Brothers and sisters in Christ—
In the Gospel reading, which we heard today, the Lord asks a very compelling question. He says to the paralyzed man: “Do you want to be healed?” It is a compelling, almost troubling question, because the answer seems so obvious. How could the man not desire, and desire fervently, to be healed of his infirmity. After all, the text tells us that the man had been sick for thirty-eight years. The Lord Jesus, however, very deliberately asks him: “Do you want to be healed?” For the Lord, the question is tantamount to: “Can you be healed?”
The question has two parts. The first part ascertains the wishes of the paralyzed man. He says: “Do you want…?” The second part of the question states the proposed object of desire: healing, health, salvation. It is interesting to note, however, that the man does not reply in the affirmative. He does not tell the Lord Jesus that he would like to be healed. He merely states the difficulties and obstacles, which stand between him and a cure. He tells the Lord about all the reasons why he can’t be healed. He explains to the Lord that he is without hope. The hymns of the Church for this Sunday are even more explicit. In these hymns, the paralyzed man says amid tears that the Sheep Pool is worthless to him, since, even if the Angel of the Lord should descend every day, or every minute of everyday and stir the water, he still would not be able to go down into the water before someone else had already partaken of its healing virtue.
The Lord Jesus determined to ask to this specific hopeless man this compelling question: “Do you want to be healed?” Perhaps to the paralyzed man the question appeared only as a kind of cruel joke, since the one apparent hope for a cure seems such an impossibility. But rather than a cruel joke, the question was a manifestation of the Lord’s compassion to all His creatures. The same compassionate Lord, who told His disciples: “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened for you,” now says to this man: “name what you want, and it shall be done for you.”
Behold our compassionate God, who desires our happiness so much that He is willing to give us whatever we ask, whatever, that is, that is to our good. But the man is so hopeless, so depressed and despairing, that he does not ask. He is a little like the Lord Jesus’ own ancestor King Ahaz, who was invited by the Prophet Isaiah to ask for a sign from God that the nation would be saved from its enemies. The Holy Prophet pleaded with the king: “ask for a sign from the Lord. Let be as deep as the netherworld, or as high as the sky.” But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask. I will not tempt the Lord.” See the way that despair and hopelessness sometimes masquerade as piety. Ahaz does not refuse to ask for a sign because he thinks that the Lord will be angry with such a request. No, he refuses to ask for a sign, because he has no hope for a sign. The Lord has to intervene in order to give him (and the world) some hope again. The Lord tells him through Isaiah the Prophet: “The Lord Himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you will call him by the name Immanuel (God is with us).” In response to the despair of a hopeless king, the compassionate God gives the world the best news that it would ever hear.”
It is the same in the case of the paralyzed man. The man has lost all hope. He does not even dare to allow himself to think about a cure, for he knows that a cure is impossible. But the compassionate God asks him a question, a question, which he does not answer, except by the remnant, the glimmer of desire behind his eyes. The God of compassion would do nothing without his consent, but once he has expressed his desire, even in the longing, listless and hopeless way that he does, the Lord merely commands that the man’s desire be fulfilled.
So it is also in our lives. Many of our fellow human beings suffer with inveterate problems, addictions, bad habits that destroy their relationships, and make them return again and again to the same sins that have so often degraded them. Time and again, we commit the same sins, over and over again, returning to God in confession and repentance, only to lapse once more into the selfsame faults. Eventually, we give up confession and repentance altogether, for “they do not help,” and we accept our vices, sins and evil habits, deciding: “I do not need to be healed.”
Our God is a God of compassion. We must believe that He sees our suffering under the burden of our sins more than our sins themselves, like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, who sees his son coming from afar, and is “moved with compassion.” So, we return again and again to our failings, our faults. Always the same sins we bring to the Lord in confession and repentance. Did we ever ask to be freed?
The compassionate God will do nothing without our consent. He is continually asking us, pleading with us: “Do you want to be healed?” Have we become like the paralyzed man and nearly lost all hope of any improvement in our life, our circumstances, and our character? Too often we allow despair to enter our lives under the veneer of ease. We say to ourselves: “I am not perfect, I have my faults, but that is alright.” Making peace with our inveterate faults, vices and habits, we cease to make serious war upon them. “Well, my faults are not so serious.” With this and other rationalizations, we are missing the opportunity to become better human beings, because we have despaired of the possibility of any improvement. Our despair has led us to say to ourselves: “I do not need to be healed.”
But all we need to do is ask—to reply to our compassionate God’s gracious question: “Do you want to be healed?” Like the paralyzed man, we have the propensity to begin to make the long checklist of all the difficulties and obstacles that stand between us and real improvement, growth and healing. But, in the end, none of the difficulties and obstacles matter. When the Lord determines to heal us, He only commands, and it is done.
Therefore, let us ask… that the fervour of our hearts to become better and better people will not burn out, that we will never give up in despair and accept our vices as “part of who we are, and that we will have the faith to ask for healing, believe in healing and receive healing from the Source of Life, our compassionate God.
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