Do You Want to Be Well?
A Sermon by Brent J. Eelman
Abington Presbyterian Church
May 13, 2007

John 5: 1-9
After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed.  ⁵One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When 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?’ ⁷The sick 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.’ ⁸Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.*
 

Healing is an important part of our life. Healthcare represents the largest single percentage of our gross national product: 15%. Here in Abington, the hospital is our single largest employer and it is the cornerstone of our local economy. Since the beginning of time, illness has plagued humanity, and the healer has occupied a position primal importance. In the Native American communities, the healer, or medicine-man was as important as the chief… often the chiefs were shaman or healers. When we read the gospels, we learn that a great deal of Jesus fame derived from his reputation as a healer. The ill and lame sought out Jesus because he was able to heal them. One might argue that his authority as a moral and spiritual teacher derived from his gifts as a healer. People tried all different types of ways to get Jesus to touch them, to heal them: the woman reaching for his hem, the man who was on a cot, lowered through an opening in the roof, and so many others.

The text from John is an account of a healing by Jesus. But John is a more stylized gospel and if we listen to it carefully, this healing narrative speaks to us about the very nature of life and the challenge of healthy change. The story takes place in Jerusalem. Near the temple there were pools that were apparently fed by springs. The lame and ill would gather at these pools because they believed that the water had healing powers. When the pools bubbled or became agitated by the gas from the springs, the lame would enter the water. It was believed that the first person into the water when the springs started bubbling would be healed. If one was crippled, it required the presence of a friend or helper so that the individual could quickly enter the water when the springs became active. This was the context for an encounter between Jesus and a man who was lame for 38 years. Apparently he had been coming to the pools for a number of years, but to no avail. He was still lame. And so he sat on his mat, waiting, hoping that something would happen that would make a difference in his life. That day something happened.

Jesus approached the man. This lame man, sitting on his mat did not seek out Jesus. In that encounter Jesus asked him a simple question: “Do you want to be well?” Now to my way of thinking, there are two possible answers to that question: Yes, or No. The man chose neither of those options; instead he goes into a long whiney tirade about how bad his life was and that he had no one to help him. He told Jesus, “Someone always cuts in front of me?” “Do you want to be well? Yes or No?” Jesus was more patient than I. He then proceeded to give the man a three part command: 1. Stand up. 2. Take up your mat. 3. Walk. The man walked. The command of Jesus speaks to our age also. We may not be crippled waiting by the healing springs, but few can argue that there are not problems and pathologies that plague individuals and our society as a whole. So Jesus asks us:

“Do you want to be well?” I read a number of newspapers and I am struck by the editorializing and posturing that goes on about the problems that plague us. One cannot read the paper or listen to the news without hearing about them. In the last five years, an additional 5% of the population has fallen under the poverty line. Thirty seven million citizens are without healthcare coverage. The number of children born to children is rising in our poor communities. The reality of drug and alcohol abuse, though not garnering headlines is still around us. There are the environmental concerns that continue to haunt us. You can make your own list… Most of us want a better world. Most of us want to see these things changed. Yet nothing happens. It is as though we are like that man laying by the side of the pool for 38 years, hoping that we will somehow get well. Christ asks us: “Do you want to be well?” How do we respond? Often we say, “That is the way things are.” Or “You can’t fight city hall.” Or “the problem is somebody else.” We often sound like that crippled soul lying beside the pool.

The same could be asked of our individual lives: “Do you want to be well?” I am not talking merely about physical illness. How often do we come up with excuses for our poor behavior. How often do we find some reason, excuse, or person that stands in the way of personal change? Jesus’ question: “Do you want to be well?” is legitimate. We might want to make it more pointed: “Do you really want to be well?” “Do you want to do what it takes to be well?” To those who respond yes: the command is clear: Stand up, Take up. And walk.

Stand up. The first part of any change in our lives, our behavior or our society is to make the decision to do something about it. Change requires resolve, and resolve requires action. We need to stand up. We need to make that first step to change, and often that is the hardest step to take. I am not a physicist, but I understand that it takes more energy to get going than it does to keep going. Stand up… that is the first step toward any positive life change. Do you want to be well? Then stand up… Take that first step. Show resolve.

One of the things that we do very well in our world is to hold conferences on the various issues and problems that bedevil the world. We have conferences on global warming, world poverty, violence, clean water, AIDs, refugees, the Middle East, and many other issues. These conferences are important because they help define the problems that we face in the world, but there is also a point where they cease from being helpful. It is not enough to sit around and talk about things. If we want God’s creation, God’s world to be better we have to stand up. We have to take that first step of action. More often than not, we can come up with a thousand and one excuses for laying on our mats, hoping that the magic water will cure the world’s ills… But Jesus asks: “Do you want to be well? Then Stand up!”

“Take up.” The mat that the man had was his foundation. It was what he rested on. His mat was what identified him as lame and it also gave him a measure of comfort and security, given his condition. Friends and relatives might use the mat to carry him around. It was, in short his a symbol of his infirmity and a source of small comfort and security. After standing up, after making the first step toward health, Jesus exhorted the man to give up his dependency upon his illness “Take up your mat” can be understood as meaning, let go of your dependencies and the small comfort that it offers. Let go of all the excuses that you have that rationalize why you are where you are.

Any move toward healthy change means leaving something behind. That is more difficult than we are often willing to acknowledge. There is a certain security to pathology. The people of Israel, standing on the Red Sea, with Pharaoh’s chariots thundering behind them, expressed this sentiment. Some of them said: “Maybe we didn’t have it so badly in Egypt… at least we had food.” Healthy change calls us take up our mat. It requires that we abandon the excuses and the comfort of our problems.

“Walk.” Health and wholeness mean moving forward: walking if you will. The healthy life is moving toward a goal. The command to walk is a command to move toward our goals: to move away from where we are to where God wants us to be. Jesus commanded the man to walk, and we hear that command and it relates directly to our lives.

Let me make a final comment about this healing. One of the things that strikes me about Jesus is the authority and sureness of what he said. Quite frankly, Jesus did not seem to be nostalgically sympathetic. When the man told Jesus all the excuses for not being well, Jesus did not respond with some type of kind affirmation. He did not say to this man… “You sure have had a hard life… I understand how bad you must feel.” No… He told how to become well. This was compassion that went beyond sympathy. It was compassion that heals. Jesus also was quite emphatic in his commands. He did not say to the many…”Try standing up.” Or “try taking a step.” He used a simple imperative. “Do it.”

We live in a therapeutic culture that has substituted sympathy for active compassion. The message of this story to us is that Christ wants us whole and healthy physically, mentally and spiritually… but to arrive at that health, we need to Stand up… take up… and walk. Do you want to be well? Then stand up, take up, and walk. This is the good news. Amen.

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org