From the Rector

My dear family in Christ,
 
Alleluia!  He is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!
 
Now we live in the time of Resurrection.  Alleluia!  But what does that mean?  What do we do with this incredible, life-changing, world-shattering Truth that we have all just witnessed a week and a half ago? 
 
It means that we are now called and appointed to go out and tell the whole world the Good News!  And yet … that’s not the first thing that Jesus’s disciples went out and did, is it?  No, before they would be ready to take up their calling as apostles ~ as ones who have been sent out ~ they first needed to process the incredible, unfathomable things they had been through.  And, let’s be honest, they needed some healing.  The road to Calvary, to the Cross and the Tomb, had taken a toll.  Even the risen Jesus still bore the wounds of that journey, after all.
 
Last Sunday, we heard how Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room where they were hiding, in fear for their lives, in the aftermath of their leader’s brutal execution.  We heard how Jesus showed them his still-wounded body, because they needed to see, to know, that he really had died, and that he really had been raised.  Jesus even made a second visit to the same locked room a week later because one of them, Thomas, had not been present to receive that healing, to experience that transforming encounter with the risen Lord.
 
Jesus knew that his disciples were not yet ready to be sent out as apostles.  He would therefore appear numerous times to various groups of people before finally ascending to the Father some forty days after his Resurrection.  Even then, it would still be another ten days before the gift of the Holy Spirit would descend upon them on the Day of Pentecost, transforming them from a band of survivors into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church whose ministry we share today.
 
Clearly, a lot can happen in forty or fifty days.  And, in that light, I have been reflecting on the process of healing and just how transformative the experience of receiving healing is for us.  Two stories of healing have been on my mind and heart lately, passages that we have not heard recently in our Lectionary.  I’ll share one of them with you now, and the other in my next column.
 
The first is from John’s Gospel (chapter 5, verses 2-9):
 
 “Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The ill man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.”
 
It’s the conversation before the healing, the exchange between Jesus and this suffering man, that is so compelling in this passage.
 
The man had been suffering for many years, and he has been doing everything he can, in his impaired state, to pursue relief and seek healing.  Jesus clearly understands fully the nature of the situation, too.  Yet the first words that Jesus speaks to this man who has been suffering for so long are:  “Do you want to be made well?” 
 
The answer should be obvious.  Is obvious, in fact.  So much so that the man never even bothers to say “yes”; he simply points out to Jesus that he cannot get down into the healing waters on his own.  Satisfied, Jesus heals him instantly, taking away the cause of his suffering and, at the same time, obviating his need to get down into the healing waters of the pool.
 
So why does Jesus ask the question?  Why that question?
 
The fact that the man does not answer with “yes” might give us some insight.  As just mentioned, the man instead describes essentially his own helplessness, his own inability to heal himself.  Perhaps that is what Jesus is really asking:  “Do you understand that you cannot on your own make yourself well?”
 
If that’s the case, then this whole scene has something critically important to say to us, in our own day and age.  Something important to say to you and me, here, now, at All Saints Episcopal Church in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, in the spring of A.D. 2024.
 
As we face our own challenges in our parish and our community, have we stopped to confront the question Jesus asks:  do we want to be made well?
 
We should not jump to answering that question too quickly.  Remember that an answer of “yes” seemed even more self-evident for the lame man at Beth-zatha than it might for us, so let’s not take it as given.  Let’s take time really to think about it, really to pray about it.  Let’s actually put ourselves in the shoes ~ rather, on the mat ~ of the man in the Gospel passage …
 
Are we doing in this moment everything that we can in our present circumstances to get ourselves into a place of healing?  Do we have faith that healing is really possible?  Are the obstacles to our healing external problems that are beyond our control, or are some of them the result of our own choices?  Have we acknowledged, even to ourselves, that we need to be healed?
 
We should note that there is an implied “now” in Jesus’s question:  “Do you want to be made well now?”  Are we ready to experience the healing that God offers us right now? 
 
Likewise, are well ready, in this moment, to put our full trust in Jesus Christ?  The lame man in John’s Gospel has bent all his effort, for a very long time, towards getting down into those healing waters in the pool.  When Jesus offers him the healing he has long sought, the man seems to think that Jesus is offering to help him get into the pool.  Jesus’s healing takes a radically different form, one the man could scarcely even have imagined as a daydream:  Jesus just tells him to get up and walk.
 
And the man has the faith to do just that, despite his long-held expectations of what healing would look like for him.  Do we have that kind of faith?  Do we even think of faith in that way?
 
If not, can we imagine what our faith community might look like if we did?
 
Peace & blessings,
C+

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