am I saying the things I mentioned are bad or not helpful to healing, as St. Paul asserts in his various Epistles, “Certainly not!”, nor should we not have some faith in them but the problem lies when we put our all our faith in these things rather than firstly in Christ and His wholistic Healing and Salvatory power.

And finally, these items go hand in hand, and they are that Christ tells the paralytic to “take up his bed and walk” and later to “go and sin no more”.  Of course, these 2 statements sound very familiar.  “Take up your cross” and “follow Me”.  They reflect a path to our healing and salvation.  Not only do we have to give up ourselves to Christ and by doing so, are called to walk a path of sacrifice, virtue and piety (which is not easy in this world) but are asked to change, to repent, to sin no more, to become Christ-like.  This requires us to give up our will, our being, our self, to become a child of God.  Dependent on Him and Him only.

So, my dear friends, let us focus our eyes on Christ. Let us throw off our paralysis. We are all in need of healing.  Let us put our faith in the right place.  In Him, who is the true physician and healer of our souls and bodies. Amen!

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit