In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
Christ is risen!
“Do you want to be healed?” the Lord asks, and I am tempted to reply, “You’re the Lord incarnate, you tell me!” “Do you want to be healed?” and I am left with incredulity: yet the Lord is asking you and He is asking me, “Do you want to be healed?”
I want to take healing and continue with my life. I am ill, I suffer—though not to the extent of others—and I want a miracle, a sign, a justification of my attending services and giving to the Church. I say to the Lord, “I pray, I give, I serve: now give me what I want. Heal me, and my life will be more manageable; Heal me, and I will deign to do a little more for You and Your Church; Heal me, and I will give you a rest from my occasional prayers.”
“Do you want to be healed?” The Lord does not offer healing for us to live according to the standards of this age, the Lord offers healing that we live according to the standards of the Kingdom. And for this to be true it may be that the healing I receive is spiritual rather than physical—but the spiritual healing is greater than the physical. Since to be healed physically prepares us for life in this age, to be healed spiritually prepares us for Life in the next.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we do not know why some people suffer with physical or psychological illness and disease while others do not, we do not know the whys and the whats and the hows. But we do know that whatever our physical health, death will take us—life in this age has a finality to it: we will die, we will cease our existence in this age, we will enter the tomb.
“Do you want to be healed?” Notice for the paralytic there was work for him to perform after his healing, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” And he was expected to witness to the leaders of the people—who had prestige and power over him and over all the people—that Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath. It was not the paralytic’s place to return to life according to this age but to become a worker of the Kingdom.
Brothers and sisters, we ask for healing and we have received it: through baptism and chrismation we are renewed, we are freed from death, sin and idolatry, we have become inheritors of eternal Life. And we too, like the paralytic, must follow the instructions of God and glorify the Kingdom. And for some we glorify the Kingdom by physical healing that we may proclaim His great works, and for some we glorify the Kingdom by enduring physical suffering with peace that we may proclaim His great works. And all the more so, for all, for each one of us, we have been granted that we will die; for in Christ our dying is a glorification of the Kingdom, “In Him death itself has become an act of life,” says Fr Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory,
for He has filled it with Himself, with His love and light. In Him “all things are yours; whether … the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21–23). And if I make this new life mine, mine this hunger and thirst for the Kingdom, mine this expectation of Christ, mine this certitude that Christ is Life, then my very death will be an act of communion with Life. For neither death nor life can separate us from the love of Christ. … I know that in Christ this great Passage, the Pascha of the world has begun, that the light of the “world to come” comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, for Christ is risen and Life reigneth.
— Alexander Schmemann, ‘For the life of the world,’ p. 106.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we seek both spiritual and physical healing, and we get frustrated when what happened to the paralytic does not happen to us, but Christ is risen! And if Christ is risen then we will rise and our very dying becomes an act of defiance against Death. The Lord heals yet He does so as He knows and wills for our salvation that His Kingdom be glorified in us.
“Do you want to be healed?” Because healing requires of us work and sacrifice, giving and serving. And we are healed, we are transformed, we are freed from all powers and principalities (see Ephesians 6:12) who afflict us. Let us make our joys and our sorrows, our health and our sickness, our living and our dying, acts of glorifying His Kingdom that we may abide in Him and receive eternal Life.
“Do you want to be healed?”
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
That we may offer true glory, honour and worship to our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who grants us healing that we may glorify the Kingdom, together with His unoriginate Father and the All-holy, Good and Life-giving Spirit. Amen.
In those days, as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints that lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. Now there was at Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she fell sick and died; and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him entreating him, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose and went with them. And when he had come, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping, and showing tunics and other garments which Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside and knelt down and prayed; then turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, rise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and lifted her up. Then calling the saints and widows he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.
— Acts 9:32–42
At that time, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda which has five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and troubled the water; whoever stepped in first after the troubling of the water was healed of whatever disease he had. One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me said to me, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk.’ “They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.
— John 5:1–15